Content Moderators’ Strategies for Coping with the Stress of Moderating Content Online
Open accessAbstract
Commercial content moderators are exposed to a range of stressors at work, including analysing content that has been flagged as harmful. However, not much is known about their specific coping strategies. Depth interviews were conducted with 11 content moderators exposed to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as part of their job, and thematically analysed to investigate both individual coping strategies and those deployed organisationally. Results highlighted the importance of social support and validation of the role, as well as creating boundaries between work and home life. Moderators expressed a preference for mandatory, individual therapy with professionals who had specific experience supporting those exposed to CSAM. How content moderators cope and can be further supported are discussed.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
These technological solutions are not necessarily considered useful by moderators.
“However, these are not necessarily considered useful by moderators (Spence et al., 2023)”
From The psychological impacts of content moderation on content moderators: A qualitative study (2023) · cites this paper as Spence et al., 2023
Cites
Gale, N. K., Heath, G., Cameron, E., Rashid, S., & Redwood, S. (2013) · BMC Medical Research Methodology · doi:10.1186/1471-2288-13-117 · Cited by 10,865 · see citing works
The Civic Labor of Volunteer Moderators Online
Matias, J. N. (2019) · Social Media + Society · doi:10.1177/2056305119836778 · Cited by 183 · see citing works
The Psychological Well-Being of Content Moderators
Steiger, M., Bharucha, T. J., Venkatagiri, S., Riedl, M. J., & Lease, M. (2021) · Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3411764.3445092 · Cited by 168 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Therefore, the emotional and pressurized labor of CM work likely creates high-stress work environments that can adversely affect staff (Steiger et al. 2021).”
Identifying and Managing Stress in Child Pornography and Child Exploitation Investigators
Krause, M. (2009) · Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology · doi:10.1007/s11896-008-9033-8 · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The psychological impacts of content moderation on content moderators: A qualitative study
Spence, R., Bifulco, A., Bradbury, P., Martellozzo, E., & DeMarco, J. (2023) · Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace · doi:10.5817/cp2023-4-8 · Cited by 48 · see citing works
“However, these are not necessarily considered useful by moderators (Spence et al., 2023) and a lack of support has been associated with quitting in volunteer moderators ( Schöpke -Gonzalez et al., 2022).”
BackgroundSelf-citationContent Moderator Mental Health, Secondary Trauma, and Well-being: A Cross-Sectional Study
Spence, R., Bifulco, A., Bradbury, P., Martellozzo, E., & DeMarco, J. (2024) · Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking · doi:10.1089/cyber.2023.0298 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Self-citationMitigating Viewer Impact From Disturbing Imagery Using AI Filters: A User-Study
Sarridis, I., Spangenberg, J., Papadopoulou, O., & Papadopoulos, S. (2025) · International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction · doi:10.1080/10447318.2024.2313890 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
- Authors
- Spence, R., Harrison, A., Bradbury, P., Bleakley, P., Martellozzo, E., & DeMarco, J.
- Affiliations
- Middlesex University London (GB)
- Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (GB)
- University of New Haven (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Online Trust and Safety
- Publisher
- Stanford Internet Observatory
- Published
- 2023-04-26
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 5
- ISSN
- 2770-3142 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4372271678
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4
- FWCI
- 7.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Online Trust and Safety (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Middlesex University Research Repository (Middlesex University Of London) (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Stress and Burnout Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Emotional Labor in Professions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Technostress in Professional Settings
- Keywords
- content moderation, coping strategies, occupational stress, child pornography, online harms, social support, work-life boundaries, organizational support
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
