Hi Carla,
Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/WP/WP02-03B.html
I thought it was a good read - it gave me some new ideas about how to
engage in constructive discussion in a community like debian-women.
Naturally the situation described in the paper isn't completely the same
as here, but anyway I thought the rest of you might also be interested.
That's a pretty good link. Could you be persuaded to write a short description
and send it to Jutta? She is putting together a links page. I'm working on
some contributions for the links page too.
After trying a couple of times for a good short description without
coming up with something I like, I'd suggest either using the title:
"Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum"
or the abstract, which sums it up nicely, but may be longer than Jutta
wanted.
" A common phenomenon in online discussion groups is the individual who
baits and provokes other group members, often with the result of drawing
them into fruitless argument and diverting attention from the stated
purposes of the group. This study documents a case in which the members
of a vulnerable online community—a feminist web-based discussion
forum—are targeted by a “troller” attempting to disrupt their discussion
space. We analyze the strategies that make the troller successful and
the targeted group largely ineffectual in responding to his attack, as a
means to understand how such behavior might be minimized and managed in
general. The analysis further suggests that feminist and other
non-mainstream online forums are especially vulnerable, in that they
must balance inclusive ideals against the need for protection and
safety, a tension that can be exploited by disruptive elements to
generate intragroup conflict. "
Or does anyone want to write a better, shorter description than that?
Helen.
