The Psychology of Digital Professionalism

I have been the position where some people know me both offline and online. It seems to me that digital professionalism is management speak for something we do as a matter of course.

Our distinct identities only make sense when others recognise us as worth communicating to.

I have always considered myself an introvert, which may or may not come as a surprise to those of you who only know me on Twitter or through my blog. I thought it was much easier to communicate online than offline. So as the day of my first meeting with Sarah-Louise Quinnell grew closer, I found my stomach growing tighter. We seemed to have a pretty easy rapport on Twitter (I thought so) and I was concerned that when we met it would be like seeing someone for the first time. My brain would refuse to engage with my mouth. So anxious was I that I warned Sarah beforehand that this might be the case. But I was in for a surprise. As it turned out, Sarah claimed that she did not see any difference between my online and offline personality.

I had arranged for Sarah to present a seminar on social media and academia to the law school at University of Westminster. All through out her talk, I was nervous that I would be exposed as tweeter and blogger, which is not something I’ve discussed with my colleagues before. And I was (thanks, Sarah – no, really lol). The difference between offline and online communication became a topic of discussion and the chair (who happened to by my supervisor) asked me what I found. Interestingly, he reacted with surprise when I said that I found online communication easier.

Already, two proper academics, who I had come to respect, were suggesting that there might not be as a great a difference between my virtual and ‘real-life’ selves as I thought. If that were the case, this raises two questions. Why was I so anxious? Is there really any difference between digital professionalism and just professionalism?

Perhaps the answer came when I realised that a couple of people I knew offline were following me on Twitter. All of sudden I felt the same sense of exposure as in the seminar at the notion of boundaries being transgressed. I thought they would find out things about me that I had not yet shared with them. And then it occurred to me, this sense of exposure was not a new feeling. My whole offline life was full of those boundaries between different aspects. In fact, these two followers knew me offline in different ways and now here they were with the common capacity to know about the rest of my life.

There was not one ‘me’ that existed in the real world but several ‘me’s. For example, I did not share every detail of my life with my parents but, at the same time, they knew about the worst aspects of my life. I acted with different groups of friends in different ways. I was generally much more reserved with people I work with, until I had the opportunity to know them better and become more comfortable with them (or got drunk). I realised from my experience with Twitter that how I acted with people, and how much I shared, was only partly connected to the context. Whatever the context, it came down to how comfortable I felt sharing particular information with them. The context perhaps dictated the speed of opening up. What I found is that when people from different contexts interacted, it did lead to a further opening up, which is why I put effort into maintaining the boundaries in the first place. In that respect, the ‘me’ that existed on Twitter was just another ‘me’ in life, the only difference was that I opened up a lot faster, because my followers and those I followed comprised people whom offline would be categorised into different groups. The Twitter ‘me’, @notaphdthesis, was also the ‘me’ that blogged as Not A PhD Thesis, unsurprisingly. Was the ‘me’ who tweets and blogs a more true ‘me’? (I choose not to answer that question.)

But, of course, just as I don’t reveal everything to everyone in the offline world, I don’t share everything about my life online either. I may be more comfortable having a discussion about faith or 90210 in full view of phd and academic connections on Twitter than I would in real life, for example, but  I certainly do not talk about <censored>. I have even had second thoughts about sending certain tweets and blogs and deleted other and so many times I  have felt the need to apologise to people in case they get the wrong idea and/or are offended.

This is partly because I am aware that a future employer (or even partner or in-law) could google me and see something that reduces me in their estimation. In this respect, I have deliberately created boundaries online by using different versions of my name on different sites (Pravin Jeya is not my full name) or by setting the privacy settings on Facebook and LinkedIn. But it is also due to a general uncertainty about who else may actually know the information (i.e. security); I’m not too keen to be Sandra Bullock in The Net.  This really is no different to controlling who has access to information about me offline. If you like, the different offline contexts are like different privacy settings. In other words, the question that I ask myself when it comes to sharing online is “Am I comfortable or is it a good idea for my followers to know this about me?” and “Am I comfortable for anyone else to know this about me?” They are the same questions I ask offline, the only difference is that the second question is to how much I trust this person; online, the information is publicly available so trust may not necessarily be an issue or at least a different sort of trust. In a nutshell, I set up boundaries because, rightly or wrongly, I do actually care what people think about me.

I experienced this recently when I raised a question about dealing with procrastination on the #phdchat Twitter hashtag; I anticipated questions about what I should have been and the fear pushed to get on with my workload. For a brief moment, #phdchat became like an accountability group. Also, on Christmas Day, I was challenged by another follower/followee, @ConsultaGecko (aka Nathalie). when I was wallowing in self-pity on Twitter.

Having said that, there will be things that will never say online either as a matter as pride or, more simply, I do care about others’ feelings, privacy and reputation.

This post is not meant to be an argument for or against digital professionalism, because in reality there is no such thing as digital professionalism or even professionalism (unless I have completely misunderstood it). It’s something we have always done as a way of getting through the various contexts of life. But, even though we do attempt to be digitally professional, it is obvious that being on Twitter or blogging can lead to a blurring of different offline contexts. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Just as neuroscientific research shows that bonds between neurons are strengthened as more and more information is communicated, so the sharing of information between people whether online or offline helps create and strengthen interpersonal relationships. The more we communicate, the stronger those relationships are. If we are using social media ultimately for networking and collaboration, then we are in the process of developing relationships.

As Hegel describes the dialectic between each one of us, having a distinct digital identity is meaningless unless other distinct digital identities recognise us as worth communicating with and we do the same. In that sense, our identity is not something we build up in isolation but in relation to others. I am not just a PhD student but a student of my superviser at my university. I am a son, brother, a former and hopefully prospective employee, a colleague, a friend, a follower and someone to follow and so on. In each case, my identity is distinct but connected to someone else.

It is  relationships that lead to opportunities, including: a job (Sarah interning at the UN or being a human geographer talking to a law school) ; an article (a Hegelian/Nietzschean dialectic of the Wizard of Oz); contributors (my blog, From Tweet to Thesis); or crowdfunding.