When I spend time on social media, I tend to gravitate towards LinkedIn, where I can extend my network, see what my friends and colleagues are celebrating, or gain insight into topics that I’m interested in. I’ve amassed a nice-sized professional community that includes current and former colleagues, mentors and mentees, students and teachers, and co-presenters, co-chairs and co-authors. This community has intentionally grown through referrals, friends of friends, and shared interests. It has also grown in unintentional ways, through invitation requests from people trying to sell me a service or advertise an event. Sometimes, somebody is seeking professional advice or asks to make an introduction, which I’m always happy to do whenever possible. I consider that good citizenship. I also seem to have an unconscious instinct to connect with every panelist in sessions I’ve enjoyed or every meeting participant I’ve conversed with throughout my career, which has multiplied the population of my friends list. This kind of experience is a value-add. It can introduce the possibility of new experiences, new collaborative opportunities, fresh perspectives, and innovative ideas. Now, when scrolling through my connections, there seems to be as many people I can’t recall having a personal or professional relationship with as there are familiar faces. I like to think I’ve crossed paths with these strangers in some meaningful way at some point, but if I’m being honest, I probably don’t know anything about them beyond what their profile says.

Through social media platforms like LinkedIn, we can seem hyper connected through our ability to grow networks that spread the boundaries of our communities. The appearance of professional relationships with these connections should remind us of the critical need to vigilantly protect our professional neighborhoods. When used effectively, these platforms can help you identify people with common interests, learn about employment opportunities in the scholarly publishing ecosystem, or follow trending topics, like research integrity, peer review, or AI. Unfortunately, not every citizen is respectful, law abiding, or well-intentioned, and, every once in a while, we encounter individuals that intentionally disturb the peace, make us uncomfortable, and infringe on our desire to engage. Whether through cyberbullying or trolling, these individuals are a growing concern, and some are lurking within our shared scholarly publishing community.

Cyberbullying, which includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else, can occur through messaging services, websites and apps. They commonly appear in social media, community forums, or other platforms people can view, participate in, express ideas, or exchange content. Our digital presence, especially when we actively engage in public discussions, is vulnerable to cyberbullies, and can be attacked across multiple platforms. According to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults, 41% of Americans have experienced some form of online harassment, with 75% of the harassment occurring on social media.

What does cyberbullying look like?

It’s not always easy to recognize a cyberbully, or initially realize you’re being targeted. While some approaches may be direct, some bullies attempt to hide among your online community and pass themselves off as a person with goodwill and sincere intentions. They may offer witty banter to appear cordial and friendly, they may like your posts, add a supportive or agreeable comment in attempts to create a false sense of camaraderie. This is akin to a criminal casing the environment before revealing their true intent.

As with any neighborhood bully, cyberbullies attempt to exert perceived authority, power or influence to attack, intimidate, embarrass, humiliate, or undermine their target. They are known to employ threatening and aggressive language that can appear in highly-visible settings, like the comment sections of a LinkedIn or Bluesky post, or in more direct, threatening exchanges through email or text messages. In 2024, many people left X for Bluesky in what Forbes described as an exodus partially caused by the elimination of moderation teams that promoted a culture of cyberbullying, harassment, misinformation, and other toxic behavior. An article published by Taylor and Francis’s “Cogent Business & Management” describes workplace cyberbullying as the “targeted harassment of an individual by an individual or groups in a professional setting, using digital platforms with the intent to repeatedly send harmful or aggressive messages to intimidate, harm, and create a hostile work environment.”

There have been numerous analyses of cyberbullying trends, including literature reviews, and bibliometric studies. Generally, cyberbullying can appear in 9 different ways: denigration, flaming, harassment, impersonation, outing, trickery, exclusion, cyberstalking and cyberthreats. These forms are outlined in Table 1.

Table 1: Forms of Cyberbullying

In Jonathan Schultz’s Scholarly Kitchen post, “The Mental Health Effects of Bullies in the Scholarly Publishing Workplace,” we learned about bullying and harassment in the scholarly publishing office, and the psychological distress, depression and anxiety it can cause. In many ways, cyberbullying has the same effects, but can be amplified by the pervasive threat of the attacker, who has the ability to conceal their true intentions until they decide to ambush their target. Cyberbullies can create fake accounts, spread false and deceptive information, and use their anonymity to extend the life cycle of their behavior.

An article published in the Journal of Cybersecurity described the common, interrelated personality traits of those most likely to engage in cyberbullying as the Dark Tetrad (Paulhus, 2014): Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Sadism.

• Machiavellianism: a person’s manipulative and deceitful nature, where individuals prioritize their interests and manipulate others to achieve their goals.
• Narcissism: individuals with an inflated sense of self-importance, who seek excessive admiration, and lack empathy towards others.
• Psychopathy: individuals who exhibit a lack of remorse or empathy, engage in impulsive and antisocial behavior, and often display superficial charm.
• Sadism: deriving pleasure from causing pain or discomfort to others.

These traits collectively reflect a pattern of self-centeredness, manipulation, emotional detachment, and enjoyment of others’ suffering, often used to achieve personal gain or assert dominance. Psychology Todaysays that Dark Tetrad personalities score low on traits of emotionality, honesty, humility, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. This is not a diagnostic tool or measure of assessment but a social evaluation looking at the correlation of personality traits and behavior.

Who are the trolls?

A troll is described as a person or collective who deliberately picks a fight, starts an argument, or posts aggressive and offensive comments to provoke a target. Trolls are motivated by revenge, boredom, amusement, or attention, and tend to target people that are successful, or may seem happy.  Trolls can damage relationships and reputations by spreading false information, conjuring up rumors, and attacking the character and integrity of their targets.

What to do if you are targeted

Cyberbullying is truly a global concern with serious consequences. In the U.S., legislation that criminalizes cyberbullying is handled at the state level, where all states have laws in place. In Canada, The Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act offers protection from anybody who commits an offense “with intent to harass a person, repeatedly communicates, or causes repeated communications to be made, with them by means of telecommunication.” The UK draws from the Malicious Communications Act and the Protection from Harassment Act to offer protections from cyberbullying. Australia has the Enhancing Online Safety Act, Ireland has the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act, and Singapore has the Protection from Harassment Act.

When the reality sets in that you may have become a target, immediately disengage. Avoid responding to the attacker, block the user, report the behavior, and, depending on the nature and severity of the exchanges, notify the authorities.

If you find yourself being threatened on one of the professional social media platforms like LinkedIn or Bluesky, there are actions you can take to take the power away from the cyberbully and protect yourself. Although these two platforms are distinctly different, many of the approaches are similar. Here are six steps I recommend considering.

1. Define boundaries and expectations for engagement in your bio and/or posts.
2. Manage your network thoughtfully, including profile visibility settings.
3. Protect and nurture the community you have created by adjusting who can see your posts.
4. Moderate your comment sections.
   1. Bluesky offers third-party moderation tools that might be helpful.
   2. LinkedIn allows you to limit comments to “connections only.”
5. Don’t feed the trolls. Block and report them quickly to protect the safety of your engagement, and those that are constructively participating.

Stay up to date with the latest security features, including moderation tools, group features and privacy settings.

While these recommendations can seem restrictive, they provide a disciplined framework that will allow you to grow and protect your professional networks in ways that align with your values and vision. If a social media platform is becoming detrimental to your well-being even still after trying the steps to maintain your safety it might be worth considering an alternative space to share and communicate. Like a neighborhood watch, we have a shared responsibility to secure our spaces. As our communities overlap, we all benefit from a bully-free scholarly publishing neighborhood. If you have suggestions on ways to protect your online engagement from cyberbullying, please add them to the comments.