Exploring Harassment Directed Towards Employees on Social Media: A Scoping Review.

Area of Science:

• Occupational Health
• Cyberpsychology
• Management Science

Background:

• Growing reports of social media harassment targeting employees.
• Research is interdisciplinary and fragmented across various occupational fields.
• Lack of a consolidated understanding of employee social media harassment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a scoping review of research on social media harassment directed at employees.
• To identify the nature of this harassment.
• To determine specific risk factors and organizational management strategies.

Main Methods:

• Scoping review methodology aligned with PRISMA guidelines.
• Searches conducted across Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.
• Inclusion criteria applied to 47 initially identified studies, with 35 meeting criteria.

Main Results:

• Social media harassment towards employees is diverse, with 14 different labels identified.
• Few studies (5) explored risk factors: prominence, active social media use, and co-occurrence with offline harassment.
• Limited research (6 studies) on organizational responses, often deemed ineffective; 13 studies addressed individual coping mechanisms.

Conclusions:

• This is the first review synthesizing research on employee social media harassment.
• The field suffers from construct proliferation and lacks a coherent research agenda.
• Recommendations are provided to consolidate research and develop targeted interventions.