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.
A growing body of research reveals that some scholars face online harassment and that such harassment leads to a wide variety of adverse impacts. Drawing on data collected from an online survey of 182 scholars, we report on the factors and triggers involved in scholars' experiences of online harassment; the environments where said experiences take place, and; the consequences it has for personal and professional relationships. We find that online harassment is heavily entwined with the work, identity, and in some cases, the requirements of being a scholar. The online harassment scholars experience is often compounded by other factors, such as gender and physical appearance. We build on prior research in this area to further argue that universities ought to widen their scope of what constitutes workplace harassment and workplace safety to include online spaces.
Drawing upon ethnographic data collected among residents of Gabriola Island, British Columbia, this article analyzes the meanings associated with the movement of the MV Quinsam-the primary means of transportation onto and off the island-and with the ritual of ferry commuting. By focusing on the logic of the ferry as a medium of communication and on the ritualistic aspects of commuting and by combining a symbolic interactionist perspective with the media theory of Harold Innis, the authors reflect on how the Gabriola Island ferry shapes islanders' sense of time and thus experiences of lived culture.Résumé: En se servant de données ethnographiques récoltées auprès des rési-dents de l'Île de Gabriola en Colombie-Britannique, cet article analyse les significations rattachées au mouvement du MV Quinsam-le principal moyen de transport pour rejoindre ou quitter l'île-ainsi que celles rattachées au rituel qui consiste à faire la navette par traversier. En se concentrant sur la logique du traversier en tant que mode de communication et sur les aspects rituels associés à l'acte de faire la navette, et en combinant l'interactionnisme symbolique à la théorie médiatique de Harold Innis, les auteurs réfléchissent au rôle que joue le traversier pour les habitants de l'Île de Gabriola en ce qui a trait à leur conception du temps et à leurs expériences de la culture vécue.The logic of communication media is exercised through the operation of their formats: "rules and procedures" that work by selecting and organizing experiences (Altheide, 1985, p. 9) and by shaping ongoing definitions of social situations. Media logic is particularly consequential in the process of constructing temporal realities (Altheide, 1985). From the perspective of symbolic interactionism, however, media do not determine time and its multiple experiences. Individuals and groups instead actively interact with media and time, constructing joint lines of activity and manipulating the shape of temporal structures and experiences and thus affirming relationships and connections-albeit in conditions not always of their own exclusive choosing (Couch, 1984;Flaherty 1999;Mead, 1932).
This article contributes to understanding the phenomenon of online abuse and harassment toward women scholars. We draw on data collected from 14 interviews with women scholars from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and report on the types of supports they sought during and after their experience with online abuse and harassment. We found that women scholars rely on three levels of support: the first level includes personal and social support (such as encouragement from friends and family and outsourcing comment reading to others); the second includes organizational (such as university or institutional policy), technological (such as reporting tools on Twitter or Facebook), and sectoral (such as law enforcement) support; and, the third includes larger cultural and social attitudes and discourses (such as attitudes around gendered harassment and perceptions of the online/offline divide). While participants relied on social and personal support most frequently, they commonly reported relying on multiple supports across all three levels. We use an ecological model as our framework to demonstrate how different types of support are interconnected, and recommend that support for targets of online abuse must integrate aspects of all three levels.
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