Online Reputation Management

Literature Review: The general research question, pertaining to the phenomenon of “online reputation management” (ORM), we have selected to address is if teens with parents with low education levels will or will not participate in more reputation damaging online behavior than teens with parents with high education levels. There is growing research in this area, seeing that we now live “in the modern digital age where seemingly everything and everyone is online” (“Why your,” 2010). Also in “Why your reputation needs an online detox” (2010), the article states that “78% of job recruiters conducted internet searches on their clients in order to check out their backgrounds” (p.1). The article also goes on to report that “the huge growth of the internet has in effect created a ‘permanent memory’ that can be searched by anyone” (p.1). According to Danah Boyd, author of “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” (2007), teenagers “now experience social life online” and then goes on to describe teens’ participation on social networking sites, identity performance, and teens’ privacy practices on social networking sites. All of these play a big part in the way teens manage their online reputation and behavior. Researchers are especially concerned with the care with which teens manage their online reputation. According to Kelly, Christen & Synder (2013), authors of “An Analysis of Effective Online Reputation Management: A Critical Thinking Social Media Activity”, teens are early, and typically enthusiastic, adopters of social media (p. 1). The article continues on to state that the teens often do not consider what their social media content communicates to others online, possibly even potential employers. Kelly, Christen, & Synder (2013) argue that to effectively market themselves, teens and students need to create a professional online brand that will motivate employers to interview them. This is where online