For some people their online identity is simply an extension of their offline identity: they use the same name, same picture and express the same ideas. For other people, their online identity could be very different: they might use a different name and express very different ideas. And of course, you’ll get people in between, who decide to maintain different identities that are shared with different people. In this blog post, I’m interested in exploring the diverse ways in which people manage their identity online and why they might do so. [0] [1]
We’ll begin with me. My identities online are, in general, a reflection of my offline self. I have profiles on GitHub, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and My Website and they’re all fairly similar. Even though this may appear open and transparent, I’m still skeptical about publishing personal information and I am very careful with what I do publish. This makes me wonder whether my online identity is really a reflection of my offline self as I assumed it was before. This is in no way an attempt to hide who I really am, but it shows how the online setting poses different problems to an offline setting that may make it much harder to reflect our true selves. I’m talking about issues such as technical problems, fear of security break-ins and the idea of mass surveillance, which can make us to act differently online.
There are plenty of reasons why people may maintain different online identities, sometimes out of choice, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes as a force for good, sometimes as a force for bad.
Anonymity online can be a great asset for whistleblowers and journalists allowing freedom of expression to flourish, but on the other hand it can be exactly what you need to write hateful comments and cyberbully other members of society. In this way, if you appear to be anonymous online (for example, if an employer were to search for you and couldn’t find anything) then it’s possible that you can look more suspicious and untrustworthy: what have you got to hide? [3]
Minority groups may also want to maintain different identities from different people to avoid being “caught” by others. For those people, maintaining multiple identities is crucial, however it goes against the ideology of some of the biggest social networks in the world. For example, Facebook has recently been in the news because of its real-name policy which has posed problems to some members of society. [2]
The website, about.me, aims to combine all your profiles on different websites into one single “start page”. This goes against the very idea of maintaining multiple identities and I’ve found it to be underused, so perhaps this hints to the idea that people don’t like to combine their identities.
Ultimately, I think the decision to maintain multiple identities is a choice that people must make and I think websites should be open to support users who want to, and those who do not.
Further Reading
Zhao, Shanyang, Sherri Grasmuck, and Jason Martin. “Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships.” Computers in human behavior 24.5 (2008): 1816-1836.
References
[0] DiMicco, Joan Morris, and David R. Millen. “Identity management: multiple presentations of self in facebook.” Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work. ACM, 2007.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2011/01/26/multiple-personalities-and-social-media-the-many-faces-of-me/#5f560fbe5e5c
[2] http://techli.com/2012/02/zuckerberg-doesnt-understand-identity-or-integrity/
[3] Rainie, Lee, et al. “Anonymity, privacy, and security online.” Pew Research Center 5 (2013).
Tom Leese 
Hi Tom. I liked the part where you talked about the necessity for some to employ anonymity or multiple identities as I had not considered this in my post. One doesn’t often think about the fact that most people have the privilege of deciding whether to have one unified online identity or several separate ones with varied contents, whereas others are forced to have separate identities whether they want to or not. One thing that I find interesting regarding this is that some social networks such as Facebook allow one to have differing levels of privacy settings for different people or groups of people. For example, if one wishes to post a photo, they may choose to share it only with certain people, and then block access to it for others. I wonder if other networks offered this option would people be willing to have the same online profile on every site, but modify it within that site for different groups of people. Of course this would not work on public sites such as Twitter where the intended audience is usually the whole public. What are your thoughts on this?
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Yeah, I think that increased privacy options would reduce multiple identity use. Although there is still the problem that someone people have which is the idea of giving data to Facebook or other sites in general.
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Hi Tom!
Your post was really interesting to read. I really liked that the fact that there are some people who use multiple identities even if they don’t want to. That idea never came across my mind and your blog made me realise that fact. I share the same view as you when it comes to sharing personal information online, I tend to stay away from it because this idea of ‘digital tattoo’ has always stuck with me. I somewhat agree with the Facebook policy of using your real name to make an account because this would mean that there will be less people getting cyber bullied or catfished using fake accounts which i think are big problems when it comes to social media. I feel that if people want and can manage multiple online identities, we should let them have it but I think we will eventually have this one online identity that will control majority of what we do online.
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