A study published in the journal New Formations has found that an astonishing 74 percent of UK academics report having received online abuse for their published research. Although universities often require or encourage online visibility, they provide very little support for the academics who reap the consequences of negative publicity.
Authored by Hannah Yelin and Laura Clancy, the study centred on 85 survey responses from academics working in a wide range of disciplines and institutions. After the initial survey, 13 in-depth, follow-up interviews were conducted with some of the respondents.
While 85 responses is a fairly small sample size, the authors of the study detail how they deliberately tried to reach as wide a range of people in academia as possible. Moreover, even if the quantitative results prove hard to extrapolate to the country as a whole, the initial answers and subsequent elaborations shine a revealing light on the experience of many UK academics.
The study’s main focus was on intersectional inequalities in the amount of hate received. The paper found that women and ethnic minorities were more likely receive online abuse, especially of a kind focused on their identity. This finding contrasts with the common perception that online pile-ons typically come from the left.
Another striking result from the study is that nearly three quarters of respondents said they had experienced receiving hateful comments, messages, emails, or even handwritten letters for research published online.
This finding is especially sad since many of those surveyed said that their only or primary reason for having an online presence is the professional pressure to do so. “What is online is mostly to keep my employer happy” one of those interviews said, adding “I do just enough posting etc. to keep them happy”.
At CAF, we have often reported on academics whose controversial research has got them in trouble online, including the recent case of Michael Foran and the older case of Francesca Minerva, whose 2012 paper on abortion triggered a storm of abuse and death threats. What many of these cases show is that once the hate starts, it snowballs into an avalanche of harassment. This is exactly the same thing that Yelin and Clancy’s interviews documented.
“I have a folder in my email called hate mail”, reported one of the interviewees, indicating that the phenomenon was persistent and involved more than a handful of perpetrators. Another described keeping a spreadsheet of abusive comments and messages in an attempt to track repeat offenders and report them.
Such activities naturally place a heavy emotional burden on those receiving the digital – and sometimes analogue – vitriol. The testimonies of the interviewees make it clear how all consuming it can be. Some experience a week or two of abuse and are then forgotten, but for others it becomes a new reality; something they live with “on a daily or weekly basis that has been going on for over a decade”.
One academic recalled that the online harassment “put me on a 24/7 cycle of having to think about and respond to abuse”. Another said that the experience “just takes all of your time and energy”, adding that “[i]t’s such a waste of our time that we are constantly having to engage with these outrage machines”.
Another thing demonstrated by the study is how often academics are left to deal on their own with online abuse. Perhaps this could be excused if the online activity was merely a personal choice on part of academics, but as mentioned above, it is often explicitly required, or at least heavily incentivised for career progression.
One area where online visibility might impact an academic’s success is funding. For example, the Economic and Social Research Council lists “[o]utputs, dissemination and impact” as “a key part of the assessment criteria” for its standard grant. As Yelin and Clancy argue in their paper, a strong public profile is a valuable asset for meeting such demands.
Moreover, many academics clearly view online participation as socially obligatory, even when it’s not institutionally required. One respondent said that an academic staying largely offline will likely miss out on “networking, sharing content, showing appreciation for the work of others, and sharing information about themselves” and other ways to building social capital.
Despite these pressures to participate and build a public profile online, few universities have any formal means of support for those who become the target of abuse and harassment. Current anti-bullying and harassment policies often do not explicitly mention online activity arising from public engagement.
While the University and College Union has a policy factsheet on dealing with cyber-bullying, it is so hopelessly outdated that its main focus is on dealing with “malicious and unfounded” rumours on “chat rooms such as Facebook, Bebo and Myspace”.
The internet is not going away, and it makes sense for universities and individual academics to care about their online visibility. However, if academics are to be formally or informally forced into this arena, their institutions should have guidelines and support structures to help them deal with the potential fallout of a controversy.
Finally, the Yelin and Clancy study is a useful corrective to the common assumption that threats to academic freedom all come from institutional “wokery”. We should not overlook the pressures emanating from the (often virulently rightwing) world of internet trolldom.