This week, I mainly learn the phenomenon of online trolling and misinformation. From my perspective, I can realize how serious the internet trolling is. I haven’t involved in any online harassment or attack in my experience of using social media, but I have witnessed one of my surroundings who suffered from negative comments. She felt stressed at that time, and their conflicts started with different opinions held on a social topic. That stranger clicked in her homepage and attacked her other posts, even she was just sharing life. I was astonished when I heard about this, because my friend really took it seriously, she felt hurt and wondered why two persons haven’t met before, can assault to each other. Anonymity is one important reason that people makes comments, express thoughts with no limits and even considerations if their words greatly impact others. People believe social media as a platform for them to speak freely, but they ignore the responsibility of respect and sympathy. In the article written by Rainie, Anderson and Albright, lack of punishment will result such uncivil behaviors. Then I have some new understanding of misinformation. It is one of important reason that people make distorted views. Karen Blackmore introduces that misinformation degrades people’s ability to engage in online discourse. Without fact-checking, if increasing people believe the fake information during the process of spreading, it will lead negative forces to society. When we discuss a certain issue, it’s crucial to estimate the authenticity of it before we further spread it. High speed of its spread is both a pro and a con.
As I said above, I haven’t experienced online harassment or trolling, but my friends did. Interestingly, I almost experienced fake news everyday by the passage my grandmother shares to me. The elders easily trust some information about social change, maybe because they pay more attention on family members’ safety, and they want to give an alert which always the main topic of fake news. In my culture, it always happens on WeChat. Back to the hostile communication online, to avoid the negative impacts, I prefer to have private settings, like only people who follows me can reply. It’s just one simple method, more importantly, I think that we should focus on ourselves more than others’ words. Being confident and having strong mentality to transfer attention on real life is very crucial and helpful.
I like to use Sina Weibo most! It’s very prevailing in China, and almost all youngsters post their “moments”, share their lives on that, also we can check newest information on that platform. According to the intensified phenomenon of “cyberabuse”, Sina has developed functions to protect users’ rights. We can set who can reply to our comments or posts, and we can turn off the messages from strangers. We can also report improper behaviors to Sina assistants. And as I know, now people have to pay for their words of defamation or fake news. It has legal meaning. I only wait for official accounts to announce important news, or I don’t trust news from the unknown. I research trolling AND sina weibo on Google, and I find that weibo will have a more clear definition of “hatermongering”. Due to the exorbitant fan culture, weibo will also strengthen the management of cyber-based violence.
