Whistleblowing in Software Engineering Practice

Whistleblowing in software engineering (SE) has received growing media attention with high profile stories such as those from Christopher Wylie (Cambridge Analytica) and Timnit Gebru (Google). Situations with a lack of whistleblowers have also received attention, with ongoing scandals from the UK Post Office (Horizon IT system) and Volkswagen (emission defeat software). My literature review finds limited number of studies regarding the SE aspects and human factors behind situations found in SE practice. Whistleblowing in software engineering is a complex social-technical phenomenon. Its understanding would benefit from in-depth studies of how situations of public concern arise, and how they are handled by SE practitioners, SE communities and the IT industry. My two primary research questions are:
RQ1: What harmful (public interest) situations do software engineers see in practice?
RQ2: How are public interest situations discovered, escalated and resolved in practice?