Taking trolls seriously

The internet troll has not yet found his natural level of credibility in the eyes of some

A BLOG post about a blog post commenting on the effect of blog posts is, I’ll grant, an unpromisingly introspective premise – but bear with me.

The post in question is Jon Osmond’s, from yesterday’s IWA conference on the way women are represented in the media and politics. The comments about blogging are Dr Laura McAllister’s. To be more specific, her quoted comments were about the way some women politicians have been treated. Certainly, it is hard to do other than support Dr McAllister’s conclusion; women in public life are far too often held to a higher standard than men. They are frequently judged by their appearances as less presentable male colleagues are discussed only in terms of their intellectual qualities and personalities. Equally, while aggression and dominating behaviour from men is taken for granted (and even commended) remotely similar behaviour from a woman invites gender-laden criticisms of coldness (an accusation charged with sexual innuendo) and personality disorder, as if taking control was unnatural for a woman. These attitudes emanate frequently from females, incidentally.

But the trouble is that McAllister seems to have based her evidence on comments and slurs harvested from the blogosphere, and to be more precise the mostly anonymised comments sections that often serve as a free-for-all for trolls and antediluvians. The Plaid four referred to as “lesbians and witches”? Where else in the public domain but the deep recesses of blogland, and by someone not prepared to put their real name to it, could such an allegation fester?

And there is a danger with reciting such stuff, namely that it gains undeserved credibility. If someone tried to get such a statement published in a newspaper it would, rightly, be struck out as the work of a malicious agent or nutter. Conversely, if one overheard such a thing while in public it might be treated as some spontaneous insight into the mindset of the “ordinary voter”; a sort of on-the-go focus group. The trouble with perusing the comments sections of blogs for such abuse is that it takes on some sort of half-life between these two poles; not so easily dismissed as a smear and, with uncertain provenance, not so easily dismissed as unrepresentative of public opinion, either. A dangerous status indeed.

The fundamental problem, of course, remains a paucity of considered opinion and comment in Wales – something this site exists in its modest way to try and remedy, and the absence of published survey data about attitudes in Wales. But if the case for the continued double standards between the sexes, especially in politics, is to be treated with the credibility it deserves, it is from sources such as these that the evidence must be drawn. If you merely fish in the dregs you’re bound to come up with something quite mucky, but it won’t sustain you.

- Tomorrow on WalesHome.org: Leave the politics to us, love…