Anyone who publishes online, or tries to engage any community in online discourse, probably knows the damage that internet trolls and other harassers can wreak. Their demeaning, dismissive, insulting and even threatening comments can completely derail a conversation, chilling the expression of a diversity of voices. Which is why a team from Ohio University is developing tools and strategies to help online publishers combat trolls -- including at the local community level.

On Jan. 30 at Cracking the Code (a hackathon for women digital news entrepreneurs, hosted by the International Women's Media Foundation) one of the winning projects was TrollBusters, a digital tool to combat online harassment of women. The $3000 hackathon prize is being used to start development of this web-based tool, and a crowdfunding campaign will be launched in 3-6 months to further develop this project. Other funding (including the Knight Prototype Fund) is being pursued as well.

But even before TrollBusters is built and deployed, this vision offers useful tools that local online publishers can use today to combat trolls on their websites and social media.

Michelle Ferrier (Associate Dean for Innovation, Research/Creative Activity, and Graduate Studies at Ohio University) was part of the team that proposed TrollBusters, and knows firsthand how damaging trolls can be. In the mid-2000s, she was driven to quit her job as the first African-American columnist for the Daytona Beach News-Journal, and to move to another state, due to threats and pressure from relentless racist hate mail.

This harassment was scarier because it was fairly local. "The letters I got were postmarked mostly from in/around Florida," Ferrier said. "I believe it was organized behavior, not random spontaneous hate speech." In response, she bought and started to carry a gun, began varying her appearance and local routes, took other precautions for her home and family, and lived with fear on a daily basis.

"At the time there was no solution, no recourse," she said. "I turned to the police, FBI, Southern Poverty Law Center, Society of Professional Journalists, National Association of Black Journalists... They had nothing, absolutely nothing, to help me as a professional to protect myself. Only the Committee to Protect Journalists assisted me with a plea to the Dept. of Justice -- but that was all after the fact. The real challenge is to stop trolling in the moment. That's what we want to change with this project."

TrollBusters is a three-part vision:

1. SOS teams. Vetted volunteers who will respond in real time to reported incidents of harassment to post supportive, positive comments in threads, with the aim of drowning out the trolls. This tends to discourage the pile-on behavior of trolls -- but more importantly, Ferrier notes, this practice provides needed emotional and social support to victims of trolling during an attack, so that they don't silence their own voices in fear, isolation and frustration.
2. Identifying and outing troll networks. Using network analysis technology developed by Ohio Univ. students, TrollBusters will aggregate information on organized networks of trolls. "It's a myth that trolls are all loners. They often work in concert, strategically," said Ferrier. "If you track their networks, it becomes easier to filter them out of the conversation, and also to hold them accountable."
3. Support. Access to technical, legal, psychological and other resources to help victims respond in the moment to trolling attacks.

Right now, TrollBusters is mainly an idea -- but the needed technologies already exist. Initially, development will focus of harassment of women on Twitter. However, Ferrier notes that the core concepts can be applied to any social media or comment channel.

The SOS teams are a crucial part of the vision. "These are real people using their own Twitter accounts to speak up in support, especially around hashtags. It's not automated tweeting," said Ferrier. "When an alert goes out to the SOS teams, they can jump right in with either generic or specific supportive comments, using the right hashtags, to change the tone of the discussion."

Ferrier noted that even before TrollBusters is deployed, local online publishers can leverage this this "sea of positivity" strategy regarding comments on their own social media conversations or in comments to articles, blogs, or forums.

"Local publishers could informally recruit their own network of positive commenters, and alert them when trolls are trying to silence diverse voices on their sites or social media," she said. "The trick is to be supportive of the person under attack, not to engage or debate the trolls."

Vetting -- and even training and monitoring -- of on-call positive commenters is an important and delicate matter. "Someone can be a nice guy today and a troll tomorrow, because people are people. I've experienced this even with journalists," said Ferrier. "Would they consider their contradictory behavior trolling? Probably not. Self-assessment isn't reliable."

Ferrier also noter that a troll could easily masquerade as a supporter, but then take advantage of calls to action in order to amplify a trolling attack.

Still, being able to muster even a small cadre of supportive commenters in your community, who can jump to assistance early in a trolling attack, can make a huge difference to trolling victims. "When you know you're not alone, that other people have got your back and value your voice, that mitigates a lot of the worst pain that trolls can inflict," said Ferrier.

In the bigger picture, Ferrier noted that the analytics that TrollBusters will use to track troll networks could be used to provide a proactive troll-blocking service -- effectively, customizable and updated blacklists of known trolling accounts. These could be deployed in online commenting tools, in advance of the publication of articles or other coverage expected to attract trolls of various stripes (racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.). These blacklists also could be used to pressure social media services to shut down the accounts of notorious trollers.

Drowning out trolls with positive comments may push against traditional journalistic sensibilities, but from a community engagement perspective it can make sense. When trolling and harassment are viewed as free speech, the trolls almost always win -- by derailing useful discussion and discouraging new or diverse voices. Also, manually deleting trolling comments or banning troll accounts can require considerable effort.

There are tradeoffs. Seeding troll-invaded discussions with supportive comments also can derail the intended conversation initially. However, this strategy does have the advantage of potentially deterring trolls -- and thus creating more space and support for the voices that trolls seek to silence in your community.