“No matter what I did, I couldn’t tap into it. The debate wasn’t mine“
Researchers' affective disconnection from reputation-threatening experiences of digital harassment through micro-media practices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/mk.v42i80.157419Keywords:
Digital harassment of researchers, Affective labor, Disconnection, Reputation, ScandalAbstract
This article explores how researchers exposed to digital harassment affectively experience and then transform the negative affects of these encounters through everyday media practices of disconnection. Based on interviews with 28 Danish researchers, the analysis shows that researchers’ experiences of digital harassment are related above all to affects of losing control over one’s public reputation. Researchers navigate and attempt to disconnect from these affects through three micro-media strategies: 1) responding to aggressors in alternative formats with the aim of defending their research; 2) saving harassing content, so as to create an imagined pause in the uncontrollable digital circulation of their reputation; and 3) blocking, deleting, and (de)selecting platforms to withdraw from the digital turmoil towards a sense of peace. The article concludes by discussing whether this form of affective (media) labor can be understood as a “hidden” digital work aimed at avoiding becoming the subject of a mediated scandal.
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