7. The Dark Side of Digital Freedom
With the very concept of the digital public sphere, “’where private people come together as a public’ for the purpose of using reason to further critical knowledge” (Kruse, Norris, Flinchum, 2018), comes a freedom for both sides of an issue to be equally represented.
The online community is the perfect place to express opinions on topics as it allows quick, easy, global access to a variety of people. However, sometimes this freedom can create vitriolic abuse, with the liberation of speech provided by social media allowing for heightened portrayal of hate, “the internet didn’t create this problem, but it does amplify it” (Ellis, 2020). Through the ability to hide behind anonymity "the… discrete impression management associated with offline, face-to-face communication" (Scolere, Pruchniewska, Duffy, 2018) is lost, allowing these particular harassers or “trolls” the ability to freely express crude notions that they themselves would usually hide in physical social interactions. As such, social media becomes breeding grounds for organised hate to flow towards particular individuals or companies, creating micropublics and coordinated ‘activism’. "The digital platforms as technological structures shape the ways in which online [activities are] practiced and circulated" (Keller, 2019), allowing these hate groups to congregate and target another whom they share passionate opinions on.
Greta Thunberg has been the victim of much of this online harassment throughout recent memory, as she is young and engaged in fighting for climate activism. The online hate community will do anything to discredit Thunberg, calling her a puppet to PR companies, mentally ill and supporter of Islamic Terrorism (just to name a few). This is further propelled by Donald Trump, who called the teenager mentally unstable with reference to anger management issues. Clearly, there is a side of the internet that coordinates with each other purely to push their own agendas, such as anti-climate crisis notions that arise from the severe will to protect industries such as coal and oil that have supported the right winged community for so long. Whilst the online world can often be a great place for activism, engagement and progression, there is always a dark side that must be acknowledged.
References
Ellis, EG. 2020. Greta Thunberg’s Online Attackers Reveal a Grim Pattern, sourced from https://www.wired.com/story/greta-thunberg-online-harassment/ Accessed 27/05/2020.
Jessalynn Keller, “Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms, Social Media + Society Volume: 5 issue: 3, 2019.
Kruse, LM Norris, DR & Flinchum, JR 2018 Social media as a public sphere? Politics on social media, The Sociological Quarterly, 59:1, 62-84.
Leah Scolere, Urszula Pruchniewska and Brooke Erin Duffy, “Constructing the Platform-Specific Self-Brand: The Labor of Social Media Promotion”, Social Media + Society July-September 2018: 1–11.









