A Briefing on Trolling and Social Media Conflict

The power of social media and emerging digital communities, brings forth the increased prevalence of trolling and conflict. Whilst these new media technologies can assist in connecting people across the globe, these opportunities for online interactivity can blur the line between the impacts of digital landscapes and the real-world.

Who are Trolls?

Positions and actions that exist in reality tend to also carry over to social media and the digital landscape, for better or worse. The commonly used term, ‘troll’, is often associated with hating and other negative acts that are performed from one person to another through the Internet (McCosker 2014, p. 204). The troll is a difficult concept to simply define, however, the effects are real and can harm every online user, most predominately kids and teenagers who possess a vulnerability to bullying through these highly interactive sites that may usually feel safe within. The “highly contextualised” methods and actions surroundings trolls can lead to questions of how harmful or impactful someone has to be in order to be labelled as a troll, with these constantly “changing forms” of identification reflecting real-world bullying and harassment (McCosker 2014, p. 202). Therefore, the Internet troll must be acknowledged and understood according to one’s own experiences and opinions or else safe-spaces will never exist within digital communities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zxy_dScjsM

Cyber-Safety

When issues of trolling on the Internet becomes too frequent and focused, these acts of bullying become cyber-bullying, requiring an understanding of cyber-safety. The “increased degree of contact” that exists with the immediate connection to social media and digital platforms poses threats to any “established social norms of civility” of cyber-bullying (Fuller 2014). Is the answer to simply turn disconnect young people from their devices? Enforce rand monitor age restrictions on social media? These are possibilities, but these new “childhoods mediated through an online persona” will continue to persist with younger generations (Fuller 2014). Therefore, parents and caretaker figures must educate themselves and their children on the new forms of trolling through memes and spam, for example, taking advantage of block and report features, as well as choosing when to ignore engagement in online harassment. Cyber-safety, unlike the complexities of understanding a troll, is simple and can be approached with the same ways that bullies are dealt with in the real-world, by acting rationale and taking focus away from the harassment.

How do we support those in our various communities – involving our friends and loved ones – who display their vulnerabilities for all to see?

As evident within this discussion of trolling and conflict on social media, these ideas of safety and identification of bullies cannot be fully resolved within a blog, or even life itself. These dangers of the Internet are constantly evolving, and that must be known by every user on every online platform. All in all, these negative actions that occur through a screen prove that there will always be challenges and threats in life, and just like the real-world, every new creation and example of resistance in the digital landscape can provide us with more tools and opportunities to overcome these obstacles as they arise.

References

Fuller, G. (2014). ‘Cyber-safety’: what are we actually talking about?, The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/cyber-safety-what-are-we-actually-talking-about-23505.

McCosker, A. (2013). Trolling as provocation: YouTube’s agonistic publics, SAGE publishing company. Retrieved from https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/10.1177/1354856513501413.