Edinburgh Napier University

  Introduction. The broad theme of this paper is the use of information to build, manage and evaluate personal reputations. It reports the findings of a study that considered the extent to which social media users replicate in online environments the established information practices of academics when they assess their peers. The three platforms considered are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Method. A multi-step data collection process was implemented for this work. Forty-five UK-based social media users kept journals and took part in semi-structured interviews. Analysis. A qualitative analysis of the journal and diary data was undertaken using NVivo10. Information practices were analysed to considered the similarities or difference between social media practices and related practices deployed by academics related to citations.

Results. The findings expose the ways in which social media users build, manage, and evaluate personal reputations online may be aligned to the citation practices of academics.

Conclusion. This work shows where the similarities and differences exist between citation practices and related information practices on social media as related to personal reputations. Broadly, the findings of this research demonstrate that social media users do replicate in informal online environments the established information practices of academics.