Part 2 – Separating and Managing Online Identities

Step 4: Again building off the group reflections from the previous step, illustrate to the group three options for managing their Online identities:
•Creating an entirely new, fake Online identity;
•Creating separate personal and professional profile identities;
•Leaving their identity as it is now (not changing anything);

Step 5: Provide for each of the above options at least one real-life, relevant example and explain to participants what each of these options implies, for example:

•Creating an entirely new, fake Online identity will most likely require it to be completely disconnected from anything that could be related back to your real identity to be effective. This means creating new email addresses and social •Separating professional from personal identities may only require users to change privacy configurations on their accounts, either to limit the amount of information that is available publicly, or to specifically manage what level of information is visible to specific friends, followers or contacts; in other cases though, separating these identities could imply the need to maintain entirely separated set of profiles and accounts for each (meaning that a new set would need to be created for either the personal or professional identity).

•Leaving an identity as it is would likely only require users to change privacy configurations on their accounts, either to limit the amount of information that is available publicly, or to specifically manage what level of information is visible to specific friends, followers or contacts.

Step 6: Now, ask participants to discuss in their same pairs (from Step 3) what some of the pros and cons of each of these options could be, either in a general sense or specifically for themselves and their context. Among the issues that will likely arise during these discussions are those of practicality and credibility – be prepared to speak to those questions specifically when participants share some of their discussion takeaways with the group.