When looking back at Module 1, one of the big themes that I took away and found really interesting was the idea of an online presence via social media and how it can affect your personal (offline) life both good and bad. A good example of this that we saw in class was when we watched the south park episode about online presence and which is more important.
After a long discussion in class we decided that they had a mutualistic relationship and that while the user controls the online presence, but the online presence can control the user through the need to continue connecting with friends and the online community. Also the social media platforms have been professionally designed to keep the user engaged and for lack of a better term “hooked” to the online experience. While it might seem silly, people can become addicted and focus entirely too much on their online presence, in the reading “Social Media: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” it talks about how addiction to social media is becoming a real problem for younger people. This absorbent amount of time can also lead to things like cyberbullying which is starting to have a real consequence in the online community and social networks.
Just to quickly clarify the difference between the two, according to the reading “Social Network vs. Online Community: What is the Difference?” a social network is a place where people of differing interests and ideas can come together and communicate, whereas online communities are usually centered around an idea or interest. Here is a video that helps explain the difference in more depth
https://www.coursera.org/lecture/what-is-social/social-networks-and-communities-7Yc1G
Another factor that social media can play in peoples physical lives is the ability to get or lose jobs. While most of the time a well groomed online presence can help you get jobs through sites like Linkdin and handshake, it can be a double edge sword that can hurt your chances of being hired. In this new age of digital media more and more employers are checking potential candidates online presence to make sure they like who they are hiring. There has been numerous examples of people who have lost job opportunities because of old tweets that have resurfaced, for example Kevin Hart was recently in trouble over old tweets:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/13f8cbeb-21b0-4e64-bc9a-5b577cb7700b
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