Editing Reputation management (section)

{{Short description|Influencing, controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's reputation}}
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'''Reputation management,''' refers to the [[Social influence|influencing]], controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's [[reputation]]. It is a marketing technique used to modify a person's or a company's reputation in a positive way.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Cook |first=James |date=2022-01-04 |title=The Telegraph: Inside the booming business of reputation management |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/01/04/inside-booming-business-online-reputation-management/ |access-date=1 June 2022 |work=The Telegraph}}</ref> The growth of the [[internet]] and [[social media]] led to growth of reputation [[management]] companies, with [[Search engine results page|search results]] as a core part of a client's reputation.<ref name="Forbes">{{cite news|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2016/07/19/9-online-reputation-management-services-entrepreneurs-can-achieve-by-themselves|title=9 Online Reputation Management Services Entrepreneurs can Achieve by Themselves|work=[[Forbes]]|access-date=11 May 2016}}</ref> Online reputation management (ORM) involves overseeing and influencing the search engine results related to products and services.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Yu|first1=Bin|last2=P. Singh|first2=Munindar|chapter=A social mechanism of reputation management in electronic communities |publisher=Springer |title=Cooperative Information Agents IV – The Future of Information Agents in Cyberspace|volume=1860|year=2000 |pages=154–165 |doi=10.1007/978-3-540-45012-2_15|chapter-url=https://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/mpsingh/papers/mas/cia-00.pdf|series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science|isbn=978-3-540-67703-1|citeseerx=10.1.1.43.2241}}</ref>

Ethical grey areas include [[Mug shot publishing industry|mug shot removal sites]], [[astroturfing]] [[customer review]] [[Website|sites]], censoring complaints, and using [[search engine optimization]] tactics to [[game the system|influence results.]]  In other cases, the ethical lines are clear; some reputation management companies are closely connected to websites that publish unverified and libelous statements about people.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|last1=Krolik|first1=Aaron|last2=Hill|first2=Kashmir|date=2021-04-24|title=The Slander Industry|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/24/technology/online-slander-websites.html|access-date=2021-04-26|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Such unethical companies charge thousands of dollars to remove these posts – temporarily – from their websites.<ref name=":0" />

The field of public relations has evolved with the rise of the internet and social media. Reputation management is now broadly categorized into two areas: online reputation management and offline reputation management.

Online reputation management focuses on the management of product and service search results within the digital space. A variety of electronic markets and online communities like [[eBay]], [[Amazon (company)|Amazon]] and [[Alibaba Group|Alibaba]] have ORM systems built in, and using effective control nodes can minimize the threat and protect systems from possible misuses and abuses by malicious nodes in decentralized overlay networks.<ref>{{cite conference|conference=WWW '05 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web|url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/32fb/d789568c66ccc3b61aa22af350f548809f56.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171018180029/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/32fb/d789568c66ccc3b61aa22af350f548809f56.pdf|archive-date=2017-10-18| title=TrustGuard: Countering Vulnerabilities in Reputation Management for Decentralized Overlay Networks | author=Mudhakar Srivatsa|author2=Li Xiong|author2-link=Li Xiong (computer scientist)|author3=Ling Liu|author3-link=Ling Liu (computer scientist)|doi=10.1145/1060745.1060808|year=2005|s2cid=1612033 }}</ref> [[Surveillance capitalism|Big Data]] has the potential to be employed in overseeing and enhancing the reputation of organizations.<ref>{{Cite journal |date=2020-01-01 |title=Reputation management: Using big data to manage and repair organizational reputation |url=https://doi.org/10.1108/SD-11-2020-0203 |journal=Strategic Direction |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=24–25 |doi=10.1108/SD-11-2020-0203 |issn=0258-0543}}</ref>

Offline reputation management shapes public perception of a said entity outside the digital sphere.<ref>Hall, R. 1992. The Strategic Analysis of Intangible Resources. Strateg. Manage. J. 13(2) 135</ref> Popular controls for off-line reputation management include social responsibility, media visibility, press releases in [[print media]] and [[sponsorship]] amongst related tools.<ref>(What's in a Name? Reputation Building and Corporate Strategy, Fombrun, Charles; Shanley, Mark, Academy of Management Journal; Jun 1990; 33, 2; ABI/INFORM Global, pp 239–240.)</ref>