Tag: Online Abuse

Bookmarked The horrendous online abuse a female sports journalist received highlights dangers of media that must change by Jacinta Masters, Author at Women’s Agenda (womensagenda.com.au)

O’Halloran is among the many women journalists who receive vile online abuse. In fact, a global survey by the International Federation of Journalists found that almost two thirds of women journalists receive online abuse and harassment. To put this further into context; every 30 seconds a woman journalist is harassed online. This harassment takes the form of name-calling, sexist comments, serious accusations of physical harm such as death and rape threats, devaluing their work, threats against their partners and children, and posting of personal details online (doxing).

Clearly gender is an elephant in the room when it comes to social media.
Bookmarked Why people troll others online (W. Ian O'Byrne)

  • Anonymity – People believe they can say anything and get away with it;

  • Perceived obscurity – People believe their online expressions are fairly private;

  • Perceived majority status – People believe their opinion or experience is the majority, and that people agree with them;

  • Social identity salience – People believe that their online identity means more than their offline identity. That is, online they are guided by “mob mentality” and mimic members of their group;

  • Surrounded by their friends – People believe everyone in their network, or online social circles thinks and acts like they do;

  • Desensitization – People over time see others make so many nasty comments, or they do it themselves, that it doesn’t seem like such a big deal;

  • Personality traits – People are sometimes outspoken by nature, and believe they can express themselves online without a filter;

  • Perceived lack of consequences – People weigh the risk vs. reward of engaging in these behaviors and believe that the benefits outweigh the costs.

Ian O’Byrne discusses some of the reasons why people troll online and how to respond to them. For a deeper look at the types of trolls, read Molly Hill’s post.
Bookmarked 4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump – Dale Beran – Medium by Dale Beran (Medium)

Trump’s younger supporters know he’s an incompetent joke; in fact, that’s why they support him.

Dale Beran unpacks the rise of 4chan. This explores memes, Anonymous and the progressive move into politics. For a different perspective, listen to Charles Arthur’s interview with Jake Davis:

As well as danah boyd’s exploration of the connections between 4Chan and fake news.

Liked Why do people say things online they would never say face-to-face? (W. Ian O’Byrne)

I’m left wondering why someone would choose to share content like this openly online. I’m wondering why an individual would chose to share this type of content about a friend or family member. I’m wondering if the person thought that others would see it…or if we would see it. I wonder what the intended reaction to this comment should have been.

Liked “Just an Ass-Backward Tech Company”: How Twitter Lost the Internet War (The Hive)

At the same time, her defenders say, Harvey has been forced to clean up a mess that Twitter should have fixed years ago. Twitter’s backend was initially built on Ruby on Rails, a rudimentary web-application framework that made it nearly impossible to find a technical solution to the harassment problem. If Twitter’s co-founders had known what it would become, a third former executive told me, “you never would have built it on a Fisher-Price infrastructure.” Instead of building a product that could scale alongside the platform, former employees say, Twitter papered over its problems by hiring more moderators. “Because this is just an ass-backward tech company, let’s throw non-scalable, low-tech solutions on top of this low-tech, non-scalable problem.”