Social Media Conflict
The idea of celebrities being treated badly via social media is one that I find quite distressing. Society asks for more interaction and an insight into these people’s life, yet a group of people, all be it the minority, abuse this privileged by hating on them. I want to use the example of sport here, and specifically AFL. Twitter is a major platform for players to raise their profile, but it also puts them under intense pressure. There are two main ways that ‘trolling’ occurs in this demographic of people. Firstly, fake accounts are opened, meaning that players are quoted as commenting on an issue when it is not actually them. This issue was rectified in 2012 when players were granted authenticity tick, meaning that their profile could not be copied. The biggest issue is all of the negative comments that are thrown their way. Some players such as Tom Scully don’t even have Twitter accounts due to the amount of negativity they receive online which is not fair at all. Everybody should have the ability to have their say without vitriolic comments coming their way. This type of behaviour was in the spotlight again after Indian cricket player Yuvraj Singh received hate mail, death threats and had rocks thrown at his house after they lost the T20 World Cup. These people are just everyday citizens of the world, and we, as the audience have no idea what is going on behind closed doors in their personal lives. I think that the increased awareness of mental illness within professional sports can largely be attributed to hate on social media and from my point of view this behaviour is just totally unacceptable My final point from the readings is how parents often assume that social media increases bulling at a school level (boyd 2014). Technology can now be used almost anywhere, meaning that children are often conversing and connecting with people outside of their school hours. Whilst it is a huge issue, at least technology allows us to turn it off- children should be encouraged to use less technology in these cases if it will decrease the chances of bullying within school. Whilst parents may be able to access their children’s social media accounts, in many cases it is a mixture of online and face to face bullying, making the issue harder to solve. • McCosker, A. (2014) ‘Trolling as Provocation: YouTube’s Agonistic Publics’, Convergence. • boyd, d. (2014) ‘Bullying: Is the Media Amplifying Meanness and Cruelty?’, in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, pp 128-52.
