{"id":2163,"date":"2015-12-25T13:31:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-25T21:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/newsroom15\/?p=548"},"modified":"2021-06-22T18:37:56","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T22:37:56","slug":"taking-on-the-trolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/2015\/12\/25\/taking-on-the-trolls\/","title":{"rendered":"New Tool Aims to Take on Trolls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

By Cassandra Jaramillo<\/strong>
\nONA Newsroom<\/p>\n

Michelle Ferrier is taking on the trolls.<\/p>\n

After months of development, Ferrier, associate dean for innovation at the <\/span>Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University, has launched TrollBusters. <\/span>TrollBusters, which went live Friday, works as a digital safe haven for women experiencing harassment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Online harassment was the subject of Friday\u2019s Online News Association keynote address, \u201cWe Belong Here: Pushing Back Against Online Harassment.\u201d Ferrier was a panelist, along with Soraya Chemaly, director of \u201cThe Speech Project\u201d at the Women\u2019s Media Center<\/span>; <\/span>Amanda Hess, a staff writer at Slate; and Laurie Penny, a freelance journalist. It was moderated by Sarah Jeong, a contributing editor at Motherboard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Men and women experience similar levels of online harassment, according to a 2014 Pew Research study. But the study found women were more likely to experience more severe forms of harassment such as stalking, sexual harassment or sustained harassment.<\/p>\n

\"Young<\/a><\/p>\n

TrollBusters gained momentum after winning a top prize and $3,000 in funding earlier this year at the International Women’s Media Foundation hackathon in New York. It also received funding from The Knight Prototype Fund to help develop its positive messaging service to help drown out malicious users.<\/p>\n

Victims can report incidents to the site and get help from its virtual \u201cS.O.S\u201d team, which uses technology and moderation to give support.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we are at the forefront of something and working on something that can potentially work worldwide,\u201d Ferrier said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Chemaly said when she wrote about experiences with misogyny online, people came forward with their own stories, often looking for help. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey had nowhere else to go. They couldn\u2019t go to their companies. They couldn\u2019t go to law enforcement,\u201d Chemaly said on the panel.<\/p>\n

Some women, like Penny, said they were told the harassment was just the environment of the Internet world.<\/p>\n

\u201cA woman\u2019s opinion is the \u2018short skirt of the internet.\u2019 The idea that if you fault your brain, or your power or your opinion, then you deserve everything you get,\u201d Penny said. \u00a0\u201cIt is a backlash to the power that marginalized voices are gaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

Law enforcement and social media companies are looking to each other and watching how the law is adapting, Chemaly said. But like a weak defensive line, they\u2019re often missing the tackle when trying to determine what is a \u201ctrue\u201d threat, she said.<\/p>\n

Chemaly\u2019s campaign with \u201cThe Speech Project\u201d worked to improve Facebook\u2019s cyber harassment policies, but there\u2019s still much to be done with social media companies and news organizations, the panel noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know there are people from Facebook here. I know there are people from Google here. And I think you need to think hard about what women are to you. And what people of color are to you. Are we targets? Are we click bait? Or are we users as well,\u201d Penny said, defending the publishers who ask for more protection in harassment policies.<\/p>\n

Alternate solutions like Ferrier\u2019s TrollBusters aims to protect voices on the internet. But does the project want to shut out the trolls? Surprisingly, not at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrolls will be trolls. They\u2019re human. What we we need to is mitigate the damage that they do,\u201d Ferrier said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New tool aims to help harassed women take on trolls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10506,"featured_media":2037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[724],"tags":[668],"powerkit_post_featured":[],"coauthors":[1136],"class_list":{"0":"post-2163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-innovation","8":"tag-ona15"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2015\/09\/Screen-Shot-2015-09-25-at-1.30.12-PM-1.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5Q1c-yT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10506"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3467,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions\/3467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}