Alex Wang

The results I get when I google 'Alex Wang.' Clearly it isn't me.

Unlike many of my peers who have grown up well connected in the social media world, I don't really have many social media accounts. For the few platforms I've created accounts on, I've made sure to distance the online profile/person I created from the person I am in real life. For instance, I've had a Twitter account since high school that is used solely for sports updates and an occasional laugh. Understanding the importance of online privacy, I have always made sure to reveal as little as possible about who I am. Since entering college, my social media presence has increased, but only by a little. This increase has primarily come from realizing my need for a professional presence online, a need which has been met by the creation of my LinkedIn account.

In order to discover what information about me is available online, I've spent a decent amount of time searching for myself on the web. Below, I summarize and analyze my findings.

Thoughts Before Searching

Before starting the project, I already had predictions on what the results would be like. As 'Alex Wang' is a very common name, I predicted that I would have a tough time finding myself based solely on my name. Furthermore, as I am not well connected with social media, there would be far fewer results than what someone who used it religiously would have. Finally, I believed my online data identity would be incomplete and inauthentic. This is primarily because I view people as dynamic beings who cannot be represented completely by an online profile. Likewise, as people are always changing, it is basically impossible for everything online to be up to date.

My 'Google' Identity

Search Query: 'Alex Wang'

I began by searching only my first and last name. As I had expected, none of the search results had anything to do with me. In fact, as can be seen in the image above, all of the popular results were about Alexander Wang, a fashion designer. This was bound to happen even if I had a decent online presence, as Alexander Wang is famous worldwide. Realizing there was no point in sifting through hundreds of thousands of query results, I decided to change my search query.

Search Query: 'Alex Wang Saginaw'

Having received zero results about me using the query above, I decided to be more specific and include the city I lived in throughout middle and high school. I figured this would give me at least a few results related to me. As expected, I was able to find several search results about me. In fact, the top result was my LinkedIn profile, as seen to the right of this section

The results I get when I google 'Alex Wang Saginaw.'

. A few results down, you'll be greeted by links to mathematics competitions I competed and received awards in during high school. Go a page further and you'll see a middle school science fair I was part of, as well as a summer camp I attended in high school. What I didn't find, however, was my Facebook page. This can be attributed to the fact that I have very little information about me on the account other than that I attend the University of Michigan.

References

5, Privacy.” The 4th Revolution: How the Infosphere Is Reshaping Human Reality, by Luciano Floridi, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 110–110.

Haimson, O. L., & Hoffmann, A. L. (2016). Constructing and enforcing" authentic" identity online: Facebook, real names, and non-normative identities. First Monday, 21(6).

Shoemaker, David W. “Self-Exposure and Exposure of the Self: Informational Privacy and the Presentation of Identity.” Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 12, no. 1, 2009, pp. 3–15., doi:10.1007/s10676-009-9186-x.