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The Age of Hostility: Investigating Internet Trolling

When

Event Status

‘Don’t feed the trolls’ – it’s the conventional wisdom of the internet. But who are the trolls? What motivates them? And, beyond ignoring them, how do we limit the destruction they wreak on people’s lives?

These are the questions Ginger Gorman started asking after she herself became the target of an online hate campaign. In 2013, the investigative journalist received hateful and abusive messages, including a death threat, in response to a story she broadcast on the ABC. This harrowing experience led her to a five-year investigation of the nature and impact of trolling itself, including interviews with psychologists, police, trolling victims and, perhaps most importantly, trolls themselves. She learned about highly organised global trolling syndicates, the economic cost of internet hate campaigns, and the failure of the legal system to hold trolls accountable.

In conversation with Jamila Rizvi, Gorman will discuss anonymity, misogyny and the psychology of cyber-sabotage.

This event will be Auslan interpreted.

Metropolis will be our bookseller for this event.

Featuring

Ginger Gorman

Ginger Gorman is an award-winning social justice journalist based in Canberra, Australia. In 2013, Ginger and her family suffered the effects of online hate first-hand, and it was this experience that set Ginger on her professional journey into the world of trolls. In 2017, her series of articles o... Read more

Jamila Rizvi

Jamila Rizvi is Deputy Managing Director at Nine’s Future Women. She is a best-selling author for adults and children and an opinion columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Jamila hosts a number of podcasts, The Weekend Briefing, Anonymous Was A Woman and The Secret Life of Carers. Sh... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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Acknowledgment of Country

The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which we work. We pay our respects to the people of the Kulin Nation and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders, past and present.