Abstract:
Reputations of individuals – personal reputations – is an overlooked concept and understudied research area in communication studies. Appropriate recognition and critical assessment of personal reputations will have social and political implications for individuals and societies, because the way individuals in a society revere or deride prominent figures is a social commentary on the society's values (King & Fine, 2000). Some crucial gaps in discerning personal reputations existed; for instance, why are some individuals’ reputations resilient to reputation damage despite bad behavior? To understand why, this investigation conceptualized and developed a measurement scale for personal reputations through a sequential multi-method approach, a quantitative research that led into a quantitative study. The research relied on the Social Exchange Theory (SET), literature review, and in-depth interviews to test a scale (N = 971) to measure public figures' (PF) reputations. The literature review suggested four main characteristics of personal reputations: (1) publics cocreate reputations of PFs in their social networks; (2) reputations are enduring; (3) reputations are binary, people have simultaneously good and bad reputations; and, (4) adversaries' reputations reinforce each other's reputations. The research began with a grounded research approach by conducting 19 elite interviews, a suitable method to discover unknown aspects of a new concept. The subsequent scale was tested (N = 971) for two former Presidents of the United States, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, using four-factors: (1) their perceived legitimacy (PLgt); (2) their social evaluation (SE); (3) the public's parasocial relationships (PSR) with them; and, (4) their perceived agency. The scale demonstrated the validity and reliability to measure the personal reputations of the former Presidents. Thus, personal reputation of a PF is the relevant public’s collective opinions gathered through their socially constructed beliefs about the PFs (SE), perceived responsibility or ability to control the situation in a reputation crisis (agency), the rightfulness of the position in which a PF may claim clout over others (PLgt), and the intensity of attachment with the PF (PSR). The research findings introduced six strategies used by adversaries in reputation attacks. The data results revealed that the perceived views about PFs of one’s close networks accounted for approximately 70% of the variance in one’s views about these PFs. The discussion introduced the network influence (NI), a concept that explains how one's mediated networks influence their views about PFs. The investigation presented recommendations for reputation management practitioners. The research benefits theory advancement, practical application of reputation management, and opens doors for future research in several social science fields. Keywords: Personal reputations, reputation management, Social Exchange Theory (SET), mixed-method study, scale development, perceived legitimacy (PLgt), social evaluation (SE), parasocial relationships (PSR), agency, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Network Influence (NI), strategic communication.
