1st Edition
(Un)Silencing Academia in Times of Epistemic Conflicts Navigating Online Violence
1 (Un)silencing academia: a multidimensional perspective on online attacks on academics
Alberta Giorgi
PART 1 Theoretical background
Foreword – (Un)silencing academia part one
Margunn Bjørnholt
2 The social presence of academics on social media platforms: a specific form of public engagement
Maria Francesca Murru
3 Transformations of higher education: precarization, entrepreneurization, subjectivation, and exploitation of anxiety in neoliberal academia
Annalisa Murgia and Maria del Rio Carral
4 Beyond visibility: online academic harassment and the politics of socio-technical harm
Ezgi Pehlivanli and Busra Yalcinoz Ucan
PART 2 Case studies
Foreword – (Un)silencing academia part two
Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen
5 The politics of science: academics facing online violence
Alberta Giorgi and Hande Eslen-Ziya
6 Ethics of an unlocked closet: difficult fields and the queer researchers’ dilemma on transparency
Ozan Félix Sousbois
7 Performing citizenship through digital media: exploring online harassment of feminist academics
Arianna Mainardi and Mette Marie Roslyng
8 Threats to academic freedom online and offline in France: culture wars, identity politics, and the Islamo-gauchisme controversy
Timothy Peace
PART 3 Institutions, conclusions, suggestions
Foreword – (Un)silencing academia part three
Debbie Ging
9 Ethical challenges in digital research on the far-right continuum: insights from Northern Europe
Iris B. Segers, Ov Cristian Norocel, and Charles M. Ess
10 The rise of online harm: individual, community, and institutional strategies to protect researchers
Audrey Gagnon and Tamta Gelashvili
11 (Un)silencing as resistance: conceptualizing online attacks on academics as online violence
Hande Eslen-Ziya
Biography
Alberta Giorgi is Associate Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communication Processes at the University of Bergamo and Associate Researcher of the Center for Social Studies (CES, Coimbra). Her work explores discursive boundaries and classifications, particularly at the intersection of politics, gender, religion, and science. She has recently co-edited with Hande Eslen-Ziya, Populism and Science in Europe (2022), and with J. Garraio and T. Toldy Religion, Gender and Populism in the Mediterranean (Routledge, 2023).
Hande Eslen-Ziya is Professor of Sociology at the University of Stavanger and Honorary Research Associate at the Gender Justice, Health and Human Development, Durban University of Technology. Her research focuses on gender and politics, digital activism, anti-gender movements, and online violence targeting academics. She has published widely on masculinities, feminist activism, and digital cultures, including the co-edited volumes The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication (2019) and Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey: Centralised Islam for Socio-Economic Control (Routledge, 2018).
