https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119872950 Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Social Media + Society July-September 2019: 1–10 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/2056305119872950 journals.sagepub.com/home/sms Article Introduction As social media have become a regular feature of the infor- mation environment and news media work in particular, scholars have followed with interest the trend of media work- ers representing themselves online and developing personal brands. In a digital economy where attention is the primary currency exchanged (Davenport & Beck, 2013; Kinstler, 2013), one’s reputation is as valuable as the work performed or the content produced. The online profile page has become a sort of status symbol, communicating to the rest of the world one’s place within it (boyd & Ellison, 2007). This com- bined with a constant stream of updates, posts, images, and interactions forms a digital brand that differentiates its owner from others in the field and helps make assurances about ori- gin or quality (Murphy, 1987; Stanton & Stanton, 2013). This practice of personal branding has become especially important for journalists (Brems, Temmerman, Graham, & Broersma, 2017), whose work conditions are inherently pre- carious and becoming more so (Deuze, 2013). In an effort to communicate their value, journalists’ branding efforts speak to multiple constituencies. They market their content and defend their credibility to their audiences. They demonstrate to their employers their careful adherence to policy and com- mitment to the organization. Also, they show solidarity with other journalists in an age when news media and their democratic functions are under attack. These interactions have been styled as individual, organizational, and institu- tional branding in previous research (Molyneux, Holton, & Lewis, 2017; Sacco & Bossio, 2016). These branding efforts are not strictly professional, as studies suggest that journal- ists’ and other media workers’ self-representations often blend both personal and professional aspects (Duffy & Pruchniewska, 2017; Scolere, Pruchniewska, & Duffy, 2018). This means journalists’ performance of identity on social media often includes aspects of gender and the self. While the prevalence, forms, and motivations behind this form of personal branding work are beginning receive much scholarly attention, this work has yet to fully examine how performances of gender may interact with branding efforts. Research suggests that in general, men and women communi- cate differently, especially on social media (for a meta-analy- sis, see Liu, Ainsworth, & Baumeister, 2016). But these patterns may be overridden by organizational and institutional norms as many media professionals feel compelled to use social media as part of their job (Scolere et al., 2018) while 872950SMS XX X 10.1177/2056305119872950Social Media <span class="symbol" cstyle="Mathematical">+</span> SocietyMolyneux research-article 20192019 Temple University, USA Corresponding Author: Logan Molyneux, Journalism, Temple University, 2020 N. 13th Street, AH 305, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA. Email: logan@temple.edu A Personalized Self-image: Gender and Branding Practices Among Journalists Logan Molyneux Abstract As the field of journalism becomes increasingly unrecognizable, the messages that identify the journalist, their work, and their affiliations are of increasing importance. This study envisions journalism and social media both as gendered spaces and examines their intersection as the setting of much of journalists’ branding work. In this setting, gender’s influence on the extent, style, and target of journalists’ branding efforts is examined using data from two different datasets (content analysis and survey). The findings suggest that female journalists take a more personalized approach by speaking about themselves in their profiles and their tweets and focusing more resources and attention on their individual brands. This suggests that female journalists are not well served by male-dominated news organizations and therefore turn to a more personalized self-image in their branding efforts. This understanding is particularly important as societies and newsrooms both work toward a more inclusive, egalitarian future. Keywords gender, branding, digital journalism, social media, content analysis, survey