I’ve been thinking about this incident where a faculty member was suspended for remarks on her facebook page. The remarks were stupid and I won’t defend them, but this brings up the ever-present issue of the private/public divide in the workplace. Should people be punished at work for things they do on their public sites? In this case, there was an implicit, if joking, threat involved, but what of other instances, where the line gets blurrier? Must we always represent our employers, even in our off time?
On the other end of the spectrum, how do our online personae affect our chances of obtaining employment? Posting online is always to some extent an exercise in reputation management. I am currently beginning to look for a job, preferably academic but possibly not. I have several public identities online — this blog, my twitter account, and walled and semi-walled gardens like Facebook, Google Buzz, and others. I know people who delete or restrict their facebook and twitter accounts when looking for a job. Is there a difference between academia and private business in terms of google-searching applicants? Academics are expected to be public in some ways, but not necessarily so in business settings. Is it better to be invisible?
