TY - JOUR

T1 - “I have a folder in my email called Hate Mail”

T2 - academic public engagement, digital hate, and the unequally distributed risks of visibility

AU - Yelin, Hannah

AU - Clancy, Laura

PY - 2024/6/25

Y1 - 2024/6/25

N2 - Public engagement through ‘traditional’ and social media is an increasingly important way for scholars to communicate research with wider audiences, with academics encouraged to maintain a public profile to disseminate work. This has important activist potential for radical knowledge production, but only if all voices can participate on equal, safe terms. Existing work on digital hate rarely accounts for the diversity of the academic community, and therefore we cannot adequately account for how certain voices are being excluded from public debate. Drawing on data from eighty-five survey responses and thirteen indepth interviews with UK academics across disciplines, this article argues that the risks of visibility are unevenly distributed in ways that exacerbate harm to already marginalised groups. Our data challenges popular notions that visibility is its own reward. We demonstrate how visibility exposes academics to the kinds of online misogyny, racism, ableism, classism, xenophobia, homophobia, fatphobia and transphobia that characterise cultures of online hate. We reflect upon how academics in the ‘wrong’ body are denied intellectual authority in public debate through abuse targeting their intersectional identities and right to belong.1 Our data finds that digital hate not only affects academics’ careers, but also causes significant physical and mental harms that seep into academics’ personal lives. There cannot be meaningful, radical potential in public knowledge sharing if we cannot protect those most at risk of harm in the process.

AB - Public engagement through ‘traditional’ and social media is an increasingly important way for scholars to communicate research with wider audiences, with academics encouraged to maintain a public profile to disseminate work. This has important activist potential for radical knowledge production, but only if all voices can participate on equal, safe terms. Existing work on digital hate rarely accounts for the diversity of the academic community, and therefore we cannot adequately account for how certain voices are being excluded from public debate. Drawing on data from eighty-five survey responses and thirteen indepth interviews with UK academics across disciplines, this article argues that the risks of visibility are unevenly distributed in ways that exacerbate harm to already marginalised groups. Our data challenges popular notions that visibility is its own reward. We demonstrate how visibility exposes academics to the kinds of online misogyny, racism, ableism, classism, xenophobia, homophobia, fatphobia and transphobia that characterise cultures of online hate. We reflect upon how academics in the ‘wrong’ body are denied intellectual authority in public debate through abuse targeting their intersectional identities and right to belong.1 Our data finds that digital hate not only affects academics’ careers, but also causes significant physical and mental harms that seep into academics’ personal lives. There cannot be meaningful, radical potential in public knowledge sharing if we cannot protect those most at risk of harm in the process.

U2 - 10.3898/NewF:110-111.11.2024

DO - 10.3898/NewF:110-111.11.2024

M3 - Journal article

VL - 110 & 111

SP - 187

EP - 206

JO - New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory and Politics

JF - New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory and Politics

SN - 0950-2378

ER -