Find out how personal metadata, social media posts, and online activity make up an individual's "Digital Footprint", why they matter, and hear some advice on how to better manage digital tracks and traces. Nicola Osborne will draw on recent University of Edinburgh research on students' digital footprints, which is also the subject of the new #DFMOOC free online. Presented at the CIG Scotland seminar 'Somewhere over the Rainbow: our metadata online, past, present & future' (Metadata & Web 2.0 Series) at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 5th April 2017

1. Managing your Digital Footprint
Taking control of the metadata and
tracks and traces that define us online
Nicola Osborne, Digital Education Manager, EDINA
Nicola.osborne@ed.ac.uk @suchprettyeyes
Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Our metadata online, past, present and future
CIG Scotland’s seventh Metadata and Web 2.0 Seminar
National Library of Scotland, 5th April 2017

2. Introduction
http://nicolaosborne.blogs.edina.ac.uk/
https://goo.gl/jgHLQs https://twitter.com/suchprettyeyes
https://edina.ac.uk/

3. Personal Metadata: the Past
2009
Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any
more.

4. This time it’s personal…
• Web 2.0 and social media are about people,
personality and quirkiness.
• They allow use of links, images, video, audio,
and other multimedia to bring a topic to life.
• They are designed to nurture communities,
networks, peer support, sharing, participation
and collaboration.
• They are often updated and engaged with via
mobile phones – crossing personal and
professional spaces, places and times.
• And that means they can be challengingly
personal spaces to engage and maintain
boundaries in.
“Username: LauraGil4 on
Snapchat (Education
Storytelling)” by Flickr user Laura
Gilchrist (CC-BY).

5. What is a Digital Footprint?
Your Digital Footprint is the data you leave behind when
you go online.
It's what you've said, what others have said about you,
where you've been, images you're tagged in, personal
information, social media profiles, and much more.

6. University of Edinburgh Managing Your
Digital Footprint Research
• PTAS-funded project (2014-15) investigated students’
understanding of their Digital Footprint through surveys
(n=1457), focus groups and interviews.
• Best practice guidance, resources for educators,
eprofessionalism resources and research publications resulted
from this.
• Further research is ongoing, including a
PTAS-funded Yik Yak project (2016-17)
looking at students use of this and similar
anonymous and/or semi-private spaces.

7. Social Media & Web 2.0 leads to a lot
of digital tracks and traces…

8. Deliberate posts and presences…
"Facebook, I would say it's probably just a kind of a
representation of who I am in some ways, like who I am
in my personal life"
(participant 1)
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSUv-aogbE_/?taken-by=symmetrybreakfast&hl=en https://twitter.com/nikivermeulen/status/84819915869569433
6

9. Data from our quantified selves…
https://bust.com/living/16150-which-period-
tracking-app-is-right-for-you.html
http://www.ellieharrison.com/work/broadcasts/
http://www.mapmyrun.com/gb/edinburgh-sct/
https://www.airbnb.co.uk/

10. Full text searchable personal histories of
everything we’ve ever thought to share…
Web 2.0 and social media are sometimes
long lasting, sometimes ephemeral.
And you don’t always get to choose…
We can forget that a post is still live…
Or may not know it has been
screencapped…
Or it may now be out of our control due
to forgotten passwords, a change of site
ownership, an app is spamming on our
behalf.
5% of our students (from 1457) found
information online about themselves
that they did not think was public. https://www.indy100.com/article/we-enjoyed-reading-mhairi-
blacks-nsfw-tweets-as-a-teenager--xyvV8th3lb

11. Have you experienced the
following online?
• Bullying
• Harassment
• Unwanted comments/tags
• Identity theft
• Being hacked
• Information which is public
• Disciplinary
• Revenge porn
• Surveillance & monitoring
• Feelings of inadequacy
• Public relationship breakdown
And remnants of our life in all of its
complexities and challenges…

12. Automated traces…
Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my!
Automatic tags, locations,
face recognition are
useful. And invasive. And
some are legally iffy in the
EU…

13. Including malicious material…
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/the-dark-side-of-guardian-
comments
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2016/09/t
heres-trolls-and-trolls.html

14. Plus doppelgangers, pseudonyms,
erroneous mistaken identities…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2017/apr/03/identity-theft-racial-justice
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-changes-real-
name-policy-after-uproar-from-drag-queens-1412223040
http://www.davegorman.com/projects
_are_you_dave_gorman.html

15. And human liabilities friends…
In our 2014 & 2015 surveys of University of
Edinburgh undergraduates[1]:
11% (survey 1) and 10.7% (survey 2) of our
students had experienced unwanted tagging
on photographs
When did you last review your privacy
and tagging settings? Do you ever review
your friends/follows lists?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb
/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson
Dorothy: How do you talk if you don't have a
brain?
Scarecrow: Well, some people without brains do
an awful lot of talking don't they?

16. Why does your digital footprint matter?
• Professional reputation based on your current and
historical tracks and traces.
– Whether you create them or others do it for you as in
Barbour & Marshall (2012) concept of the “Uncontainable
Self”.
• Legal ramifications for employment, copyright,
defamation, etc.
• Personal reputation and presentation of self in the
appropriate way for the appropriate audience(s).
(Goffman 1959)
• Also, how do you want your data used in the future?

17. Personal Metadata: Present
Pay no attention to that man behind the
curtain.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604035/ube
r-is-engaged-in-psychological-warfare-with-its-
drivers/
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/
how-our-likes-helped-trump-win
http://www.nature.com/article
s/s41562-017-0086.epdf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37834856

18. Privacy and Curation As a Tactic
"I think I'm a private person...I take a lot of care and time over my
close friends...I'm not of the age where it's like ooh I've got 250
friends on Facebook...It's like I don't really care about that kind of
stuff.“
"...my boundaries are more set about who I allow to be my
friend...if you're my friend I'll trust that you don't put anything
stupid [up]" (participant 5)
My! People come and go so quickly here!
"I suppose it's different I think when I was a teenager it tended to
be you were friends with every single person you knew" (participant 1)

19. Formal policies and professional
boundaries (e.g. GMC Guidance)
“Using social media also creates risks, particularly where social and
professional boundaries become unclear. You must follow the guidance
in Maintaining a professional boundary between you and your patient.”
“If a patient contacts you about their care or other professional
matters through your private profile, you should indicate that you
cannot mix social and professional relationships and, where
appropriate, direct them to your professional profile.”
Full detailed guidance can be found here: http://www.gmc-
uk.org/guidance/ethical_guidance/21186.asp

20. Going Underground As a Tactic
Students and younger
internet users seem to
be moving away from
public spaces…
• Direct messaging
tools and WhatsApp
• SnapChat
• YikYak
• Facebook Live,
Instagram Live, etc.Nuclear Submarine Base by Flickr user Lukasz Kryger

21. Personal Metadata: Future
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/28/congress_
approves_sale_of_internet_histories/
Just try and stay out of my
way. Just try! I'll get you, my
pretty, and your little dog,
too!
http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id
=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005399
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/
http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/04/the-
news-integrity-initiative-is-taking-a-cross-
industry-approach-to-fixing-the-news-
trust-problem/

22. What have you learned, Dorothy?
1. Don’t post anything stupid
2. Check your privacy settings
3. Don’t Panic
4. Crowd out the bad stuff with the good
5. Remove content and untag
6. Avoid trolls (if you can)
7. Copyright – don’t use anything you don’t have permission to use
(open licenses are your friend)
8. Check your phone settings (apps, camera & mic access especially)
9. Think about your data
10. Consider legal issues and rights in social media
11. Respect others just as you’d want to be respected yourself
12. Know what your digital footprint looks like
Image: Dorothy’s ruby slippers by Flickr user Kevin Burkett

23. Somewhere Over the Rainbow…
“…social data tells us not just something about society, but also
about the forces that can come to shape society in future, in that
predictive technologies demonstrate a desire to anticipate the
market, and the consumer, in advance.
Academia needs to be aware of these discussions, in order to
provide a critical response to them, and to assist in developing
ethical and sustainable forms of practice. ”
(Burns, 2015)
A place where there isn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto?

24. Find out more about your own
Digital Footprint on #DFMOOC
• Join now, #dfmooc: https://goo.gl/jgHLQs
• Free Course (optional certificate is £39) open to everyone
anywhere in the world.
• Open since Monday, and will run again every month.
• We welcome reuse and sharing more widely – we think it has
particular use for CPD, in digital and information literacy,
around transitions into and out of University.

25. Q&A
Over to you!
Further comments and
questions welcome:
nicola.osborne@ed.ac.uk …there's no place like home!

26. Additional References
• [1] Student identities in transition: social media experiences, curation and implications for
Higher Education. / Connelly, Louise; Osborne, Nicola. Sheffield Hallam University -
SocMedHE Blog: SocMedHE15 Proceedings. 2016.
• WNYC. Privacy, Data Survivalism and a New Tech Ethics. In Note to Self [podcast], 21 Feb
2017. http://www.wnyc.org/story/bonus-privacy-paradox/.
• Burns, A. 2015. Looking forward: Social data informs us about society, but also about the
forces that will come to shape the future. In LSE’s The Impact Blog, 16th October 2015.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/10/16/looking-forward-social-data-and-
prediction/.
Managing your Digital Footprint Resources
• Website and Resources for Educators: http://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-
development/about-us/projects/digital-footprint
• Publications:http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/projects/managing-your-digital-
footprint-research-strand(239b8e5b-c052-4681-9568-77aa02fa44fa).html
• Yik Yak project blog: http://yikyakresearch.blogs.edina.ac.uk/