Every day we pull some stats from a survey and say have a chat about the findings. Today: How rife is internet trolling?
Internet trolls are those who subject others to sexually offensive, verbally abusive or threatening material online in ways which could be considered criminal acts.
Trolling also refers to deliberately inflammatory, upsetting or irrelevant online postings that may not be criminal.
27 per cent of people who have posted online in comments sections, chatrooms and forums admit to behaviour that could count as trolling.
43 per cent of 18-24-year-old internet commenters admit to at least one form of trolling behaviour.
The most common form of trolling is making jokes at the expense of others (16 per cent).
This is followed by deliberately making controversial statements to annoy someone (11 per cent).
Eight per cent of internet commenters have called someone they didn’t know an offensive name – this figure rises to 17 per cent of 18-24-year-olds.
Controversial TV personality Katie Hopkins’ view that “if you don’t like trolling, get off Twitter” is agreed with by 32 per cent of British people – but 51 per cent disagrees.
Source: YouGov research.
What do you think? What forms of trolling have you been guilty of? Have you ever been upset by someone trolling? What action do you think should be taken against trolls, both in terms of those people who are just rude and annoying online and those more serious malicious cases? Post a comment below, or on Twitter using #nsstatchat
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