Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series: Jason Thatcher
As part of the Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series, Saunders College of Business is proud to host Professor Jason Thatcher, Ph.D. on Friday, April 19, 2024, in the Gueldenpfennig Auditorium (1050). This event is open to all faculty and graduate students.
Jason Thatcher, Ph.D.
Milton F. Stauffer Professorship
Past Senior Editor, MIS Quarterly
Temple University | Department of Management Information Systems at the Fox School of Business
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Topic: Fury or Fright? Doxing and its Effects on Victims’ Civic Participation
Abstract:
Doxing, the malicious disclosure of personal information, has emerged globally as a means to influence sociopolitical discourse by targeting individuals for their viewpoints or affiliations regarding specific issues. Although issue-based doxing inflicts severe consequences on victims, including social isolation and significant mental health strain, research on the doxees’ perspective remains scarce. This study integrates psychological contract theory with affective events theory to examine doxees’ affective and behavioral responses to being doxed. Specifically, we investigate how doxing is perceived as a breach of the implicit social contract between citizens and society, evokes fear and anger, and subsequently affects doxees’ civic participation. Using an online vignette experiment in the context of U.S. school boards, we examine in-person citizen engagement and online discursive participation as critical outcome variables across physical and cyber domains. Furthermore, we assess the role of doxees’ convictions about the target issue in moderating the impact of doxing. Our findings advance research on the societal effects of adversarial online behavior in three significant ways: (1) by shifting the focus to the victim’s perspective and exploring how fear and anger affect doxees’ civic participation, (2) by extending previous literature to investigate the cross-domain effects of online adversarial behavior, and (3) by revealing that only individuals with strong convictions tend to sustain active civic participation in the face of doxing-like scrutiny, which highlights how doxing intensifies ideological polarization. Our work has timely implications for online platforms and policymakers.
Keywords: Doxing, civic participation, cyberbullying, victim perspective, psychological contract theory, affective events theory, online vignette experiment
Event Snapshot
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This is an RIT Only Event
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No