Whitney Phillips

Whitney Phillips is a media-studies scholar who was among the earliest academics to study online trolling and harassment, and whose work intersects directly with Reddit's culture. She is a professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon, having previously taught at Syracuse University.

Her most explicitly Reddit-focused intervention was a 2012 essay in The Atlantic responding to the unmasking of Violentacrez, the pseudonym of Michael Brutsch, who had been one of Reddit's most infamous moderators of offensive content. Drawing on her dissertation research on trolling, the piece examined what the case revealed about online subcultures and the ethics of naming and exposing trolls, and it remains a frequent reference in discussions of Reddit's relationship to harassment.

Her book 'This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture,' published by MIT Press in 2015 and drawn from her doctoral research, won the Nancy Baym Book Award from the Association of Internet Researchers. While the book ranges across platforms, its analysis of how mainstream media amplify trolling subcultures is routinely applied to Reddit.

Phillips has also written about how newsrooms can inadvertently amplify toxic online communities through 'both sides' framing, a concern directly relevant to coverage of Reddit hate communities. Her commentary appears across major publications, and she is one of the scholars most often cited in analyses of the culture and ethics surrounding Reddit's more controversial corners.