“You don't look like your profile picture”: the ethical implications of researching online identities in higher education

Abstract

Social media sites and other contemporary technologies open the possibility for the construction of online identities that are loosely connected to physical bodies; this construction allows individuals to edit their identities constantly, in a continuous process of self-recreation. In parallel, universities utilise printed and electronic media to present themselves in the best light possible through the process of branding, which -it is argued here -constitutes an instance of hyper-real identity assemblage. This article explores the ethical implications of researching brand construction in university advertisements. The authors reflect upon the ethical implications of conducting educational research on university identities when such identities rely on the representations of racially minoritised students. Online identity construction through technology invites a discussion of postmodern notions of self and reality; this article presents an exploration of a postmodern ethics for educational research.

Determining the Role of Social Identity Attributes to the Protection of Users’ Privacy in Social Media

“…Traditional space and time have merged, creating digital stages (combinations of place and time) via continuously logged-into web devices [13,18]. Understanding SI through its main characteristics, namely complexity, multiplicity, permeability, and overlapping [19,20], can be seen as Anthony Giddens underscored, as a "project": as an ongoing, endless process of the construction of an individual's persona [19] due to environmental and societal influences [13].…”

“…Digital identities are conversational ones, or as Papacharissi (2012) has defined them, "networked selves", which facilitate communication by blurring private and public lives [36], while turning part of users' privacy into entertainment content to be consumed as "extimacy" for entertainment purposes [20,24]. Hinton and Hjort's "intimacy online" is users' need to project everyday moments to construct their online identity [18]. Despite users' tendency to build realistic representations of their identity, there is a tendency towards an idealized representation of themselves through selecting content in reference to their context or audience [34].…”

“…A total of 32 papers were reviewed, extracting 18 SA. Each attribute is presented in Figure 2 alongside the reviewed papers that refer to the respective attribute of SI: Users tend to maintain profiles in different applications, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube; sometimes, they choose to link them with other SM applications, such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, MySpace, Grindr, Tinder, Snapchat, Flickr, or CouchSurfing [18,65], or with Skype, online shopping or banking, their eBay account, or potential online doctors' appointments [35]. Users establish connections among different SA of their digital identity as they update their profile information while posting and commenting online [40].…”

Reclaiming the Archives: White Supremacy and Testimonials of Resistance in an Art & Design College

“…Tokenization, particularly in environments that seek to appear more inclusive, is an additional hardship affecting students of color. The practice of institutions flaunting racially inclusive optics has deep consequences for those seeking recognition for their merit irrespective of their racial identity (Blanco Ramírez & Palu-ay, 2015). In the testimonial below, a student describes being asked to attend a highprofile party for the Mayor.…”

Internal branding in higher education: dialectical tensions underlying the discursive legitimation of a new brand of student diversity

“…Whereas diversity is increasingly selected as an external brand, it is unclear how universities achieve internal support for this specific brand. Diversity refers to student diversity or the presence of students from diverse social, ethnic and/or racial background (Blanco Ramírez & Palu-ay, 2015). However, attempts to develop an external brand of student diversity are often confronted with internal resistance, in that student diversity is widely constructed as contradicting with educational excellence (Mampaey, 2017;Shaw, 2009).…”