Victim Trolling

Natural victim? Profile slide Jennie, age 14 Has accounts on 3 Social Networking sites, including Facebook. She uses her accounts to share photographs and post on her friends’ walls. She is kind, lives with her mum and cat Gizmo, is popular and loves YouTube, surfing the net and playing netball in school. Her favourite subjects are English, Welsh and ICT. Jennie has a laptop she shares with her mother, so she can use it in the living room and her bedroom. She often goes on-line late at night to chat. Hangs around with a gang of girls and boys in school who might be considered Goths, but they keep out of trouble and love Buffy. She’s just a normal 14 year old who is beginning to think about her future, what she would like to do for her GCSEs and she is thinking about working with children.

Troll Trolling

Trolling for fun? Profile slide James, age 14 Has accounts on 8 Social Networking sites, including Facebook. Uses his account to share photographs and post on his friends’ walls. James is very opinionated and has used computers at home for a very long time. He loves going on message boards and making waves, by making “flame” comments, designed to wake up other message board members. In fact it’s his hobby. He also plays video games late at night. He lives with his parents and younger brother and has a computer of his own, in his bedroom. His favourite subjects are Design and Technology, Geography and ICT Hangs around with a gang of girls and boys in school who might be considered Goths, but they keep out of trouble and love Buffy. He’s just a normal 14 year old who is beginning to think about his future, what he would like to do for his GCSEs and he is thinking about doing a degree in computing and maybe becoming involved in the videogame industry.

Task 1 Working in pairs, decide who is going to be the victim or the troll. Copy the profile slide of your choice.(Copy and Paste) Imagine you ARE that person. Re-write some of the details to suit you. DON’T show your partner yet…… Print out the changed profile with an avatar name, not your real one.

Task 2 – Part 1 Now read the following scenario…

Trolling for fun? Scenario It’s a Friday night. It’s raining James is really fed up. He’s had a bad time being kicked out of 3 message boards, and they won’t let him back in, even though he’s changed his avatar name 4 times. They recognise his comments. So he decides to look up some of his friends in school on Facebook. Is anyone chatting? It’s 12.30am and very late but Jennie is there. He decides to switch to an anonymous user account he’s set up and starts off just generally chatting. His avatar name is Georgie Porgie and some of his mates know it’s really him, he brags about it in school. He asks Jennie to make him a friend and she does straight away. As they are in the same group at school he knows a lot about her. And then things get nasty.

Trolling for fun? Scenario It’s a Friday night. It’s raining Jennie is online at am. None of her friends are chatting on- line when she gets a Facebook message, from someone in school who’s avatar name is Georgie Porgie. Jennie thinks this is a boy from another class that she's talked to in English and she quite likes, so she makes him a friend. They start chatting on the chat line, when Georgie starts making some really strange remarks. In fact they are starting to be really rude about her friends. But worse still they start insulting her. Her hair, her makeup, her choice of clothes on the weekend. Jennie realises that this person really knows her and she is shocked. She tries to reason with Georgie, but Georgie responds by saying bad things about her mother and even her cat.

Task 2 – Part 2 Read your changed profiles out to each other – then ask each other the following questions. 1)What do you think about James’ behaviour? 2)Should you accept friend requests without knowing who that person is? Even if you THINK you know who it is? 3)What would you do in Jennie’s place? 4)Should Jennie take the matter further? If so what should she do? Now read the final part – what happened afterwards – the consequences.

Task 3- Part 1 Jennie know that the best way to deal with this is not to feed the troll. So she logs off. The following morning Jennie decided to tell some friends in school about the troll. As soon as she mentions the name Georgie Porgie one of the boys says he knows who that is. It’s James. Jennie is really upset as she quite likes James, and he’s always been friendly with her. But he seems to have a nasty side that has been well hidden from the girls in the gang at least. In fact the boys seem to know that James is a well known troll. Jennie decides to tell her PSE teacher, as some of the remarks were really upsetting, especially about her mother. The teacher tells the head and the result is that James’s parents are told about this. They take it very seriously with the result that James is not allowed to use the Internet at home for 6 months and is also not allowed on the Internet in school. He has been made to close his Facebook accounts. In fact the group of friends decide that James is not “one of them” anymore and ignore him in school. But there were others who felt that Jennie had, in the end hurt James more. What do you think?

Two sides Jennie took it seriously. She reported the bullying. It was dealt with in school even though it happened at home. She never accepts “friends” on Facebook without knowing exactly who they are. She still enjoys using her computer and is glad she stood up for herself and shared her worries with friends and a teacher. James thought it was a bit of harmless fun. He thought the school and especially his parents overreacted, badly, by banning his Internet use and closing his Facebook accounts. But he does realise that he lost friends because of what he said, and that the Internet is very public indeed, nothing is a “secret” on line.

Two sides So who is right? Did Jennie do the right thing? Would YOU have done anything different if you were Jennie? Did James get a just punishment? What would YOU do now if you were James?

Two sides So who is right? Class discussion and Plenary. Did Jennie do the right thing? She could have not made “Georgie Porgie” a friend in the first instance. She could have stopped the conversation as soon as it got nasty – “Don’t feed the troll” She probably did the right thing, but it didn’t stop some of the group siding with James. Did James get a just punishment? Yes, under the circumstances, but he did fall behind with some school work because he couldn’t use the Internet for some of his research. He lost some good friends over this but there were some who stood up for his right to Free Speech. But what James did was bullying, it was NOT Free Speech. Everyone has the right to express an opinion, but personal flame “attacks” based on a person or a person’s family is taboo.

VOTE - Plenary Jennie – did she overdo it? Or was she right to do what she did? YES Number of votes -

VOTE - Plenary I think we can accept that James bullied but did the punishment fit the crime? YESNO – too severe Number of votes -