654136

research-article2016
NMS0010.1177/1461444816654136new media & societyBerkelaar

Article

new media & society

How implicit theories help

2017, Vol. 19(12) 2039­–2058
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1461444816654136
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management: A
preliminary typology

Brenda L. Berkelaar
The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Abstract
This article proposes an empirically-grounded typology to describe how people
approach online impression management across multiple digital sites given
employers’ use of online information for personnel selection. Qualitative analysis
revealed four primary online impression management types: acceptor, dissident,
scrubber, and strategist. The four types are primarily differentiated based on
people’s relatively fixed or relatively flexible implicit theories about information,
technology, visibility, and identity, and whether people take passive, reactive,
or active approaches to online impression management. Although research on
implicit theories usually focuses on individual attributes, these findings highlight
how people’s implicit theories about the context or field of communicative action
work in combination to influence impression management behavior. This study
suggests practical interventions to increase people’s agency and effectiveness in
managing online information and provides foundations for future research on online
impression, information management, and implicit theories.

Keywords
cybervetting, implicit theories, impression management, information management,
information visibility, lay theories, mindset, online screening, social media

Corresponding author:
Brenda L. Berkelaar, Department of Communication Studies, Moody College of Communication, The
University of Texas at Austin, 2504A Whitis Avenue, A1105, Austin, TX 78712-0115, USA.
Email: b.berkelaar@austin.utexas.edu
2040 new media & society 19(12)

Internet uses and affordances make more and different information available and acces-
sible. This growing information visibility has prompted widespread cybervetting as
employers use informal online sources to assess potential and current workers (Berkelaar,
2014). Even as scholars highlight concerns about privacy, surveillance, control, and
workers’ rights implicated in cybervetting, little attention has been given to whether and
how individuals manage online impressions in response to cybervetting. Such inattention
exists despite connections between image and employability (Fugate et al., 2004), and
growing expectations that people have a proactive and professional digital presence
(Berkelaar, 2014). Although the popular press urges digital vigilance, the digital com-
mon sense offered—remove red flags, manage privacy settings, avoid content that makes
your mother cringe, and craft appropriate profiles—remains inadequate for addressing
the complexities of impression management online.
How, where, and when information is presented affects how a person is perceived.
Research on specific digital contexts (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) show how personality
(Rosenberg and Egbert, 2011), relationship type (Ellison et al., 2006), connections
(Walther, 2011), and site design (Gibbs et al., 2013) affect impression management and
formation. Such site-specific studies offer natural boundaries for empirical research and
provide foundational insights; however, they are insufficient for understanding online
impression management because people manage and form impressions across, and not
just within, online sites (Kalynaraman and Sundar, 2008). Accordingly, the information
people give or give off about themselves (Goffman, 1959), or others, is rarely contained
to a particular digital context or a particular role: Information seekers use search engines,
aggregators, and social media tools that collapse information that was often previously
disassociated by site, role, or time (Marwick and boyd, 2011). Yet, despite these practices
and affordances, researchers rarely consider how people manage impressions in the
broader digital terrain cybervetting leverages.
This study begins to address calls for research on the digital landscape writ large
(Papacharissi, 2009) by exploring how people respond to employment-related cybervet-
ting. Specifically, I examine how people report managing online information given
changing career, information, and digital contexts, and the multiple current and future
audiences, roles, and goals implicated in cybervetting. Using a systematic abductive
approach, I constructed a typology based on empirical regularities and relationships
(Kluge, 2000) in participant talk. I differentiated four main online impression manage-
ment approaches primarily based on implicit theories about information, identity, tech-
nology, and visibility. As an interpretive lens identified during analysis, implicit or lay
theories are people’s often-unacknowledged interpretive frameworks about specific phe-
nomena. Implicit theories help people make sense of complex, ambiguous information
(Kruglanski, 1989) and predictably inform behavior (Dweck, 2012).
This study offers three primary contributions: First, findings offer a preliminary typol-
ogy of reported impression management approaches across the digital landscape, provid-
ing a foundation for scholarship and practice; Second, this study illustrates how implicit
theories of individual attributes and social and technological phenomena in combination
likely influence impression management behaviors considered possible and desirable;
Third, although research on implicit theories usually focuses on beliefs about individual
attributes, this study foregrounds people’s implicit theories of the context or field of
Berkelaar 2041

communicative action. Together, these contributions complement research on impression

management by considering underlying factors informing communicative behaviors.
Thus, these contributions help explain why “people using the same technolog[ies] may
engage in similar or disparate communication and work practices” (Treem and Leonardi,
2012: 146).

Contemporary impression management

People’s effectiveness at managing impressions has long affected personnel selection.
Workers communicated value during the Industrial Economy by fulfilling standards of
physical behavior and material outputs at designated times and places. However, con-
temporary work often lacks the physical and material cues previously used to signal
value. Workers now communicate value by aligning résumés, interviews, cover letters,
and other job seeking communications with employer expectations. Yet, such episodic
strategies may be inadequate for an employment context that, all things being equal,
rewards workers engaged in permanent employment campaigns (Fugate et al., 2004).
Partly, this results from growing recruitment of passive job candidates: Employed work-
ers who are not actively seeking jobs are often desirable since paid employment operates
as a proxy for employability (Jansen et al., 2005). Increasing power imbalances in
employer–employee relationships compound these issues as contingent work grows and
collective bargaining power weakens.
Persistent, anticipatory employment campaigns are also an expected, if neither desir-
able nor inevitable, response to cybervetting. Internet uses and affordances extend the
times and role contexts in which workers typically expect to manage career-related
impressions (Berkelaar, 2014). Unlike the interactive, if asynchronous, communications
of conventional job seeking, cybervetting is usually extractive (i.e. covert; Berkelaar,
2014). Although most workers are aware of cybervetting, they usually do not know what
information is acquired by whom, when, and from what formal or informal sources, in
what order. Thus, cybervetted information is differently ordered, sourced, aggregated,
de-contextualized, and re-contextualized by those searching and the technologies used
(Berkelaar and Buzzanell, 2015). Such differences can alter evaluations (Case, 2012),
complicating impression management.
Shifting information contexts matter because impression management is essentially
information control: People work to manage the impressions others construct of them by
revealing or concealing information, to particular audiences in front- and back-stage
contexts (Goffman, 1959). Impression management matters because the perceptions
people form about a person influence well-being and persuasive interpersonal interac-
tions (Benoit, 2014)—including communicating employability.
Research offers substantial insight into how people adapt impression management
tactics under specific conditions when faced with specific image threats (Benoit, 2014),
changing information visibilities (Walther, 2011), competing goals (Gibbs et al., 2013),
and different site features (Kalynaraman and Sundar, 2008) or “virtual geographies”
(Papacharissi, 2009). Yet, this growing scholarship does not consider how people
approach impression management broadly (Papacharissi, 2009)—across the digital
“worlds” cybervetting leverages. Consequently, I framed the initial research questions
2042 new media & society 19(12)

broadly: (1) How do people report managing impressions and/or information online?
and (2) What differentiates approaches? During abductive analysis implicit theories
emerged as a useful lens to help differentiate types. Thus, I refined my questions follow-
ing Tracy’s (2013) guidelines: (3) What implicit beliefs shape reported approaches to
online impression management; and (4) What other factors, if any, influence reported
approaches to online impression management?

Method
Participants
This study analyzes data from a larger project on contemporary job seeking and personnel
selection. Analyzing existing data is consistent with abductive, qualitative approaches
because it offers an opportunity to examine data from a new angle or in terms of a different,
yet related concept (Tavory and Timmermans, 2015). Following theoretical sampling prin-
ciples, I recruited participants likely to help refine, clarify, and test new insights about
online information’s role in contemporary employment. I solicited initial participants from
personal networks and cold calls, complemented with respondent-driven sampling. After
each interview, I asked participants to recommend people who might offer different per-
spectives. I contacted individuals likely to refine emerging understandings. For the initial
study, I recruited people for two groups: “job-seekers” (people actively job seeking in the
past year; n = 44) and “employers” (people involved in selection in the past year; n = 45).
Initially, I only analyzed interview data from the “job-seekers” group. During analy-
sis, I realized the employer group could provide points of comparison and overlap to help
test and refine types (see Kluge, 2000; Tracy, 2013) because “employer” participants are
also workers who have experienced different aspects of personnel selection (e.g. select-
ing candidates; applying for jobs). Although many “employer” participants did not report
actively job seeking, industry research suggests that passive candidates (i.e. workers not
actively job seeking) routinely engage in job seeking behaviors typical of active candi-
dates (CareerBuilder, 2013).
Participants ranged in age from 18 to 65 years with relatively equal numbers of men
and women. Participants primarily self-reported as Caucasian (80.9%), just above the
79.1% of Caucasian workers in the US labor force (Bureau of Labor and Statistics,
2015). Participants were seeking and/or employed in positions across diverse industries
(e.g. arts, consulting, entertainment, information technology (IT), human resource (HR);
marketing, media, manufacturing, sales, management, retail, and utilities). About one
third of the total sample was unemployed and actively job seeking. Another third was
employed and actively job seeking. The final third did not report actively job seeking;
however more than half of this subgroup reported being hired within the last year.
Participants referenced multiple sites when describing online activities.

Data collection
I used semi-structured protocols to elicit rich descriptions designed to uncover insights
on relatively new topics (Tracy, 2013). I asked about experiences and strategies related
Berkelaar 2043

to job seeking or personnel selection, perceptions of job seeking or personnel selection,

and finally advice given and received regarding the Internet and cybervetting. I did not
ask about implicit theories. Interviews occurred on the phone, in-person, or via video-
chat (range: 26–90 minutes; mean = 48 minutes; total = 71.9 hours). Interviews were
audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data included transcripts (1352 single-spaced
pages), handwritten notes taken during or immediately after interviews (~300 pages),
and typed notes for three corrupt recordings (12 pages). Although the initial study did not
focus on impression management, impression management advice, strategies, and
insights were evident across interviews.

Analysis
I used systematic abductive analysis to develop a qualitative, empirically-grounded
typology of online impression management approaches. Abductive analysis refines con-
clusions based on an iterative analysis of data and extant research to offer explanations
that “help evaluate the heuristic and practical potential of the sample” (Berkelaar, 2014:
489; also Tavory and Timmermans, 2015). Analyses can take the form of typologies,
which offer a parsimonious way to theorize complex social realities (Delbridge and Fiss,
2013). Unlike more familiar theoretically grounded typologies which offer all possible
types using a priori dimensions, I took an empirically-grounded approach to typology
construction: I defined the attribute space—what makes a case fit one type and not
another—from the data during analysis based on participant data (Kluge, 2000; also
Strauss and Corbin, 1998 on dimensionalization)
I first analyzed transcripts from job seekers, employing successive, iterative analyses
focused on reported strategies for, and assumptions underlying, online impression man-
agement. I moved iteratively between each transcript and existing research to refine
emerging types given empirical regularities. I initially grouped cases based on a single
shared characteristic (monothetic typology)—reordering cases with each iteration to
foreground different characteristics (e.g. implicit theories; intended behavior; and com-
petencies) and to help develop relevant dimensions (Kluge, 2000). As implicit theories
of identity, visibility, and technology initially emerged as possible shared characteristics
for differentiating types, I went back and forth between the data and the literature to
identify other possible implicit beliefs in these data.
In subsequent rounds, I reduced types based on the greatest number of shared fea-
tures. Such polythetic typologizing tends to be more parsimonious and often offers addi-
tional heuristic and pragmatic value (Kluge, 2000), while remaining open for further
testing and theorizing (Delbridge and Fiss, 2013). Since social phenomena should be
understood as well as described (Kluge, 2000), I tested each case to see whether types
could be pragmatically reduced, alternatively organized, or related by additional features
(e.g. passive, reactive, active; and reported competencies). After each round I labeled
cases by type, describing relevant dimensions, types, and relationships, before regroup-
ing cases on new dimensions. Consistent with recent typological theorizing, dimensions
were neither binary nor mutually exclusive (Fiss, 2011). Instead, I took a qualitative
“fuzzy sets” approach, allowing for degrees of membership and working to ensure cases
within a type were as similar as possible and cases between types were as different as
2044 new media & society 19(12)

possible (Kluge, 2000). During each iteration, I sought non-examples to test emerging
categories, dimensions, and relationships (Tracy, 2013). When confident that I had iden-
tified clear types from the job seeker group, I wrote memos characterizing each type,
working to reduce each type’s attribute space to core dimensions.
Grounding my analysis in criteria for high-quality, qualitative, and typological schol-
arship (Kluge, 2000; Tracy, 2013), I tested types using the same process with the
employer group. Whether participants were categorized as active or passive, employed
or unemployed, employer or job seeker, both groups reported similar impression man-
agement approaches with two exceptions: Talk by an unemployed participant actively
job seeking more commonly reflected the “scrubber” approach and one participant’s talk
reflected the “dissident” approach. In qualitative work, such “extreme” cases offer useful
insights alongside “typical” cases by offering points of distinction and clarification of
possible types (Tracy, 2013). I solicited feedback from experienced scholars and engaged
in member checks to establish credibility, resonance, and practical value.

How people report managing online impressions?

Analyses revealed four distinct types of online impression management: acceptor, dis-
sident, scrubber, and strategist. These types were primarily characterized based on com-
binations of four implicit theories: information, technology, visibility, and identity. Some
subtypes existed; however, iterative analysis within and between types suggested these
subtypes lacked sufficient conceptual distinction to warrant primary categorization and
resultant decreases in parsimony (Kluge, 2000). As befits abductive qualitative work, the
findings weave existing research, data, and analysis together. I briefly define implicit
theories to scaffold each attribute set, before characterizing the four primary types.

Implicit theories
Implicit theories influence what communicative possibilities people consider and enact.
Emerging from lay epistemics, lay or implicit theories focus on what people believe
about the world, themselves, and others (Kruglanski, 1989). As routinized, taken-for-
granted beliefs, implicit theories help people “interpret and make judgments about the
information they encounter in their social world” (Kruglanski and Sheveland, 2008:
478). Although often used interchangeably, I use implicit theories rather than lay theories
to highlight the taken-for-granted aspect of these beliefs and to align with contemporary
language popularized by Dweck’s (2012) decades-long work on implicit beliefs about
human attributes.
Recent scholarship emphasizes a particular class of implicit theories—namely peo-
ple’s beliefs about whether individual human attributes are relatively stable or malleable.
For example, people holding a relatively fixed implicit theory (entity view) of intelli-
gence consider intelligence stable. Consequently, people holding a fixed view of intelli-
gence tend to avoid challenges because they assume that challenges indicate reaching
one’s intellectual set point. In contrast, people holding a relatively flexible implicit theory
(incremental view) view intelligence as open to improvement, and thus tend to face chal-
lenges opportunistically (Molden and Dweck, 2006). Implicit theories tend to be
Berkelaar 2045

Figure 1.  Implicit theories informing online information management.

domain-specific, such that particular situations incite particular implicit theories, which
then inform behavior (Kruglanski, 1989; Molden and Dweck, 2006). Although social,
scientific, and empirical research primarily focuses on implicit beliefs about individual
attributes, people also have implicit beliefs about the social and material world
(Kruglanski, 1989).
Analyses revealed four distinct, yet intertwined, implicit theories about information,
technology, visibility, and identity (see Figure 1). These implicit theories help inform
relatively distinct approaches to online impression management by suggesting that par-
ticular behaviors are desirable or beneficial. The next sections briefly present participant
beliefs about these four phenomena as relatively fixed or relatively flexible—that is, dif-
ferences in degree not differences in kind. Finding that all four implicit theories fall
along the flexibility-fixedness continuum may initially seem surprising; however, con-
cerns over flexibility versus fixedness remains a classic question of interest to philoso-
phers, scientists, and the public—reflecting a manifestation of shared concerns about
agency versus control.

Information.  Participants framed information as relatively fixed (transmission) or rela-

tively flexible (social constructionist). Those with more fixed views framed information
as “just what it is.” Such information can be acquired, unpacked, and neutrally evaluated
to “figure things out.” As Brittany,1 a recently hired marketing manager, emphasized:
“It’s impartial. It’s just impartial.” Nate, a recently hired financial consultant, affirmed
this belief: “It’s not like you don’t know what’s gonna come out and what the person on
the other side is going to see.”
2046 new media & society 19(12)

Other participants framed information more flexibly. Their talk highlighted how “a lot
of it is going to be interpretation.” For example, Rachel, a job seeker, warned that even
when “a little description” is available online “you have to be careful because sometimes
looking at the information, it’s not always clear.” Julie, a graduating student looking for
an entry-level management position, emphasized: “the Internet is very misleading … It’s
hard because it’s just their interpretation of you, and, I mean it can be easily misunder-
stood.” Victor, a recently promoted HR executive encouraged employers to consider
accuracy and context: “I guess that would be another danger of using online information
is how accurate is it really, without being able to dive deeper? Do you really know what
it is you’re getting?” Because, as Ruth, a Public Relations (PR) specialist, summarized:
When looking for jobs, people “are always putting their best foot forward. They’re
always trying to impress and you know what they’re putting forward is not always what
the employers is going to see on a daily basis.” Thus, for people taking more flexible
views of information, motive, audience, context, and completeness matter.

Technology.  Similarly, participants framed technology as relatively fixed (deterministic)

or flexible (agentic). Participants holding more deterministic implicit theories repeatedly
framed the Internet and social media as “inevitable” and “just the way it is.” Their talk
suggested that technologies operate on an external fixed trajectory outside of individual
control. As Wes, a technology recruiter, exemplified:

Everything is through the Internet … Everything is done through the Internet. It’s just the way
the Internet is. Everything is driven by the Internet. We live in a world that is Internet driven …
I mean the Internet has changed pretty much everything.

Partly, technology was considered inevitable because of the affordances and norms
implicated in social media: The “necessity” of Facebook and its “24-7” activity, meant
people “can’t control it”—neither the technology, nor the information provided.
People evidencing more flexible (agentic) implicit theories of technology explicitly
noted how technologies enabling cybervetting offered opportunities for intervention:
“The [benefit of the] tool is up to the individual, if he [sic] knows how to use it.” These
participants often labeled themselves “tech savvy” or “techie,” and provided specific
evidence of how they used technology to accomplish goals. Walter, a tech entrepreneur,
reported “constantly googling myself on Bing or wherever to try to figure out how I can
be in those ratings, those rankings.” He then showed how he leveraged expertise in
search engine optimization to make himself the number one search result, above an iden-
tically named football star.

Visibility.  Most participants framed visibility as relatively fixed or “inevitable.” Being

visible online is just “the way things are now.” As Wes summarized: “We are living in an
Information Age.” Talk from participants holding this belief presumed that it was impos-
sible to hide online: “It seems like nobody can hide from the Internet anymore. I’m sure
you’ll find something about anybody” (Nate) because “with the Internet, you can’t really
hide anything” (Josh). Although some people took less presumptive approaches, sug-
gesting if “you have something to hide, leave it off the Internet,” most people viewed
Berkelaar 2047

information visibility as inevitable because, like Eric, they felt that “you don’t really
have control about what [people] put on your wall.”
Only a few participants considered visibility relatively malleable. Participants hold-
ing this view tended be technology professionals, describing how people “can hide” or
“disguise” online information. This is most clearly exemplified by Oscar, a software
developer, who used his knowledge of search engines and “people’s laziness” to “make
noise” and “bury the lead” in search engine results. This strategy mimics aspects of
image repair theory’s bolstering tactic (Benoit, 2014)—increasing the “mentions” of
good qualities and “minimizing” negative issues by making the good easily accessible
and available to satisfice information seekers.

Identity.  Participants’ talk also revealed assumptions of identity as relatively fixed (a singu-
lar, essential “real self”) or relatively flexible (a set of shifting, fluid, or multifaceted selves).
Talk reflecting a relatively fixed view of identity suggested people could not shift identity
(“It’s not like I can change who I am”) or should not (“I don’t want people who volunteer to
hide or pretend they’re something on the Internet”). As Stephanie, an upcoming manage-
ment graduate, shared: Online information is a “true reflection of who I am” because “I put
it there. I’m basically offering myself.” Thus, when viewed as relatively fixed, identity could
be captured via digital snapshots: “I kind of feel like, if they were to look at mine, I know
they know exactly who I am, like I wouldn’t have to go to work putting on the fake presence
because they looked at my profile and they looked at my views and my standards” (Eric).
Participants who viewed identity more flexibly described multiple possible authentic
selves that change over time (“That no longer reflects who I am”); across relational or
role contexts (“When I’m talking with my friends, if my boss walked into my house …
and I didn’t invite him, and he decided to fire me for that, that’s unacceptable”); or both.
As Josh detailed,

Because that one picture really isn’t, that’s not really who I am … At that point in time, yes, but
not on a consistent-basis … because I know just because we’ve put something on Facebook …
that doesn’t mean that’s how I am every single day … but, the bosses, to them, they think ‘what
I view on Facebook’ that’s how we are every single day.

Although participants like Josh viewed identity as relatively flexible, some participants
also acknowledged that audiences often expect one consistent identity. Consequently,
they reported curating a central, single online [professional] identity to meet audience
needs because:

Identity is really big online. It’s kind of hard to aggregate it all in one place, so I try really hard
to maintain one identity. So I have www.[name].net, that’s kind of my central identity place. I
try and link to my résumé, my blog, anything I have online … So if an HR manager wanted to
they could come … if they wanted to, and make a decision. (Oscar)

Approaches to online information and impression management

The interplay of these different implicit theories offered the foundational attribute sets for
four empirically-derived types of impression management: two passive approaches
2048 new media & society 19(12)

(acceptor, dissident; n = 35), one reactive approach (scrubber; n = 49), and one active
approach (strategist; n = 5).2 Remember, these are qualitative fuzzy sets: Types are not
absolute, mutually exclusive, or comprehensive, but are based on the degree of similarity
within, and degree of difference between, empirically-identified types (Fiss, 2011; Table 1).

Passive: acceptor or dissident.  Passive approaches emphasize people’s ways of “not doing”
certain activities. Despite Western proclivities to consider passive strategies inactive,
inattentive, and thus problematic, passive approaches may be mindful, adaptive, appro-
priate, or effective, and require energy (e.g. passive resistance in exercise; social move-
ments). I identified two passive types: acceptor and dissident.

Acceptor.  Participants demonstrating an acceptor approach reported not doing any-

thing differently in response to employers’ cybervetting. Three relatively fixed implicit
theories characterize acceptor approaches: technology as relatively deterministic, identity
as relatively fixed, and online information as relatively visible. Whether people viewed
information as relatively fixed or relatively flexible differentiated the two subtypes—
willing versus reluctant. Talk reflecting acceptance typically reflected technological
determinism (relatively fixed). As Ruth noted, “I think with the Internet it’s inevitable.
You can’t stop anyone from doing that” because “this is just the way the technology is
going.” Talk also evidenced an essential view of identity, typified in Stephanie’s earlier
claims that online personas are “a reflection of who you are.” Because “you can’t control
what other people put out about you online,” many job seekers seemed resigned to infor-
mation’s inevitable, presumptive visibility: “I guess it’s public information” (Truman).
The reasons offered for why “I don’t do anything different online” differentiated two
subtypes: reluctant and willing acceptor. People evidencing a reluctant subtype accepted
cybervetting as “inevitable” although they “do not like it.” They anticipated that their
image may be inaccurately perceived as tarnished, but believed they lacked control
because information can be manipulated by factors like audience, context, or the order of
search results. As Julie emphasizes:

It might be like for you, extenuating circumstances where’s it’s just like one thing, like a one-
time thing, but to them, that might be the first ten pictures they see, and they’re like, ‘Oh wow,
I did not know, you know? Like they kind of misinterpret stuff.’

Even when reporting technological fluency, acceptors did not report using technological
skills to serve online impression management. This may be because they believed that “they
[employers] can do what ever they want” (Craig, unemployed, former business owner).
Reluctant acceptance could be abridged as: “What’s the point?” Thus, persistent pessimism
about cybervetting’s inevitability and associated misinterpretations differentiated reluctant
and willing subtypes who otherwise shared similar combinations of implicit theories.
Participants reflecting willing acceptance also did not manage online and offline impres-
sions differently. They too expected cybervetting. Yet, willing acceptors anticipated posi-
tive evaluations because they repeatedly asserted that they “had nothing to hide.” They
framed visibility as authenticity, integrity, and even opportunity. As Deena, a student
teacher, noted:
Table 1.  An initial typology of online information management approaches.a
Berkelaar

Passive Reactive Active

  Acceptor Dissident Scrubber Strategist

Implicit •• Technological determinism •• Technological •• Limited technological agency •• Technological agency (flexible)
theories (fixed) determinism (fixed) (somewhat flexible) •• Strategic visibility (flexible)
•• Presumptive visibility (fixed) •• Presumptive •• Presumptive visibility (fixed) •• Identity (flexible)
•• Essential identity (fixed) visibility (fixed) •• Identity (flexible or fixed) •• Information (flexible)
•• Information (flexible or fixed) •• Identity (flexible) •• Information (flexible or fixed)
•• Information
(flexible)
Subtypes Reluctant Acceptor: – Temporary Alter-Ego:
•• Flexible information deactivation: •• Multiple identities as key tool
Willing Acceptor: •• Flexible information and fixed Communicative:
•• Fixed information identity •• Communication as key tool
Sanitation: Technological:
•• Fixed information and flexible •• Technology as key tool
identity Super-strategist:
•• Identity, communication, and
technology as key tools
Other Willing acceptor: •• Demonstrates •• Foregrounds salient role/goal •• Aware that others may differ in
facets •• Constructs visibility as invisibility tolerance identity implicit beliefs of identity
honesty and authenticity •• Possesses in-
•• Potentially influenced by demand skillset
perceived alignment with
professional ideal
aFixed versus flexible exist on a continuum.
2049
2050 new media & society 19(12)

Really, if that person has a profile, I mean, they can look at whatever they want, you know? And
if you are the right person for the job and if you do have good character, then you have nothing
to hide, so they can look all they want, you know?

Some, like Laura—who wanted a public health job—encouraged cybervetting noting, if

asked, she would respond: “Use all the tools at your disposal.And maybe it’s me because
I don’t really have anything to hide, I would just say, ‘Definitely check out everything.’”
Such approaches suggested relatively fixed views of information (transmission) with par-
ticipants generally assuming that others would interpret personal information in the same
way as the information owner or would identify and correct “faulty” transmissions.
Compared to reluctant acceptors, willing acceptors were often relatively new to full-
time employment. They repeatedly expressed optimistic “certainty” that employers
would clarify “confusing” or “questionable” information during their eventual interview.
As Kathy, noted: “If they were working with someone who’s qualifications really fit and
there was questionable online content, I would think they would want that face-to-face
interview interaction to be able to get a read for themselves to balance against online
information.” This optimism existed even though negative information typically elimi-
nates people from contention regardless of its accuracy (Jablin, 2001). It is possible that
people demonstrating willing acceptance assessed cybervetting’s potential risk and con-
cluded that the risks were minimal and did not require action.

Dissident.  Dissidents frame identity as relatively flexible; technology as relatively

deterministic; and online information as presumptively visible and subject to interpreta-
tion. In contrast to willing or reluctant acceptance, dissidence reflects a type of passive
resistance to social norms. Although only one person reflected dissidence, qualitative
researches recognize that “extreme cases” suggest alternative possibilities for communi-
cative action (Kluge, 2000; Tracy, 2013).
Dissidents appear to enact agency over visibility expectations by possessing rare,
desirable skillsets, and thus competitive advantage. Les, a freelance graphic artist,
opposed online visibility. He did not want his multiple “identities” and “worlds” col-
lapsed online. Resisting social pressure to be digitally visible, he asserted:

I don’t do anything online. I just don’t care that much for social networking … Everybody bugs
me on a daily basis … but I just don’t want to. I don’t want my mother talking to my boss
talking to my friends, and I don’t want them knowing that the other people exist … It’s the
independent George thing from Seinfeld. I don’t want to start mixing all my worlds. You can’t
not friend her [your mom] … Yep. That’s the question I don’t want to have to ask myself, so
that’s why I’ve never signed up.

Since silence is communicative and information control is central to impression man-

agement, a dissident approach, although rare, remains impression management. Dissidence
results from concerted, intentional absence. Keeping online worlds apart requires skill,
energy, and vigilance.
Berkelaar 2051

Notably, another participant described what seemed like dissidence by his girlfriend.
She declined to participate “for privacy reasons.” Dissidence may be rare or difficult to
observe because it seems to require a (countercultural) tolerance for invisibility and a
tendency toward high privacy. Dissidence also seems to require exceptional expertise in
an industry that “gives everyone a chance” if you have “the right skillset.” Indeed, when
Les was referred to me, I received a glowing reference of his “rare combination” of skills.
Thus, dissidence offers a practically and theoretically relevant type that highlights how
intentional communicative absence may operate in online impression management.

Reactive: scrubber.  People evidencing the reactive approach to information visibility—

scrubbers—report responding during or after a triggering event, often working to repair
or restore an online image which employers might view negatively. Aligned with popular
advice to remove “red flags,” and grounded in self-censorship and perceptions of what
counts as “acceptable,” digital cleansing was most often, but not only, enacted by cur-
rently or recently unemployed workers. Even if they “realize it’s not completely possi-
ble,” participants reported “cleaning-up” or deleting “anything my mother might find
problematic,” or “anything that might be questionable, you know, the stuff everyone
does in college.” Scrubber approaches emphasized removal of present information,
rather than avoidance or absence of visible information as exemplified by dissidence.
Thus, scrubbing may reflect attempts to minimize negative information or to take correc-
tive action and “mend one’s ways” (Benoit, 2014: 26) at least in digital records.
This focus on removal reflects relatively agentic views of technology, even though
scrubbers used technology in relatively unsophisticated ways. Scrubbers also reflected a
relatively flexible, role-oriented view of identity and an implicit social constructionism
that information could be differently interpreted depending on the audience. Participants’
talk presumed everyone had problematic visible information. Austin, who wanted a job
in television, noted: “I don’t know how thoroughly employers check that kind of thing
… but that seems like a big deal.” Truman reinforced this more directly: “They’re gonna
look” and “Facebook isn’t exactly anybody’s friend at this point … I’ve tried to clean
mine up and get rid of about 500 people who write ridiculous crap on my wall who I
don’t even know anymore.”
Scrubbing seemed motivated by salient audience awareness. Participants repeatedly
reported “clean[ing] up Facebook” to avoid negative evaluations by generic “potential
job people seeing crap like that;” and specific employers:

[Disney] required us to clean up Facebook … or just change privacy settings so I could managed
who could look at my Facebook. It’s not that I have crazy awful things, but like just fun pictures.
Obviously Disney is a very high profile company and everything is happy go-lucky over there,
so if I have a picture of me at the party, then to them that looks like the worst thing possible.
(Austin)

Not unlike when applicants put on suits or spellcheck résumés, many scrubbers
“cleaned” and “polished” online information, often “deactivat[ing] accounts, to
avoid the temptation” of “questionable” activity (or reports thereof). Henry’s friends
reportedly deactivated accounts “until they got the actual job they wanted, and then
2052 new media & society 19(12)

they’d reactivate.” Scrubbers did not seem to consider how the absence of informa-
tion could prove problematic. Yet research links information absences to diminished
employability (Jablin, 2001) especially given growing expectations of digital visibil-
ity (Berkelaar, 2014).
Analysis revealed two potential subtypes based on how people sanitized online infor-
mation: People reported deleting problematic online information or temporarily deacti-
vating accounts. Scrubbers who viewed information subject to “misinterpretation” and
identities as relatively fixed tended to deactivate accounts. As Lucy, a recently hired
senior communications coordinator, described: “I guess the process that most people do
… that are looking for a job is they delete it for a few weeks … And they bring it back
once they get a job.” Scrubbers who viewed information as relatively fixed tended to
search for anything “you don’t want employers to see” and then “deleted it” to help cre-
ate “the kind of person an employer wants to see.”

Active: strategist.  Participants who evidenced strategist subtypes reported the most (pro)active
anticipation, design, and enactment of plans of action—anticipating and leveraging informa-
tion and technology to accomplish impression management goals. Strategists viewed tech-
nology as agentic and therefore relatively flexible. Information and visibility were seen as
relatively malleable, with identity framed as complex, multifaceted, and flexible. Strategists’
relatively flexible views expanded possibilities that actions could make a difference. Their
talk evidenced an appreciation of the potential for misinterpretation and the need for strategic
action: “Just because I think this [about myself] doesn’t mean they will.” Strategists evi-
denced four potential subtypes: alter ego, technical, communication, and super-strategists.
The defining characteristic of an alter ego subtype involved differentiating multiple,
fluid identities or “multiple me’s” online. Participants reported creating multiple accounts
and leveraging different visibilities to create multiple interaction and identity spaces to
separate different audiences and roles. Roberta, an unemployed IT professional, typified
the alter ego subtype:

Like I have three or four Yahoo ID’s and unless you know them good luck finding me. Because
I mean if I don’t want to be found I don’t wanna be found … if I wanna chat with an old
boyfriend or a current boyfriend or something like that online … And you never know if I’m
online or not which with which ID because I will be invisible the whole time … So, like I said
I think I have four Yahoo ID’s, one Gmail and I used to have Rocket Mail and everything else.
Hotmail, everything … Not everybody has access to my Gmail. Ya know very close friends,
business, that’s the one on my résumé.

As she continued, “My main [account] is private … so if it’s somebody I don’t know
[that I am meeting online] then I’ll make a new one.” Similarly, Neil reported creating:
“two Facebook pages … one for my family and friends and one for work.” “You just set
it up with a different email account,” he continued, explaining that different email
accounts made it difficult for employers to link his different selves.
Other strategist subtypes also recognize that communication and technology can
threaten, repair, or bolster one’s image and reputation depending on audience perceptions.
Much as organizations and celebrities work to actively manage their information environ-
ments (Benoit, 2014), participants reflecting strategic subtypes worked to bolster, repair,
Berkelaar 2053

or strengthen impressions using communication and technology strategies individually

and in combination.
Although participants’ communicative and technological competencies were not
measured directly, self-reports suggest that strategists’ relatively flexible beliefs seemed
to interact with self-reported competencies (e.g. “tech-nerd”). These implicit beliefs and
competencies enabled strategists to proactively engage in online impression manage-
ment. For example, Bridget, a recruiter and technical strategist used her “mad search
skills” and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) notifications to swiftly identify online
information posted about herself in “low-lying spots on the Internet.” Not only had
Bridget completed a class and earned a certificate for do-it-yourself online background
checks, she used those same strategies to find and evaluate her online information.
People taking a super-strategist approach reported creatively applying communica-
tive and technical competencies to manage online impressions. For example, after creat-
ing a centralized website and multi-site brand, Steve, a software engineer, described how
he “generated extra information” or “noise” (communicative strategy) and optimized
search engine results (technical strategy) to “bury” rather than scrub information. Steve
recognized “the Internet does allow you to maybe screw yourself up more” and “some
people are always afraid of people visiting their Facebook pages, and there’s even a thing
out there you can type in the name of anybody and it brings up all their social media …
and it’s targeted at HR.” Yet, Steve noted: “Personally, I find that as a plus” because “I
can show what I want to show.” In describing his use of technology to manage informa-
tion with employment audiences, Steve offered a unique solution to hide problematic
online “screw-ups” through anticipatory obfuscation:

I personally look at the Internet as a flood versus a censor. If I just flood the Internet with
information about me and there’s a picture of me drunk somewhere, then they’re going to have
to balance that against all the good stuff I’ve done … if they can even find it.

Thus, flexible views of information, technology, visibility, and identity along with
domain-specific competencies and awareness of others’ implicit beliefs allowed strate-
gists to consider communicative and/or technical possibilities when managing online
information and impressions.

Discussion
This study offers an alternate, complementary lens for understanding the communicative
possibilities people construct when managing online information. Scholars have already
detailed how people navigate dialectical tensions (Erhardt and Gibbs, 2014) or select
particular tactics (Benoit, 2014; Marwick and boyd, 2011; Walther, 2011) when manag-
ing impressions on specific online sites. This study furthers the conversation by examin-
ing different ways people manage online information across the digital landscape
(Papacharissi, 2009), and it deepens the conversation by considering how implicit theo-
ries underlie online impression management inaction, reaction, or action.
Findings also suggest when and if individuals will likely engage in anticipatory
impression management—preemptive strategies designed to ward off anticipated threats
2054 new media & society 19(12)

or criticisms (Elsbach et al., 1998). Relatively understudied, anticipatory impression

management usually focuses on organizations or celebrities (Benoit, 2014). Much like
organizations (Elsbach et al., 1998), individuals with relatively flexible views of identity,
information, visibility, and technology (i.e., strategists) often recognize that many audi-
ences expect relatively fixed, consistent self-presentations, and thus engage in seemingly
routine communication to ward off anticipated threats. Namely, strategists act based on
relatively flexible points of view while appreciating that audiences often have fixed
points of view. If strategists thought that audiences also viewed the world flexibly, their
impression management approach might look more like acceptors. In contrast, scrubbers
take a more episodic approach, engaging in anticipatory impression management when
employment audiences are particularly salient. Moreover, people may not differentiate
impression management behaviors if they believe that such actions are inconsequential
(i.e., acceptor) or if they reject underlying expectations of digital presence (i.e, dissi-
dent). Consequently, this typology also describes whether and how workers will likely
respond to growing expectations of online presence and everyday surveillance by
employers (Berkelaar, 2014).
Second, this study extends research on implicit theories. It is well established that
implicit theories about human attributes influence particular behaviors (Dweck, 2012).
By illustrating how implicit beliefs of information, visibility, and technology influence
online impression management, this study foregrounds how people make sense of the
context or field of communicative action, and their role in it. Thus, this study reinforces
theorizing on lay epistemics (Kruglanski, 1989) and empirical work on implicit theories
of individual attributes (Dweck, 2012 for summary) by showing how the recursive inter-
play of implicit beliefs about actor and context shape desirable and likely communicative
behaviors. Namely, people make sense of the nature of salient phenomena in the domain
under consideration and of themselves, constructing meaning systems about social con-
texts to inform action.
These findings also suggest the need to consider how multiple implicit theories
become salient and work in combination, and with other factors, to inform behavior. In
looking at how people’s beliefs about the social, individual, and technological work
together, this study extends arguments that people consider information about people and
technologies when managing and making impressions (Kalynaraman and Sundar, 2008).
Moreover, by focusing on how salient implicit theories become resources people use
when making sense of social and technical contexts this study offers avenues for future
work: Scholars could build on well-established protocols for measuring implicit theories
of individual phenomenon to consider the processes and outcomes of context-focused
implicit theories (e.g. what beliefs become salient for whom, how implicit theories form,
in what ways and what combinations they become manifest, and how those implicit
beliefs shape behaviors; see Kruglanski and Sheveland, 2008).
Because implicit theories provide frameworks for interpretation and action, these
findings also suggest practical implications. Best practices for online impression man-
agement can be informed by understanding on which phenomena people anchor implicit
theories. Additionally, although this study did not assess the relative effectiveness of
particular approaches, it can inform interventions should an approach prove maladap-
tive. For example, providing communication or technology skills training for reluctant
Berkelaar 2055

acceptors would be ineffective until people believed that online information could be
managed. Since implicit theories change in response to external task demands, cognitive
resources, and disconfirming feedback (Kruglanski, 2013), practitioners could custom-
ize training based on trainees’ salient implicit theories. Such interventions would likely
include identifying underlying beliefs and the types and sources of evidence an individ-
ual considers salient, and providing evidentiary and motivational pressure (i.e. feedback
loops) to reconsider approaches and underlying beliefs when approaches prove maladap-
tive (Kruglanski, 2013). Since digital and career competencies seem to work with
implicit theory sets to influence whether people use certain online impression manage-
ment approaches, interventions could also be situated within technical and career devel-
opment programs.
What remains unclear is the degree to which particular responses are adaptive for
individuals, industries, or contexts. As cautioned earlier, passive approaches are not nec-
essarily maladaptive, nor are active approaches necessarily adaptive. An active subtype
like alter ego—even as it creates space for personal privacy—may end up creating
unnecessarily complex communicative and emotion work especially for people trying to
balance tradeoffs between privacy and a desire for integrated rather than compartmental-
ized lives. Effectiveness over time also matters. Employing a scrubber approach may
help someone get hired, yet, if employers feel the candidate preview was unrealistic, it
may undermine continued employment and promotion opportunities. Finally, because
professional norms often exhibit gender, race, and other biases (Lair et al., 2005), demo-
graphic characteristics likely influence whether an approach proves adaptive. Thus, an
acceptor approach might be more adaptive for people whose characteristics align with
the ideal professional than for those whose characteristics do not align. Practitioners
need to consider how existing biases may reinforce particular approaches, the evaluation
of approaches, and underlying implicit beliefs in problematic or beneficial ways.

Going forward
Even as these findings meaningfully extend understandings of digital information and
impression management, this study has limitations. First, because this study used pur-
poseful samples, findings should not be generalized without further research using ran-
dom, representative samples to test the proposed typology, to identify the prevalence of
types, and to determine whether self-reports align with actual behavior. Since this typol-
ogy is empirically grounded, researchers should also determine if additional approaches
could exist and to what degree additional factors help define different types. Given the
potential implications of online information for employment opportunities and career
capital (Berkelaar, 2014), researchers should study the extent to which communicative,
technical, and occupational competencies as well as individual characteristics affect
implicit beliefs and online impression management. More work is also needed on which
implicit beliefs inform online impression management when employment considerations
are not primed.
In sum, this study contributes to ongoing conversations by making visible additional
factors that influence how people report managing online information in service of
impression management. Drawing on an exploratory, empirically-grounded typological
2056 new media & society 19(12)

analysis, I proposed four primary approaches to managing online impressions informed

by different implicit theories about information, technology, visibility, and identity; and
categorized in terms of passive, reactive, and active plans of action. This study comple-
ments ongoing research on implicit theories of individual attributes by focusing on how
people’s implicit theories about the communicative field of action work in combination
with other individual factors to inform behavior. It also complements existing site-spe-
cific research by considering how people report managing information and impressions
across the digital landscape broadly. Furthermore, the testable, parsimonious typology
constructed affords generative opportunities for future research and practice that consid-
ers how people’s implicit beliefs, competencies, and passive, reactive, or active plans of
action work together to inform impression management within and across digital spaces.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: The author received funding for the original data collection from the
Purdue University Graduate School.

Notes
1. All participant names are pseudonyms.
2. This study uses purposeful sampling. Therefore, the counts provided should not be considered
representative of a type’s prevalence.

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Author biography
Brenda L. Berkelaar (PhD Purdue University) is an assistant professor in the Moody College of
Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research and consulting focus on the
interplay between work and technology across individual, organizational, occupational, and indus-
try contexts. Her work has been published in journals such as New Media & Society, Communication
Yearbook, and Management Communication Quarterly and presented in national and international
academic and industry settings.