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to the New Books Network. Welcome

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to the New Books Network. I'm your host,

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Michael Imagna. Normally you'll find me over on

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the New Books and Library Science channel. Today

0:41

I'm joined by the author of Trolling Ourselves

0:43

to Death, Democracy in the Age of Social

0:45

Media, published in 2023 by Oxford University

0:47

Press. No

0:50

longer are internet trolls hidden behind a

0:53

nondescript avatar or screen name confined to

0:55

the dark corners of the web. Instead,

0:58

trolls have come out of the darkness and gone

1:00

into the mainstream, bringing with

1:02

them disinformation, conspiracy theories,

1:04

enhancing online toxicity, and

1:06

eroding our democracy. Joining

1:09

me to discuss this book is author

1:11

Dr. Jason Hennen, who is a professor

1:13

in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing and

1:15

Communications at the University of Winnipeg.

1:18

Welcome to the podcast, Jason. Thank

1:20

you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here. I'm

1:23

excited that you're here to talk about this book,

1:25

but before we get started talking about your book,

1:28

Trolling Ourselves to Death, Democracy in the Age of

1:30

Social Media, I was hoping you could

1:32

tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and

1:34

your academic career path. Yeah,

1:36

absolutely. So I actually

1:41

did my undergraduate degree in

1:44

information systems. That

1:47

was just a kind of

1:49

default option that

1:54

my family and I had decided would be the

1:57

way to go. So I had an

1:59

interest in... and digital

2:03

technology early on as an undergrad. But

2:06

it was through my

2:09

courses in sociology and in philosophy

2:12

that got me thinking critically

2:14

about culture and

2:16

politics and philosophy

2:18

and intellectual history. It

2:22

was as an undergrad that I

2:24

had discovered postman and

2:28

also Lewis Mumford, who was

2:30

very, very important to

2:34

my intellectual development. And it was

2:36

actually from reading Mumford that I

2:38

decided that I wanted to pursue

2:41

grad school in

2:44

media studies. In

2:48

2002, I had applied to

2:50

and gotten accepted into the,

2:54

I can't remember what it was called back then,

2:56

but the communications program at NYU. And

3:01

my dream was to study with

3:03

postman actually, but

3:06

I couldn't afford it. It was too expensive. So

3:09

I ended up waiting

3:11

a year. I applied to the

3:14

School of Journalism and Communication at

3:16

Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. And

3:19

so I did my MA there. And

3:22

then I decided I would stick with

3:24

Carleton for the PhD.

3:29

So I did my PhD there as well. After

3:34

I finished, I did a postdoc

3:38

at the, it was a Social Sciences

3:40

and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral

3:43

Fellowship, which I did at the

3:45

program in rhetoric and public culture

3:48

at Northwestern University. So I was there for

3:50

two years. I

3:52

ended up taking a year off and

3:54

living in California. And

3:57

then I got this job here at the University

3:59

of Winnipeg in... in 2013. So,

4:02

that's my trajectory to this

4:04

point. Excellent. So, with

4:06

that, what sparked your interest in studying

4:08

the phenomenon of trolling? Yeah.

4:10

So, that's a really, really good question. So,

4:12

when I was a PhD student, our

4:17

program had a... You had

4:20

your first comprehensive exam, and

4:22

then you had a second comprehensive exam. And

4:25

for that, you had to

4:27

take some topic of your

4:29

personal scholarly interest, and then

4:31

really dive into it in

4:33

very elaborate detail. So,

4:37

I wanted to write

4:39

about truth. It

4:42

was for me as a graduate student,

4:44

as it is probably for many graduate

4:46

students, this experience of encountering

4:49

a certain contemptuous attitude

4:54

towards truth, which

4:57

I had found a bit,

5:00

I don't know, annoying and frustrating. This

5:03

very fashionable idea that truth is

5:06

a fiction,

5:11

as Richard Rorty puts it. It's

5:14

a kind of a false god or a false

5:16

deity, to which we are

5:18

bound in a modern, secular world. And the

5:20

same way that we got rid of the

5:22

shackles of religion, we need to get rid

5:24

of the shackles of truth. It's a kind

5:26

of false god. So,

5:30

I wrote about that in my second

5:32

comprehensive exam. And then when I

5:34

became a faculty member,

5:36

my second book was called Truth in the Public Sphere.

5:38

I took that interest and

5:40

I developed it into

5:43

the form of an edited book, and actually used

5:45

much of the content from that second comprehensive exam

5:49

in my introduction, where

5:52

I was talking about what seemed to

5:54

me and to a lot of people

5:56

at the time as well, to be able to understand what was

5:59

going on in the world. emerging post-truth

6:01

phenomenon. People

6:03

had already written about post-truth journalism

6:05

and post-truth politics and post-truth society

6:08

and post-truth world. And

6:10

so this was 2016 and

6:12

Donald Trump was obviously

6:15

in the news and we were all

6:17

very taken

6:19

aback and shocked by this

6:22

man's complete disregard for truth

6:25

and for facts. And

6:27

it's kind of brazen

6:31

willingness to lie and

6:33

distort and exaggerate and deny and so

6:35

forth. So I had a fair

6:37

bit to say about the man in that. After

6:40

the book got published, I got

6:43

invited to something

6:45

called the Global Media Forum in Bonn,

6:47

Germany, which is a really fascinating gathering

6:50

of media scholars, journalists,

6:55

broadcasters, and then

6:57

human rights activists who are defending freedom

6:59

of speech. And so I was

7:02

part of this panel called Reflections

7:05

on our Post-Truth World or something like

7:08

that in which we were asked about

7:10

the origins of this phenomenon.

7:13

Where does it come from? And so I had

7:16

been teaching postmen at the time and

7:18

so he was very fresh on

7:20

my mind and I gave a very preliminary answer

7:24

trying to tie this idea of a post-truth

7:27

phenomenon to what he was describing in

7:30

his book. It was a very az-az

7:32

answer, just the germ of an answer. Afterwards,

7:35

I got approached by the conversation in Canada. They had

7:37

opened a branch of the conversation in Canada and they

7:40

wanted me to write about this in a little bit

7:42

more detail. So the title of

7:44

that piece was Trolling Ourselves to Death and then

7:46

the editor added In the Age of Trump just

7:48

to make sure that it would go viral, which

7:51

it did. So that was

7:53

the initial argument. That

7:55

was where it initially appeared. This

7:58

kind of... and

10:02

very offensive.

10:05

They took advantage of certain

10:07

groups, especially those groups

10:09

who were marginalized, who were vulnerable,

10:13

women, people of color,

10:16

queer people, they were communities that they had

10:18

targeted. They also targeted religious

10:20

groups as well, very

10:23

devout Christians as well. But where were

10:25

they could exploit

10:27

vulnerability and

10:30

get a rise out of people? So

10:32

the idea of the troll,

10:34

I mean, there are two competing etymologies for this.

10:37

So one was trolling

10:40

as a kind of fishing

10:42

technique where you swing the

10:45

fishing line back and forth on the side of

10:47

the boat to see if some unlucky fish would

10:49

take the bait. So that's one apparent

10:53

source of the idea of a troll, of

10:56

the metaphor of a troll. And then the other is obviously

10:59

from Norse mythology, those club

11:02

wielding monsters who would devour humans. And

11:05

I don't think the etymology really matters

11:07

very much, but what matters is that

11:09

it's become, I think, a really useful

11:11

term for capturing a certain kind of

11:13

sociopathic behavior of life. Initially,

11:16

trolls were part of

11:19

a subculture of

11:22

self-conscious pranksters and, I

11:25

don't know, digital vandals, I guess you could call

11:28

them. But the

11:30

interesting thing is that they have since

11:33

changed. So

11:37

Whitney Phillips and Gabriella Coleman,

11:39

Judith Donath, they've written about

11:41

trolling as a self-conscious

11:43

subculture, but

11:46

they acknowledge that there are people who troll who

11:48

don't necessarily think of themselves as trolls. So

11:51

my book wanted to explore that

11:53

phenomenon and the history behind it.

11:55

That's an interesting history and good

11:58

context for this discussion now. politician.

14:00

If we

14:02

look at the history of political rhetoric,

14:05

he was quite fascinating because he's been

14:07

regarded as, he's been described by media

14:09

scholars as the first social

14:12

media president. He

14:14

certainly did embody

14:17

many of these kind of entertainment

14:20

ideals that Postman described in

14:22

Amusing Ourselves to Death, where

14:24

you had to be funny and entertaining

14:27

and so forth. But he did

14:29

more than not. I mean, he

14:32

had social media as part of his campaign in

14:34

2007, 2008. It wasn't Facebook,

14:38

but he did have a different kind

14:40

of social network that was very effective

14:43

in recruiting volunteers to his

14:45

campaign, canvassers and so forth.

14:49

But his speeches

14:52

and his interviews, his wit,

14:54

his humor, he was very

14:56

hipster, humor friendly. He was

14:58

very ironic in his humor.

15:00

This political style lent itself

15:03

to the, I think,

15:05

the sentiment of the time, the

15:07

sensibility, the pop cultural sensibility

15:09

at the time. And

15:12

so his speeches

15:14

or clips from his speeches very

15:16

easily became these

15:18

viral videos that

15:23

would go viral on the different

15:25

platforms like wildfire. And

15:28

it became clear, I think, that, and

15:33

I think this was recognized by the political

15:35

establishment, that you can't do business as usual.

15:38

You cannot be

15:41

some old fashioned politician. If you want to

15:43

succeed in politics, you have to play the

15:46

social media game. You

15:48

have to come up with content that will

15:50

go viral that is snappy and short

15:53

and witty and so on and so forth. And

15:56

I think there was a certain overconfidence on the part of the media.

15:58

And I think that's a very good point. personality

18:00

started to become dominant,

18:03

bullying and harassing other users. This

18:05

was the space in which Donald

18:07

Trump, I think, was a

18:10

natural fit along with many of his

18:12

supporters, like at the time, Milo Yiannopoulos,

18:14

who was a troll and a bully.

18:19

I make the argument that there

18:22

is something about Twitter

18:24

that just lends itself to

18:26

this high schoolification

18:28

of our politics and our public

18:31

discourse where a certain kind

18:33

of obnoxious, vicious

18:35

personality is naturally at home and

18:37

is able to thrive and

18:40

even rewrite the rules of public

18:44

communication of political campaigning so

18:46

that now it's perfectly

18:48

normal to have politicians who

18:52

will mock and

18:54

even harass everyday users. They

18:56

will troll them on

19:00

Twitter and then elsewhere as well. It's

19:03

been really unfortunate, this corrosion

19:07

of public discourse is degrading of

19:10

our political culture as a result of

19:12

these platforms. As a result of that,

19:14

we see a decline in

19:17

the area of trust

19:19

and trust of politicians,

19:21

experts. You argue that trust needs to

19:23

be repaired in our civic

19:25

discourse, especially on social

19:28

media. This is not

19:30

an easy task. How can we as a

19:32

society move in that direction? Yeah,

19:34

that's an excellent question. The chapter in which I

19:42

discuss trust is preceded

19:45

by a chapter on

19:47

conspiracy theory. I discuss

19:49

in the conspiracy theory chapter,

19:52

the problem, the

19:55

epidemic of isolation,

19:58

alienation, and loneliness.

20:02

Loneliness is and has

20:04

been a very big problem and it's

20:06

not a new phenomenon by any means.

20:10

We now have self-help books on

20:12

how to deal with loneliness. It's

20:14

become a topic of a

20:17

concern by public health in

20:19

the UK. At one point they had a

20:21

minister of loneliness, but

20:24

this is all presented as though it were something very

20:26

new. In fact, this

20:28

has quite a long history. I'm

20:30

going back to the Industrial Revolution.

20:32

You can find in 19th century

20:35

literature very elaborate meditations

20:37

on the problem of loneliness.

20:40

Then in the 20th century, especially

20:43

in the 1950s and 1960s, there

20:45

was a whole scholarly discourse

20:47

about loneliness and alienation

20:50

of books like The Lonely Crowd

20:52

and so forth. This has

20:54

been a problem for quite some time. Unfortunately,

21:00

one of the consequences of

21:02

loneliness is this

21:05

erosion of trust, not just trust

21:07

in the world beyond

21:09

us, but even a loss of trust

21:11

in ourselves. I do draw a bit

21:14

in my chapter on conspiracy

21:16

theory from Hannah Arendt and

21:19

that final chapter of hers on

21:22

the origins of totalitarianism where she

21:25

discusses this link between

21:27

loneliness and conspiracy theory. That

21:31

loneliness is in part

21:33

this breakdown of trust,

21:35

which leaves lonely,

21:39

vulnerable individuals susceptible

21:41

to conspiracy theory.

21:44

Conspiracy theory is a kind of drug.

21:46

It's a kind of very

21:49

simplistic black and white story of

21:51

the world that

21:53

is appealing to people who

21:56

are very, very lonely, who

21:58

are distrustful, of the world

22:00

around them and who may not even trust

22:03

their own judgment. And they need some kind

22:05

of solid concrete ground

22:07

on which to stand. There's

22:11

a pain, a hunger, and a

22:13

yearning inside of them. And unfortunately,

22:15

conspiracy theory fills that

22:17

void within that. I

22:20

discuss how lonely individuals, I

22:24

try to build on a rent

22:26

and discuss the digital media dimension

22:28

to all of this, how lonely

22:30

individuals unfortunately are attracted to the

22:34

platforms because the

22:36

platforms are an excuse. It's

22:43

a false social

22:45

outlet where you feel like you're getting your social

22:48

needs met and you're not in fact getting anything

22:50

of the kind met at all. And

22:54

that scrolling through Facebook

22:57

or Twitter or TikTok or whatever it is, scrolling

23:01

is, I'm sure you know that

23:03

it was modeled after slot machines,

23:06

right? Scrolling appeals to the psychology

23:08

of a gambling addict. And

23:10

it's especially dangerous again for

23:12

individuals who are extremely lonely. It's

23:16

like giving them a drug, right? And

23:20

unfortunately, this combination of

23:23

loneliness and

23:25

pathological scrolling on the platforms becomes

23:27

a perfect recipe for the spread,

23:30

the viral spread of conspiracy theory,

23:32

which is one of the reasons

23:34

why conspiracy, QAnon and

23:37

so forth have taken off

23:39

on the platforms. So

23:43

there's this larger political

23:47

and economic background to loneliness

23:50

and alienation that leads

23:54

to this breakdown in trust

23:56

and this vulnerability and susceptibility

23:59

to conspiracy. theory. So

24:01

in my chapter on trust, I

24:04

opened by mentioning two

24:08

solutions to

24:11

this problem of our public discourse.

24:13

So I mentioned Oseman's

24:16

response at the end of Amusing

24:20

Ourselves to Death. The other

24:22

response is that by Alistair McIntyre, who

24:24

is a very, very important person to

24:26

me. I wrote my dissertation on

24:28

him. I've got a book on him. But

24:31

they both have their own responses

24:33

to what we need to do to preserve

24:35

a rational

24:38

public discourse. Oseman's argument is

24:40

that we need to turn

24:42

to the only viable mass medium

24:45

of our society in which to

24:47

cultivate a kind of critical thinking

24:49

habit. And so for him, that

24:52

is public schools. And

24:54

then McIntyre,

24:56

who's, I think, probably even

24:59

more pessimistic than Oseman,

25:01

argues that we need to create communities

25:03

where we can preserve these virtues

25:06

of civility

25:08

and rational discourse, right? Which

25:11

he was arguing would eventually

25:13

be eroded by this

25:15

culture of instrumental rhetoric. And

25:18

so I have some discussion

25:24

about that. I think that he was absolutely

25:26

right. And I

25:29

think that what we're seeing right now, this culture

25:32

of trolling is the fulfillment of this prediction that

25:34

he had made in 1981.

25:37

So one of them argues that we need to

25:39

turn to public schools. The other argues that we

25:41

need to turn

25:43

to retreat to communities. So

25:46

I make the argument in the book that if

25:49

we want to rebuild trust, that

25:51

yes, we need to synthesize

25:53

both of their suggestions and

25:55

turn to the classroom in order

25:58

to teach at a public school. very

26:00

young age in order to teach

26:02

students how to engage in

26:07

public discourse by cultivating trust in

26:09

the classroom. And so for that,

26:11

I make use of two

26:14

people who are very important to me, Paulo

26:16

Freire and Bell Books, both

26:18

of whom describe

26:22

the pedagogy of the oppressed

26:24

and and

26:26

education for the purpose

26:29

of emancipation and liberation

26:32

within the classroom and how we can build these

26:34

open learning communities that are premised

26:37

on trust, that are premised on

26:39

solidarity. And I

26:41

make the argument that this can be a

26:44

way of helping to educate students early on

26:46

in a

26:49

practice of civic engagement, which if they're not

26:51

going to get it from a classroom, I

26:53

don't know where they're going to get this,

26:55

where they're going to learn these, you know,

26:58

communicative habits and dispositions from.

27:00

So as we think about that, some

27:02

of the issues with trust, with

27:05

the rise of conspiracy theories is

27:07

based on alienation. Now, I was wondering if

27:09

you could talk a little bit about the

27:11

role that COVID played in

27:14

exacerbating this problem. Oh,

27:16

yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So it was it was

27:20

almost the the

27:22

worst thing at the right time, I should say, because

27:27

the I mean, QAnon,

27:30

QAnon obviously long preceded

27:34

COVID. I think QAnon emerged in

27:36

2016 or 2017, but it got a real boost from

27:39

COVID. The combination

27:45

of the

27:48

walkdowns, which weren't very long

27:50

or extensive at all. And

27:53

then the vaccine mandates just

27:55

played right into the hands

27:58

of conspiracy theories. theorists who

28:02

were looking for precisely this

28:04

kind of spark

28:09

to reignite their movement.

28:14

QAnon got a very big boost from this.

28:16

And then there were a number of other

28:20

conspiracy theories, the 5G

28:22

conspiracy theory. The

28:29

spoons conspiracy theory, this idea that if

28:32

you've been vaccinated, it's somehow rendered you

28:34

magnetic and then you could stick the

28:36

spoon to yourself and it would

28:38

not fall off. The anti-vax

28:40

movement got a big boost

28:43

from COVID. Unfortunately, it

28:46

was just the perfect recipe for the

28:50

flourishing of all of these different movements

28:52

to come together to one general form

28:58

of delusional paranoia

29:01

that unfortunately resulted in

29:04

the harassment and abuse of

29:06

healthcare workers. It led

29:08

to people dying because

29:12

of this insistence that COVID

29:16

is not real, it's a

29:18

hoax, even at the same time that they were

29:20

calling it a Chinese bioweapon. But

29:22

there were people who refused to get vaccinated on

29:26

this ground that it was

29:29

either a hoax or that COVID was a

29:32

hoax or that the vaccine was a method

29:34

of population control. There were people who died

29:36

as a result of this and it's really,

29:38

really tragic to think that their lives could

29:41

have been prevented had they not been

29:45

seduced into believing

29:47

conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, that movement is

29:49

still going very strong.

30:00

the UK, I've read that one

30:02

quarter of the population thinks

30:04

that COVID was a hoax. So

30:10

the alienation is

30:12

real, the distrust is real,

30:14

the susceptibility to conspiracy theory

30:16

is real. And

30:19

we need to deal with this in

30:21

some large scale way. I

30:24

know that there are scholars

30:27

who argue that the best

30:29

way to deal with conspiracy

30:31

theory is by offering greater

30:34

access to mental health services. I think that

30:36

should certainly be a component of it, but

30:39

I don't think that gets to the root of

30:42

the problem. I don't think that gets

30:44

to the root of the proliferation of

30:46

conspiracy theory, which fundamentally is alienation

30:51

and loneliness under the

30:54

conditions of advanced capitalism. And

30:57

so I like the suggestion

30:59

of the role that public schools

31:01

and community and ultimately the classroom

31:03

can play in hopefully combating

31:06

this. But what roles do you

31:08

see the social media platform playing?

31:12

I am very pessimistic about

31:15

any role for these platforms to play

31:18

simply because of their

31:20

structures. These are private

31:23

entities that are premised

31:25

on the maximization of

31:28

profit. And

31:31

so they do not serve the public

31:33

good. I mean, they've tried in a

31:36

very halfhearted joke

31:39

of a way to address things like conspiracy

31:43

theory and influencers on

31:46

the platforms who disseminate false

31:50

information. So Facebook

31:56

has deplatformed a bunch of

31:58

these Twitter did, deplatform

32:01

some of them, but then Musk

32:04

took over and reversed many

32:07

of these bands on

32:11

conspiracy theorists. It

32:14

was never going to work. It was never

32:16

going to work. Deplatforming, conspiracy

32:18

theorists isn't going to work. You ban one

32:21

and 100 more will pop up. And

32:26

disinformation is thriving. Disinformation

32:31

was thriving before and it's

32:33

thriving now on Facebook,

32:35

Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. I

32:39

think that so long as these platforms

32:41

are primarily businesses,

32:45

they're not going to care about the public good. They're

32:47

not going to care about the public good unless

32:50

they're transformed into something else, either

32:53

public utilities or workers cooperatives where

32:55

they have a more public

33:00

oriented mandate and mission rather

33:02

than maximization of private profit.

33:04

I do not expect them

33:07

to play any role in

33:10

addressing extremism

33:13

or anything of the

33:15

kind. They will only do so to the extent

33:17

that they are legally obligated to, but they don't

33:19

have any structural

33:21

reason to do so. That's why I don't pay

33:23

a whole lot of attention to them as far

33:25

as a potential solution

33:28

to these kinds of problems. Instead, I think we

33:30

should turn to, as Postman suggests,

33:33

the one mass communication medium where

33:35

we can cultivate some sort of

33:37

critical literacy,

33:41

media literacy in habits of mind, namely public schools.

33:46

It's hard to have this conversation without bringing in

33:48

the topic of cancel culture and the

33:51

discussion of free speech. Now, you

33:53

argue that we should be focusing

33:55

instead on debt, guilt, and capitalism.