Your Online Presence - Activity

Introduction | Prep | Activity | Further Resources

Reflect on your online presence - present and future (10 minutes)

Use the following questions to think about how you use online platforms.

How do you communicate about your work? Where can you connect with fellow researchers and your potential audience(s)?

Social media

What social media platforms do you use? e.g. X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Slack, LinkedIn
What do you use these platforms for now?
How do you want to use them in the future?

Academic profiles

Where can others find your academic profile? eg. ORCID ID, personal website, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu
Is there a profile that includes your complete publication record?
How much time and energy does each platform take? How much benefit does each platform offer in terms of increased impact? How long will the platform maintain your information? Are there platforms you’d like to have a profile on in the future?

Note: CreateUK Links to an external site. is a free digital platform UK students and faculty can use to create an academic profile and share their work: websites, blogs, portfolios, online exhibits, long-form born-digital scholarship, and more.

Create websites, blogs, portfolios, online exhibits, long-form born-digital scholarship, and more using CreateUK Links to an external site..

Informal publications

Where else do you share your work? eg. blog, podcast, Wikipedia
Note: CreateUK Links to an external site. is a free digital platform UK students and faculty can use to create an academic profile and share their work: websites, blogs, portfolios, online exhibits, long-form born-digital scholarship, and more.
How do you use these venues now?
Are these venues accessible? Can users access the content via a screen reader, using captions, or by tabbing through on a keyboard?
Do these venues help improve the visibility of your work? Does the content you post here show up in Google or other search results?
How often do you update your content?
What role might informal publication have for your work in the future?

Popular publications

Where have you already published, or wish to publish in the future? e.g. magazines, newspapers
If you plan to write journalistic articles and popular essays, how do you want that writing to connect to your academic research output?

Consider your information security.

What information about yourself, your work, or your life do you want to keep private?
How would you like to manage who you interact with, and who can interact with you, in online spaces?
Have you dug into the privacy settings on the accounts you use most? Are you being tracked? Is the content you post available to search engines?
Do you conduct an egosurf periodically? Do you have other ways to check whether the measures you have in place to protect your privacy are working?

Plan your next steps (5 minutes)

Identify tasks that you can set as your next steps and future goals.

What areas do you want to focus on?
What challenges do you anticipate?
Who has experience in this area that you can reach out to?

Compare notes with a friend

Start a conversation with a peer about the online spaces they visit.

Some questions you might ask:

Where do you get the best information about new developments in the field?
Where do you get the most support for your scholarly work? Where can you have productive conversations and get advice and encouragement?
Which online spaces do you think give you the biggest reach? What’s the best way to get yourself out there and be known?
Is there anywhere you feel unsafe? Is there an online space where you have to deal with a lot of unproductive or offensive interactions? What strategies do you use to protect yourself?