Digital Identity, Worker, Person: Assessing and Advertising the Self

• In Event: From Industrial Health to Corporate Wellness: Histories of Body Measurement at Work

Abstract

Workers in the US in 2021 are frequently asked to self-assess their value: proposing an hourly contracting wage, self-reflecting upon a performance review, or reporting productivity outputs. On a private level, assessing our value is important for our wellbeing, retaining and building on existing relationships, and ensuring personal growth milestones are met. Advertising our worth has become a critical skill in flexible work arrangements so common to the contemporary economic landscape. Digital tools have linked these processes to our online identities and Internet-based work. This theoretical paper therefore addresses the question: what strategies do American workers in 2021 take to assess their value and advertise their worth?

To answer this question, we draw on Hochschild (2020) who suggests that self-assessment becomes a new dimension in the management of professional/private identity. We also build on Mauss’s (1925) concept of reciprocity, we see how workers understand how what they have done for others is often the measure that they use to understand their worth. We also build on Henaff (2010) where production is defined by a productive culmination of labor that yields profit through a vigilant ritual sacrifice of one’s own time, resources, and effort.

In this paper we argue that workers’ self-assessing and personal marketing behaviors are bifurcated between expression and management. With these behaviors increasingly mediated through technology, public identity becomes expanded into digital identity, and digital identity becomes the prevailing modality of assessment, which is edited to fit perceptions of professional normalcy and private expression.

Authors

• Jina Hong, Informatics, UC Irvine

• Margaret C Jack, Syracuse University School of Information Studies