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Hoaxes and trollsTrust and authority online
#mac281
@rob_jewitt
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Overview
Hoaxes
Trolling
Flaming
RIP
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Hoaxes: The curious case of Masal Bugduv
Burroughs & Burroughs, 2012
16 year old Moldovan footballer
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Wikipedia entry
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Wikipedia entry
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Moldova vs Lithuania
November 19th 2008
1-1
Igor Bugaiov
Changed to Massi Igor Bugduv
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The Times
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Qatar Dream Football League hoax
12th March 2013: The Times duped into printing a false story
Mounted a defense of the story after a French website revealed it to be fake
18th March: Conceded defeat
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Manti Te’o & Lennay Kekua hoax
September 2012: Lennay Kekua died of Leukemia
Except she didn’t…
She didn’t even exist
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Chain letters, myths, and spam
Flaming
Flaming e-bile
Shut the fuck up you fucking ugly OLD wowser cunt. You need a good stiff cock shoved down your throat if you ask me. (E-mail sent to the Australian children’s
advocate Julie Gale, cited in Jackman [2011])
Flaming e-bile
I hope you get raped in your *sshole and eyeballs until you bleed to death. (Post on MoFo Politics [f u commenting (2011)])
E-bile
‘the extravagant invective, the sexualized threats of violence, and the recreational nastiness that have come to constitute a dominant tenor of Internet discourse’ Jane, 2012: 2
E-bile
‘Toxic and often markedly misogynist e-bile no longer oozes only in the darkest digestive folds of the cybersphere but circulates freely through the entire body of the Internet’ Jane, 2012: 2
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Anita Sarkeesian
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The "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian" game
The internet…
A place where “even the meekest of people” have become “ground-shaking titans” who “crusade and burn and unleash hell on . . . imaginary enemies” in “all-caps rants” Tin, 2012
Trolling
‘The culture of sadism on-line . . . has gone mainstream. The common term “lulz” … refers to the gratification of watching others suffer … Trolling is not a string of isolated incidents, but the status quo in the online world’ Larnier, 2010: 60
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Sean Duffy
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The Dark Tetrad of personality
‘online trolls are prototypical everyday sadists’ -- Erin E. Buckels, Paul D. Trapnell, Delroy L. Paulhus (2014)
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Context collapse
friends
colleagues family
f
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Context collapse
‘individuals representing multiple social contexts (e.g., work, family, high school acquaintances, close friends) are ‘‘collapsed’’ into the flat category of ‘‘friends’’ or ‘‘contacts’’ on social media sites, creating … the multiple audience problem.’ Marwick and Ellison: 2012: 379
Lindsay’s P45
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Dangers
Networked communication brings with it new risks
Trust and authority can be hard to maintain
Sites with persistent identity features (eg Facebook) can still be subject to spoofing
Motivations for trolling?
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Questions
1. Identify some well known internet hoaxes or chain letters/emails
2. Identify some online incidents in which people have been abused or victimised
3. Find some examples of 'flaming’
4. Try and come up with a reason as to why you think people behave this way?
5. Can there be any pro-social trolling?
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Trollface
Sept 19th, 2008
MSPaint comic made by deviantArt user Whynne about the pointless nature of trolling on 4Chan’s /v/