Re: Trolling : Tue Oct 16, 2012 1:33 pm
I strongly suspect that people who are not regular users of forums such as this don't understand what "trolling" actually is.This is reinforced by a few high profile incidents in the last year where the meeja have deemed certain people "trolls" when in fact they were not trolling, but being either abusive, bullying, or deliberately offensive. Which is not to say trolling can't also be any of those things, as well as trolling.
It becomes rapidly clear that some people who are not seasoned internet users have picked up on the word and hijacked it to their own meanings. So you get items on main news broadcasts, where as an aside they define "troll" for those who don't understand the term, but are clearly not using the term correctly.
To have a proper debate about communications in electronic media surely we should start with a position where there is a definition of what it is we are supposed to be discussing?