Trolling and Cyber-bullying on Moodle Forum
BY MELODİ BÜYÜKÖZER (PSYC/IV)
buyukozer@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
I bet almost everybody knows about the Atalar@Moodle forum by now. First, the Rector launched "Atalar on Twitter," and then we started asking questions and sharing our problems about Bilkent. In a few days, it was obvious that we needed a whole new platform to share our ideas, make requests and suggestions (and probably complain a little bit) to make the Bilkent experience a better one for all of us. Then, the Rector opened the Moodle Forum. This way, all Bilkent students were able to reach Prof. Atalar whether or not they have a Twitter account. I must say that it was, indeed, a hit. We loved it! I, myself, had some complaints and suggestions, and when I took a look at the discussions, I saw that other people in Bilkent are also experiencing similar issues, and they had already expressed them, even suggesting solutions. Most of us complain about something here in Bilkent at some point but very few of us forward them to an authority or come up with a solution. So, yes, it was indeed a great idea to set up a platform that provides direct communication between students and the University Rector. While taking this look at the forum, I realized something else: Some of the discussion topics had incredible numbers of responses, and I obviously got very curious and started to read every single comment one by one.
Now, I must say that I am amazed. Obviously, Bilkent students are very observant of what is going on around them despite the outside misconception that we are non-complaining robots going to school in the morning and partying hard at night, not having to think for ourselves because Bilkent does it for us. However, it seems that we are very articulate while expressing our opinions and complaints, and we are able to defend our ideas resting them on solid foundations; moreover, we are pretty witty and know what irony is. On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore the discussions within the "hot-topics" on the forum. These topics have too many responses. If you start reading from the top of the page, you forget what the topic was at the bottom because at some point somebody tells something that is pretty irrelevant and everybody starts responding to that comment. I do not know about you but the content of these irrelevant comments (some of them are deleted now) along with some other relevant comments are just too disturbing to me because they seem to be full of hatred, discrimination, and insults. I have read racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. Of course, the reaction to these posts is out there, too. One post like this keeps us occupied for days, and we lash out posting comments one after another. As a lot of people in the forum have noticed, this kind of act of provoking people with off-topic messages online to bait them into responding is called "trolling," and people who perform this act are called "trolls." Even though the definition of trolling is highly subjective, it is pretty close to cyber-bullying.
According to Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D. and Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D., cyber-bullying is "willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices." Not that I claim that people in Bilkent deliberately try to hurt each other or every trolling act is cyber-bullying, but the line in between can become very thin. Trolling makes use of sensitive subjects to bait the responders. By twisting a completely school-related topic to refer to somebody's sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, or even appearance and using this information as a way to insult, exclude, and discriminate is definitely cyber-bullying.
As members of Bilkent, receiving a great education and having the opportunity to raise our voices without being silenced, we have to be aware of the fact that we should take our time and think thoroughly before we express our opinions. We might sound like we are saying something that we did not intend to say. Especially in a platform where we write our opinions, we might not take it back and we all know that "spoken words fly away but written words remain." For the ones who have good intentions, be careful because words can be sharper than you think. And for the others, please, "do not feed the trolls," especially the bullying ones, because they can grow bigger and eat you too.