Speakout: tackling
online harassment
Student internships on School of the Arts research projects
Online harassment has now become pervasive in online and social media
spaces in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. A recent Government
report indicated that 60% of respondents to an online survey had
witnessed abuse online while 41% had been affected by online abuse
at some time. A report written by Universities UK has pointed to the
growing prevalence of online harassment among university students in
the UK. In recent years, the Office for Students has funded a number of
initiatives at UK universities, including the University of Liverpool, which
aim to tackle and prevent online harassment.
During the academic year 2018-2019, two researchers at the University
of Liverpool, Dr Craig Haslop and Dr Fiona O’Rourke, conducted
a research project, which critically examined the extent and nature
of online harassment between students in this institutional context
to better understand how to tackle and prevent these practices. This
action-orientated project, which was titled ‘#Speakout: calling out
online harassment’, aimed to encourage university students to ‘speak
out’ against online harassment. This project contributed to university-
based initiatives, which aim to challenge and prevent harassment,
including e-resources that provide students with information about how
to effectively deal with it and seek support from student support services.
In addition, the project contributed to the Liverpool Guild of Student’s
#Call it out campaign, which focuses on tackling harassment that can
occur online and offline (e.g. sexism, homophobia, transphobia) and
encourages university students to ‘call it out’ if they observe it.
The research team involved undergraduate students from the Department
of Communication and Media in designing content for this university-
based campaign. Two student interns - Alice Churm and Ellie Houghton,
were recruited to produce engaging content for this campaign over
an 8-week period (June-July 2018). In the following paragraphs, Ellie
Houghton (graduating from BA Communication & Media with Politics,
2019) writes about her experiences on the internship programme.
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