Abstract
This chapter discusses how reputation comes to take a prominent position in the job market of the knowledge economy and why it should be considered the form taken by social capital in the digital age. Reputation establishes as the ‘equivalent’ shared by both offline and online domains as an asset that digital knowledge workers must acquire and strategically manage in their network of professional contacts, decisive to get jobs and establish professionally. Reputation links into value as an investment in social relations with the expectation of an economic return, being the source for trust to be established among participant in hybrid contexts of interaction made of digital and non-digital exchanges that do not necessarily imply face-to-face or physical proximity.
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Notes
- 1.
For an introductory discussion on this point, see Alessandro Gandini, “Online Social Influence and the Evaluation of Creative Practice: A Critique of Klout,” in Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts, ed. Cecilia H. Suhr (New York: Routledge, 2014), 150–168.
- 2.
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- 3.
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- 4.
John Dorley and Helio Fred Garcia, Reputation Management: The Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communications (New York: Routledge, 2006).
- 5.
Daniel Solove, Understanding privacy (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008).
- 6.
Robert C. Post, “The social foundations of defamation law: Reputation and the Constitution,” California Law Review 74.3 (1986): 691–742.
- 7.
David Rolph, Reputation, celebrity and defamation law (Farham, Ashgate, 2008).
- 8.
Alison Hearn, “Structuring Feeling: Web 2.0, online ranking and rating, and the digital ‘reputation’ economy,” Ephemera, 10.3–4 (2010): 421–438.
- 9.
Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in Social Media Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
- 10.
Alice E. Marwick, A E., Diego Murgia-Diaz and John Palfrey, Youth, Privacy and Reputation (Literature Review), Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2010-5; Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 10–29 (2010), accessed October 28, 2015, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1588163.
- 11.
Marvin Washington and Edward J. Zajac, “Status Evolution and Competition: Theory and Evidence,” Academy of Management Journal 48.2 (2005): 282–296; Alessandro Gandini, “Online Social Influence and the Evaluation of Creative Practice: A Critique of Klout,” in Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts, ed. Cecilia H. Suhr (New York: Routledge, 2014), 150–168.
- 12.
Sergei Brin and Larry Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, (1998), accessed October 28, 2015, http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html; Alessandro Gandini, “Online Social Influence and the Evaluation of Creative Practice: A Critique of Klout,” in Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts, ed. Cecilia H. Suhr (New York: Routledge, 2014), 150–168.
- 13.
Hassan Masum and Yi-Cheng Zhang, “Manifesto for the Reputation Society,” First Monday 9–7 (2004), accessed October 28, 2015, http://firstmonday.org/article/view/1158/1078.
- 14.
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Hyperion, 2006).
- 15.
Rachel Botsman, “Welcome To The New Reputation Economy”, Wired UK (2012), accessed October 28, 2015, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/09/features/welcome-to-the-new-reputation-economy. Rachel Bostman and Roo Rogers, What’s Mine is Yours. The Rise of Collaborative Consumption (New York: Harper Collins, 2010).
- 16.
For a detailed review of ORS, see Randy Farmer and Bryce Glass, Building web reputation systems (O’Reilly, 2010); Cliff Lampe, “The Role of Reputation Systems in Managing Online Communities,” in The Reputation Society. How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World, ed. Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2012), 77–88.
- 17.
Chris Dellarocas, “The digitization of word of mouth: Promise and challenges of online feedback mechanisms,” Management Science 49.10 (2003): 1407–1424; Chris Dellarocas, “Designing Reputation Systems for the Social Web,” in The Reputation Society. How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World, ed. Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2012), 3–11.
- 18.
Paul Resnick et al., Reputation Systems, Communications of the ACM, 43.12 (2000), pp. 45–48; Cliff Lampe, “The Role of Reputation Systems in Managing Online Communities,” in The Reputation Society. How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World, ed. Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2012), 77–88.
- 19.
Gary E. Bolton, Elena Katok and Axel Ockenfels, “How effective are electronic reputation mechanisms? An experimental investigation,” Management Science 50–11 (2004): 1587–1602; Gary E. Bolton, Claudia Loebbecke and Axel Ockenfels, How Social Reputation Networks Interact with Competition in Anonymous Online Trading: An Experimental Study, Cesifo Working Paper (2007), accessed October 28, 2015, http://www.ifo.de/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/1187082.PDF.
- 20.
Alessandro Gandini, “Online Social Influence and the Evaluation of Creative Practice: A Critique of Klout,” in Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts, ed. Cecilia H. Suhr (New York: Routledge, 2014), 150–168.
- 21.
Michael Fertik and David C. Thompson, The Reputation Economy (New York: Penguin Random House, 2015).
- 22.
Alison Hearn, “Meat, Mask, Burden. Probing the contours of the branded self”, Journal of Consumer Culture 8.2 (2008): 197–217; Alison Hearn, “Structuring Feeling: Web 2.0, online ranking and rating, and the digital ‘reputation’ economy,” Ephemera, 10.3–4 (2010): 421–438.
- 23.
Adam Arvidsson and Nicolai Peitersen, The ethical economy: Rebuilding value after the crisis (New York: Columbia University Press. 2013).
- 24.
Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 1–24.
- 25.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu, “The social space and the genesis of groups,” Theory and society 14.6 (1985): 723–744; Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1986), 241–258.
- 26.
For an extensive literature review on social capital, see Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 1–24; Steve P. Borgatti, Candace Jones, and Martin G. Everett, “Network measures of social capital,” Connections 21.2 (1998): 27–36.
- 27.
Robert D. Putnam, Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998); Robert D. Putnam, “Social Capital; Measurement and Consequences,” Canadian Journal of Policy Research 2.1 (2001): 41–51.
- 28.
James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94.5 (1988): 95–120; James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1990).
- 29.
Ronald Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Ronald Burt, Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
- 30.
Ronald Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
- 31.
cf. Note 24.
- 32.
Mark Granovetter, “The Strenght of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78.6 (1973): 1360–1380; Mark Granovetter, “Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91.3 (1985): 481–510; Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study on Contacts and Careers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Mark Granovetter, “The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19.1 (2005): 33–50.
- 33.
Nan Lin, Walter M. Ensel, and John C. Vaughn, “Social resources and strength of ties: Structural factors in occupational status attainment,” American Sociological Review 46.4 (1981): 393–405; Nan Lin, “Building a network theory of social capital,” Connections 22.1 (1999): 28–51; Nan Lin, Social capital: A theory of social structure and action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- 34.
Nan Lin, Social capital: A theory of social structure and action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- 35.
For a similar disambiguation see Marwick, Status Update, 2013.
- 36.
cf. Note 31.
- 37.
Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study on Contacts and Careers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
- 38.
Niklas Luhmann, “Familiarity, Confidence, Trust: Problems and Alternatives,” in Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, ed. D. Gambetta (Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, 2000), 94–107.
- 39.
Alessandro Gandini, “Online Social Influence and the Evaluation of Creative Practice: A Critique of Klout,” in Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts, ed. Cecilia H. Suhr (New York: Routledge, 2014), 150–168; Johnnathan Messias et al., “You followed my bot! Transforming robots into influential users in Twitter,” First Monday, 18–7 (2013).
- 40.
Stefano De Paoli, “The Automated Production of Reputation: Musing on bots and the Future of Reputation in the Cyberworld,” International Review of Information Ethics 19 (2013), 13–21.
- 41.
On the story of Sam Fiorella, see Seth Stevenson, “What your Klout score really means”, Wired UK, April 2012, accessed October 28, 2015, http://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff_klout/. On the story of Justine Sacco, see Jon Ronson, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justin Sacco’s life,” New York Times, February 2015, accessed October 28, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0.
- 42.
Alessandro Gandini, “Digital work: Self-branding and social capital in the freelance knowledge economy,” Marketing Theory (2015), DOI: 10.1177/1470593115607942.
- 43.
On the notion of digital labour, see Tiziana Terranova, “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,” Social Text 18.2 (2000): 33–58; Trebor Scholz (eds.), Digital Labor. The Internet as Playground and Factory (New York and London: Routledge, 2013).
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Gandini, A. (2016). Reputation, the Social Capital of a Digital Society. In: The Reputation Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56107-7_3
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