Digital narratives on workplace bullying and the role of human resource development: topic modelling and sentiment analysis

Purpose Workplace bullying is a pervasive organisational problem that has significant personal and professional implications, ranging from severe psychological trauma to substantial impacts on organisational effectiveness. However, bullying often remains widely underreported. Instead, targets seek validation and support through anonymous online platforms such as Reddit. This study aims to explore how digital narratives on Reddit reflect the lived experiences of workplace bullying targets, aiming to inform human resource development (HRD) practices. Design/methodology/approach Using data from Reddit’s r/workplace_bullying subreddit, this study applies Latent Dirichlet Allocation for topic modelling and sentiment analysis to evaluate emotional responses. This mixed-methods approach identifies thematic patterns and emotional trends within user narratives. Findings The authors identified five dominant thematic patterns within Reddit discussions: workplace bullying patterns and traits, post-bullying contact and response, long-term psychological trauma, systemic and organisational failure and daily stress and unfair treatment. Analysis revealed strong negative emotional responses across the topics, particularly anger, disgust and fear. This tendency was especially notable in the narrative describing bullying behaviours and traits. Originality/value This research underscores the value of digital platforms as informal reporting and support channels for targets. It advocates for integrating insights from online narratives into HRD strategies to address bullying, improve workplace culture and support employee well-being.