Troll Hunting

Inside the world of online hate and its human fallout

Author: Ginger Gorman

Topical and gripping, Troll Hunting is an extraordinary first-person investigation of a disturbing new online reality that goes well beyond cyberbullying

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Summary

Topical and gripping, Troll Hunting is an extraordinary first-person investigation of a disturbing new online reality that goes well beyond cyberbullying

Description

In 2013, journalist Ginger Gorman was trolled online. She received scores of hateful tweets, including a death threat. She was terrified, but once the attack subsided, she found herself curious. Who were these trolls? How and why did they coordinate such an attack? And how does someone fight back?

Over the next five years, Gorman spoke to psychologists, trolling victims, law enforcement, academics and, most importantly, trolls themselves, embedding herself into their online communities and their psyches in ways she had never anticipated. She uncovered links between trolling, cyberhate and real-life crimes. She mapped out a cohort of men – mostly angry, young and white – who rightly or wrongly feel marginalised and disenfranchised and use the internet to express this. She encountered the frequently extreme personal costs endured by trolling targets, not to mention the very real financial and economic costs of cyberhate.

A gripping read, Troll Hunting is a window into not just the mindset of trolls, but also the profound changes in the way we live and work in a post-internet world. Trolls didn’t appear from thin air – they are real people, and reflect a real aspect of our society. This remarkable investigation will change the way you think about the internet, and what it means to be a human online.

Critic Reviews

“'Ginger Gorman's continued openness and vulnerability, having come through her difficult journey, lends an uncommon validation to her reporting. I will widely share her work with students and colleagues.' -Conrad Fulkerson, M.D., Assist Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine -- -”

Written with the authority of impeccable research, Ginger Gorman’s compelling book takes us deep inside the often sad, sometimes mad, and always bad world of trolling. And she never lets us forget that we are all members of the society that has created the phenomenon of trolling. So, in the end, this is a book about us all. - Hugh Mackay

'the best researched, most comprehensive work on trolling I've seen in years.' - Emma Grey Ellis for WIRED
'The best researched, most comprehensive work on trolling I've seen in years.' -- Emma Grey Ellis Wired

About the Author

Ginger Gorman is an award-winning journalist based in Canberra, Australia. In 2017 her series of articles on trolling for Fairfax newspapers went viral and became one of most read stories of the year.