A professional in digital space: strategies of creating and transforming the image

The focus of the study is the communicative behavior of a professional personality within social networks, as a result of which an image of a professional is created. The work is based on the understanding that in the digital environment, a linguistic personality is transformed into a digital communicative personality that can choose an image or identity depending on the pragmatics of communication and the specificity of a particular platform. The purpose of the study is to determine the communicative strategies with the help of which a professional creates their image. It involves highlighting those aspects of a professional personality that are prioritized by professionals in network communication, which involves answering questions about how they build their image or transform it if necessary and in what ways, what tools are used for this. The research material encompasses accounts of social network users representing a professional community of Russian universities lecturers. The methodological tools include methods of observation, contextual, communicative-pragmatic and semiotic analysis. Four strategies for creating the image of a professional are identified at different levels of post formation: an information strategy at the communicative level, the personalization strategy at the pragmatic level, the strategy of self-presentation or self-promotion at the metapragmatic level, narrativization at the level of text implementation and multimodality at the instrumental level.