Fully immersed in the first topic of the ONL-course, I’m aware that it is much more time-consuming than I anticipated, despite the fact that all participants were warned about this. ‘Online participation and digital literacies’ is a challenging topic, though, and a fun one at that. I’m sure that in a scan, my brain looks very much like a musty stew with its ingredients (thoughts, concepts, and articles I’ve read) visibly bobbing around in there. Even in my sleep I’m trying to make sense of it all.

In this blog post, I address one particular ingredient in my brain soup that stayed with me: the concepts of digital Visitor/Resident, proposed by David White and Alison Le Cornu (2011). In this typology, the Visitor sees the web as a set of tools, and leaves no social trace, however impossible that may seem in this day and age. The Resident, on the other hand, sees the web as a series of places and people, going online to engage with others, leaving social traces and building a digital identity.

Reflecting upon it, I see myself as a Visitor in some aspects, and a Resident in others. Also, there’s a clear difference between what I do and who I am online professionally as opposed to privately. And sometimes, these two blend together nad overlap each other. An example: for my work as a teacher, I search for information online, in databases and branch magazines or blogs, and I read massive amounts of scientific articles to make sure I’m up to date with the latest research in my field. I also watch videos, instructive ones and recordings of lectures or webinars I missed. So far, these are typical Visitor activities.

Privately, my online activities comprise of engaging with family and friends through Facetime, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook, and of winding down by browsing sites like Hemnet (a Swedish housing site) or Pinterest. Every once in a while, though very rarely, I might even buy something online. All in all, these would be Resident activities.

Defining who I am online gets tricky because of the fact that I also engage in what David White defines as Resident activities in my professional life: I engage with others through Zoom or Teams, and I share documents through Google Drive and other services, to name but a few things. On the same note, I could be defined as a Visitor privately, for instance while banking online, or reafing magazines via Readly.

The take-away message here is that hardly anyone is either a Visitor or a Resident; we are all a little bit of both. I still struggle to wrap my head around the part of ”leaving social traces”, as I think that anything we do online leaves a trace. It stands to argue to what extent these traces are indeed social or not – a matter of definition, I suppose. But I must admit that sometimes when I’m online, be it professionally or privately, I find myself asking: ”Am I a Visitor or a Resident now?”

Reference

David White and Alison Le Cornu (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16 (9), at https://firstmonday.org/article/view/3171/3049, accessed 6 October 2020.