Word Limit: 2,500 words
The aim of this assessment is for you to obtain a deeper understanding of your own
digital self and the role of digital communication in your everyday life: what do you do
online? Why do you do it? Who are you when you use social media and other
communication spaces? And what does digital communication mean to you? What
do your everyday activities on social media platforms say about yourself?
For this assessment, you will need to:
1. Keep an individual narrative/diary of your online identity negotiations
for one week. You can keep the diary on paper or digitally, which will
be your data for this assessment. You will then be required to draw
on the diary in your report, either through screenshots/images or
paraphrased or direct quotes. You should not submit the whole diary
as part of your assessment;
2. Draw on the weekly readings to make sense of your practices. Focus
on a specific practice (e.g., running a pseudonymous account on
social media, managing your different audiences, expressing your
gender or national identity online, dealing with your privacy concerns,
your activist identity online) or a series of practices (e.g., selfie-taking,
or avoiding using social media apps altogether, interacting with
influencers or creating content as an influencer yourself), and:
3. Based on your analysis of your data in the light of theoretical and
methodological perspectives covered in this module, present your
findings in the form of a 2500-word report. You are expected to use
relevant academic literature and images in your report (e.g.,
screenshots) but please do not identify other internet users in your
report (see the Q&A document for more details about anonymising
other internet users) (Learning Outcomes 3, 4 and 5).
4. The sample structure of the report could be as follows:
1. Introduction (this section clarifies the topic, aims and argument
of the report and provides theoretical context to your analysis –
about 500 words).
2. Methodology and methods (this section will detail the
methodology -e.g. digital auto-ethnography- and data -how you
collected and analysed your weekly diary of online identity
negotiations – about 300 words).
3. My digital identity through…. (this section will be the analysis
section where you will bring in systematic data from your diary
and analyse them in the light of relevant readings of the
module and beyond on digital selves – about 1400 words). I
recommend you to divide this section into two, depending on
the most important themes of your analysis.
4. Conclusion (this section wraps up the main arguments and
aims of the self-assessment project and summarises the
findings through the main theoretical and methodological
insights of the analysis – about 400 words)
