This week's VoiceThread really made me think about the context collapse I am experiencing online. I want to focus only on Instagram because that's the platform I most frequently use, and it lets users create different accounts.
I currently have three accounts I regularly use. My main account, which is private, started back in 2015 when I was an undergrad. So far, I have 453 posts posted on this account with many highlights of stories, which shows how active I am in sharing my life, travels, hobbies, and food I eat within my network. I was surely more active back when my network was relatively small. However, as I started living abroad, getting involved in different communities and networks, and began my career, I started to be cautious about what I uploaded, even within my network. Once, I even had a few of my elementary students I teach request to follow me, which made me very uncomfortable. I did not ever want to share my personal life with such young kids! I also had some people I didn't even know follow me at one time I made it public. This was the moment I experienced context collapse, which limited my freedom to share whatever I liked and whatever I used to. This constant self-censoring led me to open another account.
My second account is very, very private. I only have 15 of my closest circle of friends follow me, and I upload my life - more so that it doesn't need a careful selection of pictures and more of a diary format (I feel like I can be more genuine here).
Then I have my third account, which I opened at the beginning of this year mainly because I needed an instructor account for the undergraduate course I taught. I have been too busy to upload anything there, but I did communicate with students and followed some of my colleagues, professors, educators, and accounts related to my field.
I created this diagram using Canva and realized that my main account and professional account rarely overlap. I think I prefer these accounts to be shared with different groups of people as the purpose is different. Then I start to wonder for those following my main account or my professional account only, do they know real me? Do they have to know the real me? Can I say we are on the same page within the network, or do I prefer it this way? If you have similar questions or wonder, please leave comments! I'm happy to discuss this with more of you :)
Hi! I'm Bridgette from EME 6414, a first-time commenter. You asked some really thoughtful questions in this post, which got me thinking. When you post different types of content on two different accounts, each with different followers, can you really show the "real" you? I think we are all multifaceted, and using different social media accounts to showcase different facets of our identities is one of the great advantages of social media.
ReplyDelete