Everyone has a unique personality. When you walk into someone’s bedroom you can often begin to glean some information about who that person is, what they like, and what they care about. The band poster on their wall tells you about their music taste. Do they have a shelf full of books? Or a wide array of movies? These small observations can tell you a lot. Similarly, a person’s online presence can also tell you a lot about them too. A person’s online activity curates a so-called tapestry or a roadmap of their lives, their interests, and so much more. Sometimes an individual’s “digital curation” is something they consciously aware of, something they are doing purposefully. Other times, it is an unconscious creation. When someone simply pursues content that they find interesting or good, they are not necessarily pursing it with the intention on curation. For me, it is a mix of both conscious and unconscious. In some online forums, like Spotify, I consciously curate a playlist of music that I enjoy and that I feel represents me. For example, I particularly enjoy 80’s and rock music; If someone wanted to know what kind of music I liked, they could easily go to my Spotify playlists and find this out. On other platforms, like Facebook, I am less conscious of the digital presence I am creating. I typically share videos, photos, and any other post that I find interesting, funny, or simply worth sharing. In the long run, this inadvertently creates patterns that others probably use in order to make assumptions about who I am and what I care about. I share a lot of animal videos. I also share a lot of liberal-leaning posts about the state of our government and other various social issues. These things, combined with many others, will create an unintentional portrait of who I am. The fascinating thing is that I do consciously make a decision about language on my social media. On Facebook and Instagram, I make a concerted effort to avoid posts with profane language. I do this because those are the two platforms on which I am “friends” with family members, coworkers, respected family friends, and others who I feel uncomfortable using such language around. However, on Twitter and Snapchat, I tend to have less of a filter because my audience is different. While I am not one to purposefully curate an “aesthetic” or personality on social media, I am someone who is aware of my changing audience from platform to platform. Twitter tends to be the place where I share my own opinion and ideas instead of just sharing someone else’s post like I often do on Facebook. Personally, Instagram is the place I consider myself most conscious of digital curation. I love photography and Instagram gives me a platform on which I can display my “professional” work as well as my personal photos. I think of it as an online photo album. My grandparents had tons of physical photo albums and they would pick out the best pictures to put in; I do the same with Instagram. I strive to make a page that people enjoy looking at but that also serves to represent me. I hope that I can be more conscious in the future about how my digital curation affects my perceived online presence. With employers using social media to recruit and monitor employees, I think it would be a wise choice to be careful about how we may unintentionally present ourselves online; It could be a great advantage or a terrible downfall.
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AuthorAshley Harris is currently a Junior at Belmont University. She is majoring in Publishing with a minor in English Writing. She hopes to end up working at a publishing house in NYC, publishing books for children and young adults. She has an affinity for the Christmas/ Archives
November 2018
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