Trolls To Cyber Mob: The Virtual Rape Through Facebook
Karthika C1, P.P. Vijayalakshmi2
1Karthika C, Assistant Professor, Department of Visual Media & Communication, Amrita School of Arts & Sciences, Kochi, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), India.
2Dr. P.P. Vijayalakshmi, Professor, Department of English & Languages, Amrita School of Arts & Sciences, Kochi, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), India.
Manuscript received on 18 August 2021 | Revised Manuscript received on 26 August 2021 | Manuscript Accepted on 15 September 2021 | Manuscript published on 30 September 2021 | PP: 10-16 | Volume-1 Issue-1, September 2021. | Retrieval Number: A1002091121/2021©LSP
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© The Authors. Published by Lattice Science Publication (LSP). This is an open-access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Sexual harassment charges and allegations are on the rise in the film industry. Many in the industry have come forward to share the bitter experiences they went through while pursuing a luminous career. Some of them assert that there exists a “casting couch” syndrome in the industry. In addition to being physically assaulted, these gifted actresses are victims of sexual repartee. Social media has become a virtual platform for this. Award-winning South Indian actress Parvathy is one such victim as she was viciously trolled and abused on social media. Lewd and malicious comments and posts were hurled on Twitter and Facebook after she publicly criticized the misogynistic and sexist dialogues in Mammootty starrer ‘‘ Kasaba’. This paper examines the nature of cyberbullying of celebrities in the social media and the attitude of the general public towards it taking the Parvathy issue as a case study. Fifty trolls related to the issue were selected for analysis. Then the response of a sample of 500 respondents of age group 15-60 from four districts of Kerala were obtained through a structured questionnaire survey. Frequency analysis is used to present the data in the form of proportions or percentages. The study found that the cyberbullying against actress Parvathy was gendered and sexist and also it showed that females disagreed with the cyberbullying against Parvathy whereas males supported the attack.
Keywords: Trolls, Cyber-Mob, Virtual Rape, Cyberbullying, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media