I get by with a little help from my friends: The ecological model and support for women scholars experiencing online harassment

Authors

  • Jaigris Hodson Royal Roads University
  • Chandell Gosse University of Western Ontario
  • George Veletsianos Royal Roads University
  • Shandell Houlden McMaster University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v23i8.9136

Keywords:

social media, online abuse, online harassment, support, ecological model, academia, networked scholarship, online participation

Abstract

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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Published

2018-08-01

How to Cite

Hodson, J., Gosse, C., Veletsianos, G., & Houlden, S. (2018). I get by with a little help from my friends: The ecological model and support for women scholars experiencing online harassment. First Monday, 23(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v23i8.9136