Slides for the conference paper 'Assessing the available and accessible evidence: How personal reputations are determined and managed online' presented at Information: interactions and impact 2015, Aberdeen, 23-26 June 2015.Abstract available at http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/c/publications/publicationid/13382473
Assessing the available and accessible evidence: How personal reputations are determined and managed online
1. Assessing the available and accessible evidence:
How personal reputations are determined
and managed online
by Frances VC Ryan
Presentation delivered at the
Information: Interactions and Impact (iÂł) Conference
24th June 2015, Aberdeen, Scotland
Co-authors: Professor Hazel Hall, Alistair Lawson, and Peter Cruickshank
f.ryan@napier.ac.uk | @cleverfrances | www.JustAPhD.com
1
2. Let’s chat about …
 Overview
 Domains of study
 Key terms
 Key themes
 Evidence
 The gaps
 Research questions
 Next steps
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3. What’s it all about?
How online information contributes to the building and assessment
of personal reputations
 How people manage their own personal reputations through their use
of online information
 The means by which people evaluate the personal reputations of
others from the online evidence available to them
– Personal reputation: Private individuals, rather than corporate identity and brand
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4. Where’s the literature found?
(Almost) Everywhere!
 Information science
 Computing
 Employment research
 Human-computer interaction
 Human resources management
 Information systems
 Management and organisational studies
 Marketing
 Media and communication studies
 Physical and mental health
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5.  Created by the individual that
the identity represents – and
others
 Different presentations of self for
different audiences
 “Representations of self/selves”
that individuals create for or
about themselves
Key terms: Identity
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6. Key terms: Reputation
 Everyone has (at least) one!
 Determined by others based on
the information available to them
 The personal opinions and
character judgements one
individual has for another
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7. Key terms: “Real world”
 Blurred lines
 Intentional transfer of offline
activities to online environments
 Trading information for online
conveniences
 If you’re not online, are you real?
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8. Key themes in the literature
 Information sharing
 Information quality and accuracy
 Employment and career
opportunities
 Friends and friends-of-friends
 “Real names”, pseudonyms,
and anonymity
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9. What does the literature tell us?
Employers conduct
social media reviews
pre- and post-
employment
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10. What does the literature tell us?
Friends and friends-of-
friends can impact reputation
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11. What does the literature tell us?
“Real names” and
anonymity are key
debates
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
At least some self-regulation and
censorship by individuals
What does the literature tell us?
13. Mind the gap! (1)
 To what extent are individuals evaluating the reputations of others
based on the information found about them online?
 What processes do individuals follow to identify and collect online
information about others?
 How is online information about individuals rated, assessed, or
validated for the purposes of reputation evaluation?
 To what extent does the quality of information collected impact the
determination of individuals’ reputations?
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14. Mind the gap! (2)
 How do individuals manage online information regarding their combined
professional and private reputations?
 How do individuals manage their online and offline reputations as one
“real world” reputation?
 To what extent do individuals feel more or less free or restricted
because of the blurred lines between their online and offline worlds?
 To what extent do individuals actively monitor their online footprints for
the purpose of reputation management? If so, how and to what extent?
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15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
 How do people relate to, seek,
and use information?
(Bates, 1999, p. 6)
 How do we handle ideas and
knowledge, both our own and
other people’s?
(Howkins, 2009, p. 1)
Alignment with some “big questions”
16. The research questions
 How do individuals build identities for themselves online?
 How do individuals use online information to build and manage their
reputations?
 How do individuals asses the identities and reputations of others
based on the information available to them online?
 To what extent are individuals actively practicing identity and
reputation building and assessment online?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17. Next steps
 Pilot study being designed
 Scope and test possible
approaches for main study
 Largely qualitative work
 Preliminary results expected
by end of summer
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18. Let’s chat about …
 Sample for main study
 Potential secondary methods
of investigation
 Other thoughts on the literature
or doctoral investigation
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19. Indicative bibliography
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Ausloos, J. (2012). The “Right to be forgotten”: Worth remembering? Computer Law & Security Review, 28(2), 143–152.
doi:10.1016/j.clsr.2012.01.006
Bates, M. J. (1999). The invisible substrate of information science. Journal of the American Society for Information
Science, 50(12), 1043–1050. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:12<1043::AID-ASI1>3.3.CO;2-O
Cronin, B. & Askins, H.B. (2000). The web of knowledge: a festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield. Medford, NJ:
Information Today
Duguay, S. (2014). “He has a way gayer Facebook than I do”: Investigating sexual identity disclosure and context collapse
on a social networking site. New Media & Society, 1–17. doi:10.1177/1461444814549930
Fieseler, C., Meckel, M., & Ranzini, G. (2014). Professional personae: How organizational identification shapes online
identity in the workplace. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 1–18. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12103
Finocchiaro, G. & Ricci, A. (2013). Quality of information, the right to oblivion, and digital reputation. In B. Custers, T.
Calders, B. Schermer, & T. Zarsky (Eds.), Discrimination and Privacy in the Information Society (Vol. 3, pp. 289–299).
Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-30487-3
Greidanus, E. & Everall, R. D. (2010). Helper therapy in an online suicide prevention community. British Journal of
Guidance & Counselling, 38(2), 191–204. doi:10.1080/03069881003600991
Howkins, J. (2009). Creative ecologies: Where thinking is a proper job. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland
Press.
Kluemper, D. H. & Rosen, P. A. (2009). Future employment selection methods: Evaluating social networking web sites.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 24(6), 567–580. doi:10.1108/02683940910974134
Lingel, J. & boyd, d. (2013). “Keep it secret, keep it safe”: Information poverty, information norms, and stigma. Journal of
the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 64(5), 981–991. doi:10.1002/asi.22800
Madera, J. M. (2012). Using social networking websites as a selection tool: The role of selection process fairness and job
pursuit intentions. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(4), 1276–1282. doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2012.03.008
Mesch, G. S. & Beker, G. (2010). Are norms of disclosure of online and offline personal information associated with the
disclosure of personal information online? Human Communication Research, 36(4), 570–592. doi:10.1111/j.1468-
2958.2010.01389.x
Two main themes:
How people build and create their OWN identities and reputations
How they evaluate or assess the reputations of others
Information science – including citation analysis and everyday life information seeking
However! Much of the literature is dispersed across a number of other domains
Within the domain of information science, some of these discussions explore identity creation through citation practices, and how identity is not necessarily created by the individual that the identity represents (for example, Cronin & Shaw, 2002b; Hyland, 2012).
Geoffman’s work on presentations of self ring true within the context of online presentations of self. Information science researchers Bullinghman and Vasconcelos, talk about opportunities to create multiple identities—without the need to reveal one’s true, physical self online
This desire for some individuals to use information for the projection of more than one identity, coupled with a perceived anonymity of the Internet, has provided a platform for individuals to construct multiple online identities without revealing their offline identities.
This paper looks at identity as “representations of self/selves”
And also notes that the reputation of individuals is determined by others based on the information available to them.
The idea that online and offline worlds have merged to create a “real world” is becoming an accepted concept
But there is not a consensus on how or why the amalgamation happens.
Hongladarom argues that the blurring between online and offline environments occurs as individuals project themselves onto social media and social networking sites.
He also suggests that there is essentially no difference between individuals’ online and offline selves because of this, thus causing them to merge into one “real world”.
Other studies have indicated that some individuals intentionally transfer their offline activities and interactions to online environments (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010, p. 1294).
However, Craig and Ludloff (2011) suggest that some of the blurring between online and offline worlds happens not because of individuals’ specific desires to share information about their offline worlds online, but rather the convenience of conducting some of their activities online.
They argue that individuals trade personal information about themselves for the conveniences of services including ecommerce, instant messaging/communication, and connecting with others through networking sites (Craig & Ludloff, 2011, pp. 1-4). This is not necessarily due to an intentional desire to merge the two worlds.
Anecdotal evidence asking about online/offline by HR managers and social media users alike.
A quick Google search for “twitter got me fired” brings up dozens of stories about people who found themselves unemployed because of a tweet. Emma Way – the infamous “bloody cyclists” tweeter was fired after her flippant and unremorseful tweet about knocking over a cyclist with her car. Paris Brown was asked to step down less than 24 hours after taking on a post as xxx because racist tweets she’d made years earlier were brought to light. And young Cella was fired the day before she started her job at a pizza place after complaining that she was starting “this [censored] job tomorrow”.
But we know that these gaps align with some of the “big questions” related to information science research.
Specifically:
How do people relate to, seek, and use information?
(Bates, 1999, p. 6)
How do we handle ideas and knowledge, both our own and other people’s?
(Howkins, 2009, p. 1)
Keeping those questions in mind, along with the gaps in the literature previously discussed, four research questions have been identified for the larger doctoral investigation:
How do individuals build identities for themselves online?
How do individuals use online information to build and manage their reputations?
How do individuals asses the identities and reputations of others based on the information available to them online?
To what extent are individuals actively practicing identity and reputation building and assessment online?