Citation

Gosse C, O'Meara V, Hodson J, Veletsianos G. High. Educ. 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10734-023-01043-7

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Academic labor has expanded beyond the walls of academic institutions. Academics are expected to communicate with students online, use digital tools to complete their work, and share their research with broad audiences--often through online spaces like social media. Academics also face technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA) in these same spaces. When this happens, employers have a responsibility to protect and support workers. However, recent events have shown that universities are not always prepared to do so. We use data from a discourse analysis of harassment and discrimination policies and interviews with university managers (including Vice President Academics/Provost, Faculty Deans, and directors of human rights offices) to examine how prepared Canadian universities and colleges are to support academics targeted by TFVA. We found that institutions are unprepared in three ways: first, they focus on physical safety over non-contact harms; second, they envision perpetrators to be named, local, and part of the campus community; and third, the reporting process is cumbersome and outpaced by the speed and frequency with which TFVA occurs. We consider these findings in the context of work-overflow and context collapse to demonstrate how the institutional apparatus for maintaining a safe and respectful working environment has not expanded in kind with the extensification of contemporary academic labor.

Language: en

Keywords

Context collapse; Cyber bullying; Higher education; Online harassment; Organizational policy; Technology-facilitated violence and abuse; Work extensification