My Digital Self: Representing Yourself Well on the Internet

Finding Myself in Cyberspace

I searched three of my names: Nicole Barn­hart, Nik­ki Barn­hart, and my com­mon screen name, nbarn­hart. To each of these, I added my “brands”: New­town (my home­town), SUNY New Paltz (my for­mer school) and UConn.

I have pub­lished a fair amount online, most­ly through Long Riv­er Review, The New­town­er Mag­a­zine, and The Dai­ly Cam­pus. How­ev­er, the first thing that comes up when I google “Nik­ki Barn­hart UConn” is sim­ply a com­ment I made on a class­mate’s post on the Long Riv­er blog — not my own work. I bat­tle my for­mal name­sake “Nicole Barn­hart” with the US Wom­en’s Soc­cer Goalie, so much of my own iden­ti­ty is pushed down, but one can even­tu­al­ly find the fact I made Honors/High Hon­ors in high school, thanks to the prin­ci­pal’s blog. Per­haps the most embar­rass­ing and poten­tial­ly haz­ardous thing that comes up asso­ci­at­ed with my name is a ter­ri­ble qual­i­ty video I made for my Jour­nal­ism 1 class at my old school, on our class’s Vimeo account. I should real­ly bury that.

I think I have the poten­tial for a good dig­i­tal foot­print, con­sid­er­ing how much I’ve pub­lished online, but right now it is some­what weak. I think the strongest search I have is “Nik­ki Barn­hart UConn” because that shows most of my Dai­ly Cam­pus arti­cles, as well as Long Riv­er posts, (even­tu­al­ly) and that shows I am active in the writ­ing community.

You should always con­duct your­self pro­fes­sion­al­ly and with tact if you want any­one to trust you. I con­sid­er the impact of every­thing I write, and I don’t pub­lish any­thing offen­sive, even though I am strict­ly pri­vate on all of my social media accounts. There is a pic­ture I loved of my group of friends at a par­ty, and one of them is hold­ing the clas­sic and trou­ble­some red cup. Although I loved this moment, and it was not even me who was hold­ing the cup, I decid­ed against mak­ing it my pro­file pic­ture because I did­n’t think it was a pro­fes­sion­al or accu­rate way to rep­re­sent myself.

The Role of a Journalist

Far too often the jour­nal­ist respon­si­ble for the work is not known to us. Just a byline. Yet exper­tise is an impor­tant ele­ment of trust. Where has their work appeared? How long have they worked with this out­let? Can audi­ences access their body of work?  - Online Chaos Demands Rad­i­cal Action by Jour­nal­ism to Earn Trust

I agree that it is impor­tant for writ­ers to estab­lish cred­i­bil­i­ty, that they should be “Google-able” and you should be able to find their work online. How­ev­er, they should­n’t be dis­missed because they don’t have a large body of work, and a lot of this can be com­bat­ted by strong but short bio at the end of their arti­cle — like in the one quot­ed above.

Some writ­ers do a great job of brand­ing them­selves — such as the Thought Cat­a­log team. My favorite writer on the site is Ryan O’Con­nell, and I par­tial­ly got a Twit­ter in 2011 to fol­low him. O’Con­nell does­n’t write hard news, but rather human interest/life and cul­ture pieces on a web­site that encour­ages indi­vid­ual voice — there­fore it is okay for him to be a bit “snarky” and expect­ed — that’s how he caught my inter­est and I’m sure oth­ers as well! While a tweet like “Sun­day is a great day for depres­sion!!!” could war­rant a fir­ing or at least a scold at anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion, it is total­ly accept­able and expect­ed for O’Con­nel­l’s genre.

The new duty of a jour­nal­ist to be a con­ver­sa­tion leader and addi­tion­al pres­sures make me a bit uncom­fort­able in some ways, to be hon­est. I am a very pri­vate per­son and I don’t like the idea of being a “brand” but I do like the fact that I have the pow­er to start con­ver­sa­tions and be influ­en­tial past my pub­lished works. I enjoy get­ting to know my favorite writ­ers through their extend­ed web pres­ences and I would be hon­ored if in the future read­ers find me so inter­est­ing they would like to do the same.