Although scholars increasingly use online platforms for public, digital, and networked scholarship, the research examining their experiences of harassment and abuse online is scant. In this study, we interviewed 14 women scholars who experienced online harassment in order to understand how they coped with this phenomenon. We found that scholars engaged in reactive, anticipatory, preventive, and proactive coping strategies. In particular, scholars engaged in strategies aimed at self-protection and resistance, while often responding to harassment by acceptance and self-blame. These findings have important implications for practice and research, including practical recommendations for personal, institutional, and platform responses to harassment, as well as scholarly recommendations for future research into scholars’ experiences of harassment.

1. Coping with Online
Harassment: Women
Scholars’ Experiences
Shandell Houlden, McMaster University
George Veletsianos, Royal Roads University
Jaigris Hodson, Royal Roads University
Chandell Gosse, Western University
@lettermattering
@veletsianos
@SocMedDr
@chandellenid

2. Veletsianos, G., Houlden, S., Hodson, J., Gosse, C. (2018 ). Women
Scholars’ Experiences with Online Harassment and Abuse: Self-
protection, Resistance, Acceptance, and Self-Blame. New Media &
Society, 20(12), 4689-4708.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461444818781324
Post print:
https://www.veletsianos.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/
harassment_coping_postPrint.pdf

3. Academics’ (Happy) Use of Social Media
● networking
● sharing research
● connecting with students
● activism and advocacy
● promoting events
● staying in touch with family/friends
● public scholarship
● live tweeting conferences
#AoIR2018

4. The Darker
Side of Social
Media

5. Our research
How do women scholars cope with online harassment?
What is the toll exacted by negative experiences online?
What can be done to prevent or mitigate these experiences?

6. The
Literature
● Higher Education, Cyberbullying
and Online Harassment
● Gendered Online Harassment

7. Gendered
Online Abuse
● 40% of Internet users report
experiences of harassment, but women
and other marginalized groups face
more severe and sustained forms of
abuse (Duggan 2014, 2017)
● Qualitatively different abuse: insults/
abuse based on physical appearance
● Women more than twice as likely to be
sexually harassed online (Angus Reid
2016)

8. Higher
Education &
Cyberbullying
● 22% female academics vs. 6%
male academics report
experiences of online harassment
● More likely to complete survey
(Cassidy, Faucher, and Jackson,
2014)

9. Methods
● Twitter call on @AcademicSay
● 14 semi-structured interviews
● Iterative inductive coding process
● Three major preliminary categories: Affect, Response, Impact
● Out of “Response” we further divided into the coping categories:Self-
protection, Resistance, Acceptance, Self-Blame

10. Findings: Coping Themes
Theme Description Examples
Self-
protection
A cluster of behaviours that took place before, during, and after harassment
occurred. Its aim was to reduce exposure to, and impact of ongoing
harassment, to reduce the vulnerability to potential harassment, and to
eliminate harassment altogether.
increased security settings, avoiding
certain social media platforms, outsourcing
readings of comments to others, self-
censorship
Resistance Scholars’ refusal to accept or remain silent or passive in response to
harassment.
speaking out, trolling back, refusing to
remain silent
Acceptance Recognition that the problem of harassment was unlikely to disappear any
time soon, and thus coping strategies were reactive in nature and focused
on emotional responses to harassment.
avoiding social media, feeling unsurprised
by harassment
Self-blame Participants feeling that they needed to compromise their own values,
apologize and monitor their own behavior, and minimize their experiences of
harassment.
comparing harassment to others’
experiences, blaming one’s own naiveté,
feeling stupid

11. Self-Protection
Examples: Increased security
settings, outsourcing comment-
reading, using humour
Abby: On a good day, I can laugh about
it. You know, I mean, the sheer
ignorance and absurdity of some of
them [the comments] are boggling. You
know, you wonder how do you make it
through the day if these are the
reasoning skills you are working with?

12. Resistance
Examples: Trolling back, continuing
work
Jasmine: “I am not quitting. I've been at
this too long to throw it out the window
just because someone with a Y
chromosome thinks that they get to
throw some sort of fit, and I'm just gonna
disappear off the face of the planet.”

13. Acceptance
Example: Noting the banality and
everydayness of harassment
Lucy: … it’s kind of almost like, there’s a
phrase for this, where you’re just sort of
used to it because it’s happened so many
times and you share it. It doesn’t even
bring you closer to women anymore
because you’re just like yeah, great, that
happened again, cool, like the sun came
up.

14. Self-Blame
Examples: Taking responsibility,
minimzing
Jessica said “compared to some of the
other people who got harassed, mine
was relatively minor,” even though she
received death threats and was doxxed.

15. Discussion & Future Research

16. 1. More data is
needed
● What is the lived experience of
particular types of online
abuse?
● What personal, institutional, or
platform strategies mitigate
harassment?
● What are the outcomes
associated with typical coping
strategies?

17. 2. Institutional
Awareness &
Support
● Knowledge of risks
● Expectations around SM use
● Training
● Support networks

18. 3. Self-
protection isn’t
enough ● Self-protection as emotional
labour
● Emotional labour & burnout
● Include women and other
targeted groups in policy-
development

19. 4. Resistance & strength are
part of the story too

20. 5.
Intersectional
research is
urgently
needed
● Who engage in resistance?
● How does resistance differ
across things like gender
identity, sexuality, race etc.
● Whose methods of resistance
are deemed “acceptable”? etc.

21. Thank you
@lettermattering @veletsianos @SocMedDr @chandellenid
Note: References & image credits available upon request.