Gay employees on social media: Strategies to portray professionalism

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. Social media is increasingly present in the workplace. Yet, we still know very little about how LGBTQIA+ employees behave online, which I investigate through observations and interviews with gay male employees in the Brazilian subsidiary of a multinational automaker. Professionalism often means masculine behavior in face-to-face interactions. I show how employees adopt online strategies that correspond to their assessment of compatibility between being gay and professional, mainly on Facebook and Instagram, platforms where work and other spheres of their lives overlap. Also, gay male employees engage in “testing the waters,” and observe reactions from work colleagues, family, and friends, after which employees recalibrate their online behaviors.