Rebranding Online Trolling
With the rise of the Internet and social media, online trolling has sky-rocketed and become a part of our digital culture. Whether this looks like hostile communication, trolling, or online harassment, this is something that needs to be addressed due to the problems that have arose. Based off of this week’s readings, online trolling has been of concern and have learned the need to focus on finding a solution. One thing that I learned from this week’s readings was the new term “cyberabuse” coined by Evita March. The term ‘trolling’ is so broad and often is used more in a joking manner rather than the seriousness that this word entails. Mainstreaming the term into ‘cyberabuse’ categorizes things like cyberbullying, online trolling, cyberhate into a known term. I agree with this and often find that people are more common to brush off a concern when one discusses online trolling but seem to take more serious action if one was to say cyberbullying. While these all fall under a similar category, I think mainstreaming these actions into one term will help people understand the seriousness of it. Additionally, in “The Future of Free Speech, Trolls, Anonymity, and Fake News Online” discusses the various themes of the future of our online social climate. One theme in particular that stuck out for me was, “trolling and other destructive behaviors often result because people do not recognize or don’t care about the consequences flowing from their online actions” (Rainie et al., 2017). I think this theme perfectly illustrates how online trolling has become part of our digital culture and the influence that is has on our digital identity. It is much easier to say something behind a screen than to someone’s face which is why online trolling and cyberbullying is so prevalent. This week’s readings helped to open my eyes up into the seriousness of cyberabuse and the demand to find a solution to these issues.
From my experience, I have yet to experience any online harassment or trolling. I am thankful that I have never had to experience anything like this, even though I know that this is far more common than not. I believe that one of the best ways to avoid online harassment and trolling is by keeping all your social media accounts private and only allowing people that you know to follow you. Anytime I think a spam account is trying to follow or message me, I block the account and haven’t run into any issues with this. I think this can be a good preventative strategy to anyone that has an online profile and something that needs to be taught before people join the digital world.
The social media platform that I wanted to learn more about was TikTok and the influence that online trolling has. The article that I found is titled, “Trump’s Campaign was Trolled by TikTok Users in Tulsa” from CNN and written by Donie O’Sullivan. This article discussed this past June when Trump was supposed to hold a rally in Tulsa and was expecting more than 100,000 people to show up because of the million plus RSVP’s to his rally. The goal was for TikTok users to all respond ‘yes’ to the event and not show up which would leave Trump’s rally empty. In the end, Trump’s rally had little to no attendance for how much they hyped up the attendance. TikTok did not make a comment towards addressing the online trolling that occurred here. I think this shows just how powerful the Internet can be, especially when people have a common goal. Overall, online trolling is very harmful to the Internet community but also can have a positive influence when used for the right purposes.
O’Sullivan, D. (2020, June 21). Tulsa Rally: TikTok Users Troll Trump’s Campaign. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/21/politics/tiktok-trump-tulsa-rally/index.html
