A New Glass Ceiling: The Impact of Online Harassment on Research Innovation and Public Education Workers

Jaigris Hodson and Chandell Gosse received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to explore the problem of online harassment for workers in research and public education.

In a time where COVID-19 has accelerated the digital transformation of work, those who work in knowledge-intensive industries face new challenges navigating sometimes harsh and non-inclusive online landscapes. For workers who conduct research or public education in particular, they must not only use digital technologies in the course of connecting with their work, but also need to use social media technologies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Zoom, Instagram and LinkedIn, among others, to share the outputs of their work with the public. This double dose of digital activity in the workplace: as they use digital technologies both to conduct work and also communicate it -- puts research and public education workers at increased risk of harassment. Thus it is on this issue that we wish to focus for our Knowledge Synthesis Project. In the proposed project, we will engage in a systematic and thorough review of existing academic, grey and policy-related material to answer the following questions:

1.What does the current academic and grey literature suggest are best practices for protecting knowledge workers in research and public education work from online harassment?

2.What are the consequences for employee engagement when researchers and public education workers experience harassment; how does the experience of harassment impact community in a (now) digital work place?

2b. What are the consequences identified in the literature for diversity and inclusion, when employees in the knowledge economy (particularly research and public education workers) experience online harassment?

3.Which organizations and institutions have implemented policies to protect or support workers from online abuse? How efficacious have these policies been? What can we learn from publicly shared data on these policies?

3b. Given the trends in the literature and existing policies, what immediate steps do Canadian researchers/public educators, their employers, and policy makers need to take in order to support innovation, knowledge mobilization, and collaboration in an increasingly digital knowledge economy?

While there are reasons to be optimistic about the potential positive impacts of digital technology for making research and public education work more efficient, more flexible, or more open (Mewburn & Thomson, 2013), there are still key vulnerabilities inherent in being a digitally connected worker, particularly when your job involves the public communication of science. This is especially true for research and public education workers who are racialized, transgender, disabled, and precariously employed (Gosse et al., 2019, Houlden et al., 2020). This project thus will conduct an interdisciplinary and broad scope literature search to ensure that all aspects of this issue are considered, and key opportunities and gaps are revealed. Project deliverables include a 40-page report, policy brief, project website, social media communication, webinars, professional presentations, and academic conference presentations. Through these outputs, we intend to reach a broad audience of key stakeholders, scholars, and policy makers who are well-positioned to address the problem of online harassment for workers in research and public education. By supporting these workers in particular, we increase our capacity to handle misinformation, and we increase innovation, because the support of research and public education workers means support for free, diverse, and open information.