Presenting Professionalism: Impression management in online professional communities

Assignment No. 3

by

Senthil Sukumar

Group No. G17

Academic Writing

CORE 006, T2 AY 09-10

I declare that this Assignment is my original work and all information obtained from other sources has been cited accordingly. _______________________ Signature and Date Course Instructor: Elizabeth Rankin

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Introduction

Online forums, social networking services, blogs and many other emerging forms of

online networking websites have become popular mediums through which people interact with

others. Although more commonly associated with social networking for personal reasons, and

typified by successful social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, virtual communities

of professionals are increasingly warming to the potential benefits of social networking sites in

creating and maintaining a professional image.

In this paper, it is suggested that the technologies of online social networks offer more

precise impression management tools than can be found in traditional face-to-face interactions,

and allows virtual communities of professionals to better present and maintain the ideal

professional image. To demonstrate this, real world professional identity formation will be

contrasted with aspects of professional identity formation on online social networking sites. In

addition, the challenge of establishing credibility in an online environment and how exclusivity

of participation in social networking sites can solidify a virtual community’s professional

identity will be explored.

Professional Identity

Professional identity can be defined as the persona of an individual which is designed in

accordance to a code of conduct that facilitates the attainment of objectives unique and central to

a particular profession. The purposeful design of an individual’s professional identity

traditionally begins with the attainment of skills that usually requires formal training and

education, and eventually, tangible proof of professional competency in the form of certifications,

accreditations, or academic qualifications is obtained. These proofs of professional competency

(e.g. a medical license, bar certification etc.) communicate to others firstly, a compliance with a

set of professional standards, secondly, the possession of certain specialized knowledge, and

thirdly for some professions, an adherence to ethical guidelines, and are often sufficient to

coalesce around a particular community of professionals a common professional identity

(Harshman et al., 2005, p. 230).

Proofs of competency alone, however, are insufficient for the long-run maintenance of a

professional identity. Harshman et al. (2005) assert that the individuals’ need for expert

assistance and their inability to satisfy those needs for themselves creates a dependency and

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vulnerability to the expertise of professionals, and the primary factor that contributes to overall

satisfaction of services rendered is the application of specialized and professional expertise that

produces tangible and beneficial results (p. 229). This means that the professional’s inanimate

proofs of competency must eventually be augmented by confidence in competency that can only

be provided by individuals who are external to the professional community such as patients,

clients or customers.

Confidence in competency is earned through repeated use of a professional’s expert

faculties to provide beneficial assistance to these external parties, and it produces three key

elements of the professional identity: expertise, experience and reputation. How well and for

how long the professionals within a community fulfill the needs of external parties through

efficacious use of their professional competencies ultimately determines the degree to which

external parties choose to legitimize the professional identity of the professions they are

dependent on. This legitimization by external parties, through repeated engagement of

professional services from a chosen community, recommendation of these services to other

external parties, or through direct and positive feedback about services rendered, is crucial for

professional communities in establishing a successful professional identity.

Offline vs. Online Impression Management

The professional identity that accompanies proofs of competency are made manifest

through appropriate public displays of these proofs, such as when credentials are displayed in the

accompanying professional setting (e.g. a doctor hanging his medical certificate on a wall in his

office) so that when non-professionals enter the spaces of the professional setting, there is little

room for debate about the professional function and capabilities of the practitioner. In addition,

professionals augment these proofs of competency through experience, age, demeanor, dress,

and manipulation of professional tools such as a stethoscope or a legal contract in order to

present a claim to professional expertise (Harshman et al., 2005, p. 230). In real world

interactions, these physical cues are often used to establish the validity of professional

knowledge and advice. If the individuals within a community assume the ‘look’ that is

commonly ascribed to a particular profession, or if they are in an environment commonly

associated with a particular profession, then the professional identity and authority of that

community is often adequately established beyond doubt, and the ideal impression is conveyed.

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Impression management is thus the goal-directed conscious or unconscious attempt to

influence the perceptions of other people by controlling information in social interactions.

Through impression management, individuals and groups try to manipulate the impressions

others form of them, with the ultimate aim of projecting and validating a positive professional

persona. In the real world, impression management is exercised through explicit signals such as

the aforementioned professional credentials or attire as well as implicit signals like body

language and tone of voice. In cyberspace, however, the physical proofs of competency and

environmental cues that lend credence to professional identities are omitted, and professionals

are no longer able to rely on these usual signals to manage the communication of their

professional identities to external parties. Online impression management serves to remedy these

omissions by providing tools through which professionals are able to communicate competency

in an online environment.

Managing an Online Professional Identity

In the virtual environment, the proofs of competency that convey professionalism are

replaced with user profiles where personal information and the professional qualifications of an

individual are collated and displayed for both members of the community and external parties to

view. Through profile pages, the first element of the professional identity, namely expertise, is

adequately conveyed to peers within a professional community as well as to external parties

through the inclusion of professional qualifications. This inclusion can occur either through pre-

assigned data fields for the sole purpose of publicizing an individual’s qualifications, or the use

of the ‘About Me’ data field to describe these qualifications. The latter is a staple of virtually

every modern social networking website.

The second element of experience is communicated more effectively online through these

profile pages than offline interactions. This is due to the fact that in professional face-to-face

interactions, unless queried or as a means to validate one’s level of professional expertise, it

would be awkward to mention the number of years of experience one has had thus far in a

particular profession. Another gauge of experience, both offline and online, is the range of one’s

professional network, as over time, professionals are expected to have built up an extensive

network consisting of professionals both internal and external to the practitioner’s profession.

The size and range of a professional’s network is often used as an implicit indicator of how

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experienced that professional is, and like the explicit revelation of the length of experience one

has, revealing the range and size of one’s professional network in physical interactions is often

awkward (Kleck et al., 2007, p. 4) and can come across as self-aggrandizing. In online

interactions, however, information such as the number of years of experience one has can be

updated informally, and social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn automatically

calculate and list the number of people in an individual’s network. As the act of accessing the

information available on online profile pages is initiated by an external audience, through social

networking sites, professionals are able to effectively communicate their level of experience and

network size automatically, routinely, and therefore casually (Kleck et al., 2007, p. 4).

The third element of reputation is perhaps the best example of how online impression

management tools can convey one’s professional identity more efficiently and with greater

precision than offline impression management. Social networking sites, and in particular those

in the form of online forums, which are essentially extensive databases of an individual’s

contribution of expertise to a virtual community, function as automated and accessible

aggregators of online professional discourse. This aggregation of discursive content allows

others to view the contributions of members within a particular community, and external parties

can then evaluate the quality of discourse to determine the professional breadth of that

community. However, there is a distinction to be made here regarding the difference between

data and information on the Internet. The virtual world is a deluge of data; anything from stock

prices to lists of drugs or legal definitions can be found at the click of a mouse, and Harshman et

al. (2005) rightly assert that data delivered conveniently and cheaply will not rise to the level of

information unless it finds appropriate and efficacious application (pp. 231, 235). The reputation

of a professional community is thus enhanced (or reduced) based on how well available data is

rearranged by professionals into useful information that provide guidance for appropriate action.

The more applicable and useful professional discourse is to external parties, the greater the

degree to which they legitimize the professional identity of the community from which such

information is retrieved.

Another online tool which provides an online representation of reputation is the rating

system employed by social networking sites. Online rating systems measure two main types of

online interactions of professionals: the level of contribution and the quality of contributions.

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The level of contribution is measured by the number of times an individual contributes content to

a virtual community, either through posting information useful to others who have access to that

community, or by responding to the queries of other people with professional opinions and

advice. These contributions are tallied into a numerical value that is equated with different tiers

of professionalism. The higher this number, the more professional an individual is perceived to

be as compared to other professionals with a lower contribution value. A professional’s quality

of contributions is measured through reviews and feedback from professionals and non-

professionals. Many social networking sites include feedback mechanisms through which a

professional’s guidance and discursive contributions can be reviewed by others, and similar to

the numerical value for the level of contribution, more positive reviews from others translates

into a higher quality rating for that professional, and positive reviews serve as the online

equivalent of legitimizing the professional identity. An example of online rating systems can be

found on Facebook, where group pages created to represent a particular community such as

commercial or professional organizations tabulate the number of interactions between the people

within the community and those without. The quality of these interactions is also determined by

the percentage of people that engage and interact with the community whenever new content is

posted on a group page.

The rating systems of social networking sites serve three purposes. Firstly, as a numerical

representation of professionalism, it serves to quantify an individual’s professional reputation,

and to improve this rating, individuals can choose to frequently and regularly contribute

constructive content to their virtual communities. Secondly, it communicates to external parties

the professional echelon of a particular virtual community: more active professionals and a

higher quality of discourse within a virtual community can increase the willingness of external

parties to approach, engage and interact with that virtual community. Thirdly, a successful

professional identity communicated through these ratings can entice and draw in to that virtual

community other professionals who seek to legitimize their own professional identities through

active participation in communities of similar practice.

Case Study: Bankers On Line Forum

User profiles, as mentioned previously, are highly customizable according to individual

preferences; the selective obfuscation of certain elements of the offline persona and active

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promotion of the professional persona is the most common form of online impression

management, and results in a highly personalized collection of data that is the explicit digital

representation of a person’s professional identity. An analysis of user profile design on Bankers

On Line (BOL), a publicly available online forum dedicated to the professional discussions of

bankers by Emmanuelle Vaast (2007) demonstrates how the various fields available in the

forum’s user profiles are used to convey and affirm membership to their occupation.

BOL user profiles consist of various data fields that users may or may not fill: these are

the user id (only mandatory field), e-mail, member number, homepage, occupation, hobbies,

location, birthday, bio, and date of registration (Vaast, 2007, p. 187). The website also

automatically gives users' a title based on the level of contribution, and publishes the total

number of posts per user (Vaast, 2007, p. 187). Among Vaast’s (2007) sample test group, several

similarities in how data fields were filled were noted. To convey expertise, profiles usually

included technical and professional certifications, and the occupation field was used to convey

specialized roles within the banking profession, such as compliance or loan assistance (Vaast,

2007, p. 190).

In contrast to the diversity of the values seen in the occupation field, the hobbies

presented fell into only a few categories: indoor activities such as reading and cooking, outdoor

activities such as fishing and sailing and sports such as golf and volleyball (Vaast, 2007, p. 191).

BOL users avoided mentioning any hobby that was not socially approved offline, such as

gambling, smoking or watching TV (Vaast, 2007, p. 191). In some profiles, the presentation of

hobbies reinforced the impression of professionalism. Vaast (2007) noted that golfing appeared

very often in the hobbies field, which is largely similar to offline environments where

mentioning that one is a golfer conveys one’s social status (p. 191).

Reputation is also conveyed through BOL’s rating system, which segregates users based

on the amount of content contributed to the forum. Users progress through the various tiers

according to the cumulative number of posts they have made, and a system-generated title

corresponding to different levels of contribution is assigned to users. This title is visible to both

registered and non-registered users of BOL, and categorizes registered users (the majority of

whom are bankers) into different tiers of professionalism. For example, a user with the title of

‘Junior Member’ (post count of 25) may be perceived to be less professional than a user with the

title of ‘Diamond Poster’ (post count of 1000). In addition, some titles are not attainable through

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content contribution, but are assigned by the BOL forum owner to denote official representatives

of the company or other VIPs, and denote an entirely separate, but coveted level of

professionalism.

Vaast’s (2007) research also highlights how although the impression management tools

provided by BOL’s virtual environment allows users to ‘mystify’ their professional identities by

not including information such as their real names or email addresses, most professionals

actually provided a lot of information on their profile pages in an attempt to limit the distance

between their online and offline personas (p. 194). Vaast (2007) posits that such "de-

mystification" may be part of an impression management tactic (p. 194). On the Internet, where

anyone can manipulate data to take on the identity of someone else, providing information about

the offline persona can be used to enhance the trustworthiness of the professional persona and

establish credibility.

In addition, although it was observed that markers of offline social identities such as

gender and motherhood were included in most user profiles, other markers such as age and

ethnicity, readily identifiable in offline environments, were absent in the BOL forums, and while

professional training and past experiences were often mentioned, there was usually no detail

about the certifying institutions and the previous companies for which the user had worked

(Vaast, 2007, p. 194). These observations suggest that over time, social norms of what should

and should not be presented in BOL user profiles had emerged, and that users collectively

modified the aspects of the offline self they presented in the virtual environment of the BOL

forum in accordance to these norms (Vaast, 2007, p. 194).

Assuming a False Professional Identity

Despite the positive aspects of professional identity formation afforded by the

technologies of social networking sites, the same tools that provide for the micro-management of

professional identities can potentially lend themselves to abuse. As digital data is far easier to

fabricate than real-world cues to professionalism such as age, dress or credentials, the online

professional identity’s reliance on user-modifiable input to construct a coherent virtual front

makes it easier for external parties to infiltrate the ranks of and masquerade as professionals.

Lewis (2001) puts forth a well-publicized case of this type of deception in which 12-year-

old Marcus Arnold began dispensing legal advice on AskMe.com, an online knowledge sharing

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portal. Within a relatively short period, 12-year-old Marcus had created a new professional

identity for himself, that of a lawyer, and had became one of the top legal ‘experts’ on the

website. In a particular two-week period he had answered nearly 1000 legal questions (as cited in

Lewis, 2001, p. 36). On AskMe’s version of the user profile page, Marcus had listed himself as

a ‘...law expert with two years of formal training in the law’ and as being involved in ‘…trials,

legal studies and certain forms of jurisprudence’, but in actual fact, he lacked any form of legal

training and experience whatsoever (as cited in Lewis, 2001, p. 36).

Like most social networking sites, AskMe.com has a rating system where users can rate

the self-designated experts from whom they seek advice, and this rating is calculated based on

the number of questions answered by the expert, the speed with which the answers are provided,

and the usefulness or quality of responses (Harshman et al., 2005, p. 228) User satisfaction with

the quality of Marcus’ legal advice was extremely high, and he eventually made it to AskMe’s

list of the ‘Top 10’ legal experts. Although the majority of users were satisfied with Marcus’s

advice, their lack of knowledge and dependency on professional expertise made them unable to

distinguish between proper legal information and Marcus’ well-researched data.

This example shows how easy it is for pretenders to use Internet technologies to assume a

false professional identity, and although no one was harmed from Marcus’ unqualified legal

advice, it demonstrates how individuals can be deceived by unsubstantiated claims of

professional expertise.

Exclusivity as a Gauge of Professionalism

Online impression management is not merely a tool for the professionals within a virtual

community. The creators of virtual communities can apply impression management tactics to

their creations as well to establish a community’s ideal professional image. The members within

a professional community all possess a common set of knowledge and skills, and they articulate

some form of moral commitment associated with the practice of that profession (Harshman et al.,

2005, p. 230). This implies that real-world professional communities have as the criterion for

entry into a particular community the exclusivity of skill and commitment that is central to a

particular profession. This is reminiscent of guilds prevalent in the early Middle Ages that

brought together the craftsmen of a particular trade, and although exclusive guilds of craftsmen

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have been largely replaced by modern capitalist economies, there is no question about the guild-

like aspects of professional communities of practice.

This guild structure, when translated to virtual communities, seems even more

contradictory given the evolution of the Internet as a democratic and level playing field.

Bruckman (1996), however, gives an example of the benefits of guild-like communities by

describing how, in creating and managing the professional identity of MediaMOO, an online

community for media researchers, she rigorously enforced the requirement that new members be

actively involved in media-related academic research. To preserve MediaMOO’s character as a

place to conduct scholarly discussions, she regularly rejects applications from undergraduates

with no particular focus to their interests (Bruckman, 1996, p. 175), and similar to guild

recruitment, most new members are attracted either by word of mouth or recommended by

existing professionals within the community. In addition, Bruckman (1996) also recognized that

individuals who are not willing to fully share their professional identities online would be less

inclined to engage in serious professional discussion, and thus enforced a strict non-anonymity

policy for MediaMOO (p. 176).

Guild-like exclusivity of membership is not necessarily a bad thing. As Bruckman (1996)

notes, virtual communities are groups of people brought together for a common purpose, and

achieving that purpose requires a recreation of the discretionary polices inherent in guilds to

determine who can join a professional community (p. 174). Thus, deciding on how virtual

communities operate with regards to admissions policies and anonymity limits the scope of

discourse that occurs, and can be an efficient determinant of a virtual community’s level of

professionalism. If the same strict admissions policies and rules of non-anonymity that

MediaMOO employs had been used by AskMe.com to validate Marcus Arnold’s claim to legal

expertise, he would have been unable to assume and project the professional identify of a lawyer

as successfully and for as long as he did.

Another form of exclusivity comes in the form of content moderation, where discursive

content is actively monitored by individuals who are familiar with the professional character of

an online community, and filter out content that is deemed as inappropriate or out of line with

this pre-defined character. Moderation of content, like restricting admissions into an online

community, grants certain individuals within a community power over others, and can be an

effective compromise between stringent exclusionary policies and fully open, non-exclusionary

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communities (Bruckman, 1996, p. 175). Content moderation also allows non-professionals to

enter a virtual community and seek professional advice while limiting their influence on the rest

of the community. This allows virtual communities to function as places where professional

advice can be given to external parties, while ensuring that people with differences of opinion or

an antagonistic agenda do not interact with a virtual community in a deliberate attempt to disrupt

professional discourse (Bruckman, 1996, 176).

Summary and Conclusions

This paper has identified three main elements that constitute the professional identity:

expertise, experience and reputation, and how online impression management tools such as user

profiles and rating systems allow professionals to better create and maintain an ideal professional

image in a virtual environment as opposed to a physical one. The rationale for this is because

social networking sites are able to effectively communicate explicit signals of expertise while

replacing the (sometimes ambiguous) implicit real world signals that suggest professionalism by

aggregating and numerically quantifying the elements of experience and reputation. In addition,

the research conducted by Vaast (2007) demonstrates that shared expectations and norms can be

formed in a professional virtual community, and this influences the collective impression

management tactics of that community such that a consistent and common community identity is

projected.

However, there are limitations to online impression management with regards to

standards of professional integrity, as the democratically participative nature of cyberspace

provides both professionals and non-professionals with access to a common set of impression

management tools on social networking sites. To prevent individuals from communicating a

professional claim to expertise where there is none and undermining the credibility of a

professional community, principles of exclusivity must be exercised.

Ultimately, the phenomenal rise of social networking sites, combined with the increasing

trend of professional discourse being carried out online means that even with the potential for

misuse, the art of online impression management must be practiced and continually refined if

virtual communities want to communicate to others a shared, consistent and ideal professional

identity.

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References

Bruckman, A. (1996). Finding One's Own in Cyberspace.

Technology Review , pp. 171-178.

Harshman, E., Gilsinan, J., Fisher, J., & Yeager, F. (2005). Professional Ethics in a Virtual World: The Impact of the Internet on Traditional Notions of Professionalism. Journal of Business Ethics, 58(1-3), 227-236. doi:10.1007/s10551-005-14174.

Kleck, C. A., Reese, C., Ziegerer-Behnken, D., & Sundar, S. (2007).

The Company You Keep and the Image You Project: Putting Your Best Face Forward in Online Social Networks. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA. Retrieved from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p172756_index.html

Lewis, M. (2001, July 15).

Faking It. The New York Times , pp. 26-44. Vaast, E. (2007). The Presentation of Self in a Virtual but Work-related Environment.

In E. Vaast, Virtuality and Virtualization (pp. 183-199). Springer.