Society - Written Monday, November 30, 2009 by Tim Bevins - 0 Comments

Don’t feed the trolls

danah boyd, researcher at Microsoft Research New England, Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and publisher of the apophenia blog, had plenty to say to the audience at Web 2.0 in New York City on November 17. But some tweeters got in the way.

Conference organizers decided to display real-time tweets from the audience during Boyd’s presentation, which was thoughtful, a bit provocative, and a bit complex. It did require paying attention. Joshua Michéle Ross does a good job describing the situation and drawing some conclusions about what happened, and why and who’s responsible. Here’s how Ross described the situation: “[Boyd] had a rocky start – couldn’t see the audience (lights), couldn’t see the Twitter stream (projected behind her) and the podium made it difficult for her to see her notes. When critical comments began coming through on Twitter it began a downward spiral. The audience laughed at inappropriate moments, throwing danah off her game. The audience then fed on her increasing anxiety and so on.” Continue…