'This is a stage': A study of public relations practitioners' imagined online audiences

•PR practitioners feel a significant expectation to be visible in online spaces.•PR practitioners are constantly expected to promote their organizations through their online spaces.•Audience scrutiny is a dominant aspect of PR practitioners lifeworld.•PR practitioners deliberate and enact ongoing performance assessment before posting to social media.•PR practitioners may limit the demonstration of what they feel is their true selves and they frequently self-edit.

Public relations (PR) practitioners are among those cultural intermediaries who privilege symbols, products, and communication rituals in society. Through interviews (n = 26) and analysis of practitioners' Twitter accounts, this study considers how members of this field identify their personal social networking site audiences and how these behaviors are implicated in the performance of their online identity. Findings indicate practitioners feel pressure to use personal social media in accordance with field-constrained norms and that an “occupational publicness” pressure requires them to be visible online outside of the workplace. The persistent specter of public criticism from audiences and the prioritizing of organizational interests above their own self-expression limits performances of PR practitioners' authentic selves online.