Gay employees on social media: Strategies to portray professionalism

Lucas Amaral Lauriano
Additional contact information
Lucas Amaral Lauriano: LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Abstract This study explores how gay male employees represent themselves on social media. Research shows that online self-representations vary according to imagined audiences and platforms' affordances, but little is known about the possible roles of work in this process. In a qualitative study based on interviews and observations in the Brazilian subsidiary of a multinational automaker, I show how employees' assessment of compatibility between professionalism and homosexuality leads them to adopt different strategies on Facebook and Instagram, platforms where work and other spheres of their lives overlap. These behaviors are dynamic, occurring in a process I label "testing the waters": The gay men observe visible audiences' reactions and change their online self-representations in response to these reactions. This study shows how worried, conscious, and strategic LGBTQIA+ employees are about their use of social media, in new spaces that reproduce old workplace pressures.

Date: 2023-03-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2023, 28 (2), ⟨10.1093/jcmc/zmad001⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04130785

DOI: 10.1093/jcmc/zmad001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().