Online content reviewers and mental health at work

Introduction

The Internet began as a small, restricted virtual network for real time communication within universities and research institutes. It has since dramatically evolved. To build a sense of community within the many social spaces of this early Internet, users often created the rules and guidelines for participation, standards of behaviour and other forms of self-management and control, appointing ‘superusers’ to enforce them[1]. When the Internet opened to the public, it was perceived as a communication architecture serving freedom of expression. Technological advances fostered a democratisation of online speech, while mainstreaming the exchange of digital…