I see “web presence” as content-driven. It is all the content that you contribute to the Web, meaning blog entries, comments on other people’s content, videos you create, your content on various web 2.0 communities like Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Vimeo, Storify, Pintrest, Edmodo, Web 2.0 Classroom etc. The map or picture of “web presence” is what comes up as I search Google for my name. “Digital footprint,” on the other hand, includes a lot of other data: your searches, forays into other sites with or without leaving your own contribution. According to Wikipedia (2012), “Inputs to digital footprint include attention, location, time of day, search results and key words, content created and consumed, digital activity and data from sensor, and from the users social crowd. Some data can come from deep IP and Internet data, such as footprinting. Value created from the collection of inputs and analysis of the data are recommendation, protection, personalization, ability to trade or barter and contextual adaptation.”
Your digital footprint is also affected by others who mention your name and other data referring to you. For example, my information on the UAF directory site, friends on Facebook re-sharing my posts, followers retwitting my twits or re-pinning my pins. Your digital footprint is often out of your control because of an open and social nature of the web and other things such as, various tracking software used by many companies to learn about your interests for their marketing strategy. How often do we go to a news site like nytimes.com and on a side where ads are situated, see an ad for a winter coat we have searched for a few days ago. Such strategies often perceived as invasion of privacy, and companies that practice it arise controversy and feelings of untrust about collecting data without public consent (Lifehacker, 2012).
However, it is important to remember that there are also beneficial uses that come from “footprinting” or digital footprint tracking. Our browsers keep track of what we are searching to give us better search results: if you search for coffee shops, the browser based on your location and earlier search data will most likely display all the coffee shops in your area and not nation-wide. A rudimentary geo-tagging which can be part of your digital footprint is based on geographical identification and can be tracked through your mobile device’s GPS. It is enabled on many social sites like Panoramio and Flickr, and is very useful in finding location-specific information, whether it is news, images, websites, or other resources.
If you can control your web presence to some degree by deleting some content or giving up a membership for certain sites and communities, you cannot erase your digital footprint. Your web presence is a part of your digital footprint and is directly affected by it. It is very important to start educating kids and college students alike about web presence and digital footprint because our online lives are becoming more and more important as far as future education and employment goes. Frankly, this is the least favorite topic of mine because there is a lot of advice and strategies out there based on fear and resonate a little too close with “Thou shall not!” dogma. For instance, some articles go as far as suggesting setting up Google Alerts to monitor what others are saying about your persona (Nielsen, 2011). In my opinion, you cannot control what others are saying about you on the Information Superhighway any more than you can in physical life. Instead of spending time tracking what others are saying about you, I would advise a slightly different strategy: use avatars and nicknames for the accounts that are of more personal nature, separate your personal web presence from your professional one, and “think before you post” strategies. Unfortunately, many schools (mostly K-12), choose not to deal with social presence all together by simply banning access to them. This is not a solution.
I do not profess to know what the most effective solution would be. But I do think, it should start at home, because it is at home where many kids take part in online activities, and it should include teaching kids to use common sense. We forget that the nature of the web is highly social, and for many, being a part of one or another social network takes place over face-to-face interaction or even becomes a substitute for learning experiences they don’t get in a “traditional classroom” (Fisher, 2012). We also forget that social lives and interests change over time. My online presence in my 20s (if I had one) would have looked very different from what it is now. But if one would have taken a look at my digital footprint over the span of those years, one would have discovered (I hope) my growth and a real person behind the data. Additionally, if I were looking for a prospective employee, I would be very skeptical of hiring someone with a “tight” digital presence that did not veer off into some personal realms.
This is not to say that creating your web presence should not abide by some rules. Just like our “real world” has moral code and socially accepted behavior, so does the digital world. This is where privacy, intellectual property, and copyright issues come in, however blurry and sometimes unclear they are. The nature of the web makes reproduction so infinitely easier than it was in print age that sometimes it is hard to trace the original and its creator. We have to recognize the copyright law even if it does get more and more complicated as it is being tailored to account for intellectual property housed in a free environment and give credit to content creators. You would not appropriate the work of someone else in the real world (although there are always cases as such). Why, then, would you treat the digital world any different? Even in communities based on rewriting or adding to an original work (such as many fanfiction sites like www.harrypotterfanfiction.com) where copyright violation according to the law is so clear, the author is acknowledged, the credit is given, and community policing is high (writers that do not acknowledge the due credit getting kicked out of the community) (Shirky, 2010, p. 90).
By the same token, in spite of the possibilities of copyright violations and intellectual property theft, we have to acknowledge the free and open nature and culture of the World Wide Web. As Lawrence Lessig (2005) points out, “Free Cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon.” (Lessig, 2001, p. 11). There are amazing works out there that employ re-mixing and making something original out of the already existing content (you can see some examples at http://www.everythingisaremix.info and http://thru-you.com) not to mention the entire culture of open source projects in which everyone can participate, alter and build upon what someone else has built already. It was such projects that gave us MySQL—the most popular database management system, and Linux operating system— the most popular alternative to Windows and macOS. There is a big part of the World Wide Web community that does not care about copyright and intellectual property but cares strongly about sharing and building something together. Should not this be a part of the values we try to install in our students?
In conclusion, all aforementioned issues combined make up an individual’s web presence. Most importantly, they also compose a large part of a realm called “digital citizenship” and should have an important place in educational curriculum, K-12 and Higher Ed alike.
Resources:
Digital footprint. (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved July 1, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_footprint.
Lifehacker. (2012). Twitter Is Tracking You On The Web; Here’s What You Can Do To Stop It. Retrieved from http://lifehacker.com/5911389/twitter-is-tracking-you-on-the-web-heres-what-you-can-do-to-stop-it
Nielsen, L. (2011, August 19). Discover what your digital footprint says about you. Message posted on http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/08/discover-what-your-digital-footprint.html
Fisher, M. (2012, June 29). Snapshot of a Modern Learner. Message posted on http://smartblogs.com/education/2012/06/29/snapshot-modern-learner
Lessig, L (2005). Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. Penguin Books.
Shirky, C (2010). Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin Press.