Question: Explain the concept of digital “visitors” and “residents” drawing upon your reading and your own online experiences to date in support of the points that you make.
Digital “visitors” use the internet as a tool to perform specific tasks or activities such as corresponding to emails, research on a subject, find information, etc. With the intention of performing these tasks, they hope to end up with a result or accomplishment of sorts. After completion of said task, they will move away from the internet and resume whatever they were doing offline.
Digital “residents”, it seems, wait for things to happen online because they “live” on it. Besides using the internet as the “visitors” do, they create for themselves an identity and persona using various social media platforms that allow for plenty of customising and profiling. They bother putting effort into personifying what they put online and making it a part of them.
If I were to place myself on the spectrum between these two extremes, I believe I lean towards being a “resident” by a fair bit. If you’ve seen my Self-Test however, I might come across as a person who doesn’t engage in as many social media platforms as many of my peers would. However, even if it’s just two or three, my usage and time spent on these platforms have shown me that I rely on them to project a kind of image or a part of who I am to people and even strangers.
It seems to me that people generally transition from being a “visitor” to “resident”, or they do not at all. What then pushes them towards making that choice? I would say it’s because the web is an extremely convenient piece of technology, people move from being a “visitor” to “resident”. Most websites and applications now only require heavier usage for a person to become accustomed or well-versed with it, although it might take varying timeframes for different people. Prolonged use of the internet could cause a “visitor” to rely on the internet further for certain functions and eventually lead to the discovery of a variety of websites/applications relating to an area of interest that could prompt them to create a profile/account with the website/application. This relationship then becomes a reason for users to constantly visit the internet simply for updates. It may not put them straight into the “resident” category, but I believe it certainly inches them closer.
References:
White, D. S., & Cornu, A. L. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9).
White, D.S. (2008, July 28). Not ‘Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’ [Web log post]. Retrieved Oct 30, 2015, from http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk.
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Chloe 
Hello Chloe.
I really enjoyed reading your post, the part where you describe how easy it is for “digital visitors” to becomes a “resident” really caught my eye and got me thinking, do you think “digital visitors” become “digital residents” unknowingly. It scares me a bit to think how easy this digital age has made us all inch closer; like what you said, to becoming even more digitally reliant on social networking sites and applications.
So much so that i think it may become inevitable that we may all have to become digitally reliant on these websites as they serve more than just entertainment purposes this coming age. These websites and applications are now used for work and school related projects and also used as an important tool of communication. Creating a persona online has now made it convenient for people to locate you and it also serves as tools for future employers to find out more about you outside of work before hiring you.
I really enjoyed reading your post! (-;
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