Gosse on online life and offline consequences

Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Chandell Gosse, who studies online abuse and extremism, joined Shaye Ganam on 660 CHED and 770 CQHR Global Radio, and Brian Bourke on Kitchener Today of 570 News, regarding the long-term consequences of online activity, such as the QAnon online conspiracy theory.

Here is an excerpt from her discussion with Shaye Ganam:

“We use the term “in real life” to make a distinction of the things that we do away from a screen. But the things we do away from a screen are still always connected to the things we do in front of our screens. Socializing, dating, shopping, banking, health care, working, school. So many things that are core to our social, political, economic lives now require a huge component to be online or connected to some way.”

[…]

“In my research I am focused online abuse… and one of the things I noticed in my research is when people seek support after they have been targeted for online abuse, [people] sometimes say “I don’t really know what you are upset about. It’s ‘just online.” Why don’t you turn off your computer? Why don’t you log off your account?” The harm there is the assumption… that the harm can be as switched off as easily as the device itself... When we fail to understand the deep connection between what is happening online and things that happen offline, we miss the opportunities to respond to critical threats as they emerge online.”

Hear the full discussions on the Shaye Ganam Show and on Kitchener Today.