Social Media and Professional Identity

Greetings blog readers and welcome to my first blog post. This blog will be related to the content which I’ve navigated though in the MHST 601 course, and specifically touch upon professional identity and social media. Through MHST we’ve encountered the theme of building a professional identity through social media and the advantages of actively engaging through e-portfolios. Living in the digital society makes social media a popular phenomenon. However, there have been many incidents where individuals have faced consequences through their respective occupational bodies/employers for failing to use social media according to professional guidelines.

As I build a more broad and active digital identity, I want to ensure that I engage with other digital users and adhere to professional guidelines which I am bound to. I am not part of a professional association through my occupation, unlike most other healthcare roles. Instead, I am accountable to my employer and their respective guidelines for social media. The professional guidelines which are mandated by my employer are articulated in an organizational policy. I must be cognizant of creating and posting content on my social platform which embody my employer’s mission, vision, values, and ethics.

I also want to create a digital identity that is immersed in a digital community. A study done by Scott Young and Doralyn Rossman presented a model which allowed community-building through social media. The model highlighted the importance of using principles of personality and interactivity to create a community for targeted users (Young et. Al, 2015). Keeping this in mind I would like to have my digital identity centered around professionally related topics such as hospital administration, chronic kidney disease, and oncology. My digital identity will be active and interact with groups that are in the above categories. The content I create and post will also be based on current events/articles/and opinions related to healthcare leadership, renal care, and oncology care.

The content I create and post on social platforms needs to adhere to ethical standards which are constantly changing in the digital environment. The University of Aberdeen conducted a research study to understand perceptions and expectation for social media use. The conclusion of the research was that ethical standards and the frameworks for ethical social media are dynamic and change (Townsend et. Al, 2016). Keeping this in mind I also need to ensure that the content that I post and create is relevant to the dynamic ethical considerations when using social media.

References:

Townsend, L., & Wallace, C. (2016). Social media research: A guide to ethics. University of Aberdeen, 1, 16.

Young, S. W. H., & Rossmann, D. (2015). Building library community through social media. Information technology and libraries, 34(1), 20-37.