Professionalize the Personal: Online Professional Identity Using Impression Management Among Junior Employees

Authors

  • Amal Nazzal Birzeit University

Keywords:

online professional identity, social media, online impression management, Goffman, junior employees

Abstract

How do junior employees use different online impression management techniques to construct their online professional identities? And how is their online personal identity reconstructed on social media platforms? This exploratory research argues that there are overlapping, intersecting, and dominating spaces between the personal and the professional, where social media platforms are not neutral stages of self-performance as much as they are powerful tools, alongside other dominant organizational structures, for continuously reconstructing multiple selves. Inspired by Goffman’s theoretical framework of the formation of social selves and the notion of impression management of ‘self-presentation’, this research intends to better understand how junior employees manage their online impressions and ‘professionalize’ their social media content for different work-related reasons and how their digital personal identity intersects with their professional identity. In-depth interviews with 30 junior employees from various working fields revealed three key impression management techniques: anonymize/de-anonymize identities, self-surveillance, and sacrifice the personal. This research extends and deepens our understanding of Goffman’s framework of how online impression management techniques are employed, either willingly or unwillingly, to construct our online professional identity.

Author Biography

Amal Nazzal, Birzeit University

Amal Nazzal is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Business and Economics at Birzeit University. Her research interests include online organizational mechanisms and dynamics in organizations. Her research interests include new social media in organizations, critical social media studies, intersectionality theory, feminist organizing, social capital, and social networking theory. She is also interested in new research methods such as digital ethnography and social media content analysis. Her research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Business Research and Human Relations, and has written opinion pieces for Al-Shabaka, the Institute for Palestine Studies, the Palestinian Digital Rights organization (7amleh), Middle East Monitor, Mondoweiss, and Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society.

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Published

2024-09-28

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Section

Articles