Category: Dr. V In the News

Online identity management article in JOEE

We (myself and my research group) have been working for a while on projects related to the management of online identity – that is, how people do, and should, present themselves online, across several social media sites.

One of the first papers in what will hopefully be a series was published this past Friday in the Journal of Online Engineering Education – Online Identity Management Literacy for Engineering and Technology Students (pdf).

This video explains why you should read the paper. 🙂

The paper discusses the current employment climate in the U.S., where many employers check students’ Google resume in addition or even instead their paper resumes. It presents data about online identity management of undergraduate students, collected through in-depth interviewing. It then presents a program for students to manage their online identities:

The program begins with social media literacy – understanding the dynamics that make identity management trickier online than off. It then suggests tools, ideas, and direction for 4 steps:

  1. Creating professional online content
  2. Optimizing online content for social media
  3. Developing and maintaining an online professional network
  4. Monitoring and maintaining online presence

Coincidentally, there is an article in today’s university newspaper about this very topic. The article quotes yours truly (I forgot to mention that my name is Dr. V!) and summarizes informally some of the points that are developed formally in the journal article.

The journal article is intended for:

  • college professors, who are asked to consider teaching a bit of social media literacy in their courses;
  • college students, who benefit from awareness of how to manage their online information (at least that’s what the students who read the paper tell me).

And no, you don’t have to be in engineering or technology to find this article useful. 🙂

Graduate students who are interested in this and other social media topics may find the research seminar I am teaching this Fall interesting. TECH 621: Research Focus: The Social Internet is a course that reviews current research in core social media topics. In this course, students are immersed in social media and work on an original research project of their own interest. More info about the course coming soon, but feel free to contact me if you’re interested and are a Purdue student. And, if you are interested but are not a Purdue graduate student… well, why not become one?

In the News: Summer 2011

Inside Indiana Business, Oct 18, 2011 – Purdue working on STEM innovations

Journal & Courier, Oct 2, 2011 – BoilerCribs owner taps crowdsourcing to hone West Lafayette project

The Atlantic, Sept. 2, 2011 – Social Media’s Slow Slog Into the Ivory Towers of Academia

Journal &  Courier, Aug. 3, 2011 – Keynote at Lafayette Digital Media Conference

Lafayette Online, July 29, 2011 – Lafayette Digital Media Conference

Lafayette Online, July 7 – Social Media Marketing Workshop for Artists

Journal & Courier, June 7 – West Lafayette Police Adopt Social Media Policy

Journal & Courier, June 9 – Steffey’s mother joins search for missing student

Journal & Courier, June 14 – Slow start for applying social media ethics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

McAfee Global Report: Web 2.0 in Business

web2dot0
Photo credit: McAfee

My Facebook & Twitter pals might have seen my mentions of a big mystery project I was working on at the end of the summer. Well, the big mystery project has been released, and now I can tell you about it: It was preparing a global report for McAfee Co. I worked with my Purdue and CERIAS colleague, Dr. Lorraine Kisselburgh to analyze data from a global survey McAfee conducted, enrich it with expert interviews, and weave it into a story which became the report – Web 2.0: A Complex Balancing Act.

You can download the report at the link above, and you can read highlights in the news release.

In the news

2010

Mar. 26 – Social hours – Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly article about using social media at work

2009

Oct. 7 – Twitter tool could help educators, e-campus news

Oct. 6 – Quoted in the Journal & Courier about a new Twitter tool, need4feed.

Aug. 9 – Newspaper article published in The Spartanburg Herald Journal (South Carolina) about some of my Facebook research.

Mar. 8 – Politicians are a-Twitter over the new social media, The Spartanburg Herald Journal, S.C.

Search Engine People interview

Ruud Hein of Search Engine People questioned me 🙂

Read my interview, on various PR topics, here.

I wrote about social media culture & social norms, how not to be “creepy,” how to plan strategically for public relations, misunderstandings about what PR is, could, and should be, and tempered the idea of conversational PR.