Managing Concealable Stigmas When the Online and Offline Worlds Collide

Abstract

Employees with concealable stigmas can opt to hide part of their lives at work. A growing number of studies have shown the antecedents and consequences of revealing stigmatised identities to peers, when the lines between work and non-work contexts are clear. The internet, however, has caused a collapse in such lines, with the possibility of interaction with multiple audiences in a single virtual space, such as Facebook and Instagram. Literature on concealable stigmas has overlooked this context collapse, leading to limited knowledge about the impact of social network sites in such cases. We then ask: how do social network sites affect the management of concealable stigmas? Drawing on ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews with gay male employees in the Brazilian organisation, we reveal that stigmatised employees adopt a ‘mirroring behaviour’ to avoid disclosure dissonance between online and face-to-face behaviours. Contrary to current studies on online behaviour, we argue that segmentation of identities can do more harm than good. Peers can easily realise such ‘acting’, even if stigmatised employees are skilful at using social network sites. We advance concealable stigma studies by exploring changes that the internet causes in stigma management, also including peer’s perceptions as an essential variable.