This week, I cybersluthed on my friend, Sarah Mennie. The investigation included looking at her:
Taking a look at Sarah's Instagram, it is apparent that this part of her social media is mainly friend based. Sarah's very first post was published in 2013, so this profile has been in the making for 7 years now. Her follower to following ratio is average. (nothing crazy here) as well as her bio gives us a couple details about herself, however does not share too much.
Viewing her photos as a whole, I can gather that Sarah values her family, pets and friends. She often captions many of her posts with emojis and song lyrics/quotes, so there is no risk of any inappropriate captions.
In her photos, Sarah is always dressed professionally and is clearly very content-mindful, in the sense of no inappropriate/non-professional objects are seen throughout her feed.
Looking at Sarah's Twitter profile, her profile photo is in fact the same photo as one in her Instagram feed. In Sarah's bio, she has included that she lives in Treaty 4 territory as well as has included the hashtag #inclusion, which shows me that she values inclusion. Again, her follower ratio on her profile is pretty average.
One suggestion I might make is for Sarah to insert a cover photo, to really highlight her personality and characteristics.
Scrolling through Sarah's Twitter feed, I see that this is a professional account that surrounds topics such as using technology in the classroom and crocheting, being that it is her personal learning project. It is apparent that Sarah took part in the SaskEd chat that we were to attend online. Sarah also has many posts that are on the topic of inclusion, that back up her hashtag in her bio.
Again, there is no sign of any inappropriate or unprofessional content in posts, likes or replies, however this account was only created in January of 2020 (3 months ago), therefore, Sarah has not had much opportunity to build her digital footprint on her Twitter.
Lastly, I took a look at Sarah's Facebook. I know that in my generation when I was 12-13, Facebook was THE social media account to have. Upon creeping Sarah's profile, I can assume that her beliefs up in Warman, SK are the same.
Looking at the Intro section on Sarah's Facebook profile, I can see that she was a counsellor at Camp Easter Seal. Upon going to the Camp Easter Seal Facebook page, I discovered that this is a camp that supports children and teens with exceptionalities. Their mission statement is, "SaskAbilities supports people experiencing disability with programs and services to enhance their lives." This adds to my theory of Sarah's value of the subject of inclusion.
Upon scrolling through Sarah's photos that she was tagged in, I came across this photo of a cookie that has the words "dumb cluck" iced on the cookie. Seeing this somewhat surprised me. Though this is not something that is directly inappropriate, however, this does refer to a particular curse-word phrase. Perhaps I am overprotective, but I might suggest for Sarah to untag herself in this post.
Reflecting on Digital Identity
Upon viewing Sarah's social media profiles, I realized that it is very important to check in on your own digital identity (especially tagged photos of you) regularly, so that something unprofessional or inappropriate does not appear on any of your profiles. It is common in this day and age that people will often look at someone's online profiles when becoming friends with, in school with, or even looking to hire this person. Maintaining our digital identities and ensuring to have knowledge of digital citizenship protects our image as educators and professionals.
In relation to Lee's article, having multiple identities can be beneficial to maintain a professional identity. Many of my friends have personal accounts and specific teaching accounts, in which both have different audiences (with some overlap). The convenience of this to the audience is that, as Ron Diggity says, "You choose your own level of involvement." For example, many of my peers that are not teachers do not follow my professional Twitter, however do follow my personal Twitter. This allows me to expand my teaching horizons and retweet things that I find useful that my friends not involved in teaching may find annoying.
The Justine Sacco scenario is a prime example of what happens when we do not separate our personal life from our professional lives or other interests. It is also an example of using digital etiquette in the sense of really thinking before you post. Perhaps a solution to Sacco's Tweet could have been to use a second account, one specifically for making jokes. This way, it would be much tougher for people to have access to things in her personal life and ruin it for her while she was on a plane, unable to explain her joke. In his video, Jon Ronson states, "The great thing about social media is that it gave a voice to voiceless people, but we're now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless." This saddens me, however it is true. The video was released four years ago, and society has not changed the slightest bit. every chance we get, we are constantly judging people's actions, pictures and posts online. This is why it is so crucial that we educate ourselves and educate not only our future students, but our families, friends and peers the importance of digital citizenship and to be literate in online etiquette, to ensure that nor we, our students, families, friends and peers do not get hurt.