Abstract
Trolling is often enacted against women and minority groups on social media platforms, such as Twitter, as a means of limiting or undermining participation in virtual space(s). This chapter considers trolling as a form of gendered and symbolic violence. Drawing on an analysis of British national newspaper reports focusing on cases of trolling, we demonstrate that trolling can be viewed as a ‘silencing strategy’. Trolling leaves its victims in a powerless position as freedom of expression for perpetrators is defended via social media ideologies. The initial promise of social media – to provide democratizing spaces – in practice creates space for the percolation of misogynist, sexist, racist, and/or homophobic attitudes. The chapter focuses on trolling in the form of rape and death threats, women as doubly deviant when deemed to be entering men’s (online) domain(s), responses to trolling, and feminist activism.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Violence |
| Editors | Nancy Lombard |
| Place of Publication | Oxford |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Chapter | 9 |
| Pages | 121-132 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Edition | 1 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781315612997 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781472483515, 9780367580988 |
| Publication status | Published - 8 Dec 2017 |
Keywords
- gender
- violence
- trolling
- cyber crime
- online abuse
- social media
- internet
Access to Document
- Lumsden_etal_RHGV_Cyber_Trolling_As_AAM
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Violence on 2017-12-08, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9781472483515