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Study says Star Wars: The Last Jedi backlash was fueled by Russian bots
A media researcher based in the United States has triggered a fierce debate about what exactly fuelled the intense backlash towards 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
With his study, Morten Bay, from the University of Southern California, has attempted to shed light on why there was so much online outrage towards the film, and says the resulting paper has been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journal First Monday.
"It shows [around] 50 per cent of criticism directed at Rian Johnson [the film's director] was political trolling, some of it likely from Russia," Bay tweeted. "Also shows haters [were a] small minority."
Earlier this year, The Last Jedi actress Kelly Marie Tran left social media after being on the receiving end of racist abuse for months. Her Wookieepedia page - Star Wars' answer to Wikipedia - has also been locked down due to a constant stream of offensive revisions.
Hundreds of people have also tweeted abuse at Johnson, accusing him of ruining the Star Wars franchise, while some trolls have gone so far as to create a crowdfunding page in a bid to redo the film. Others want it scrubbed from the Star Wars canon entirely.
But could Russian bots have also targeted Morrissey?
Posters such as Benny the British Butcher, Brummie Boy, and others openly waged a campaign to destroy Morrissey's career. Lesser trolls got involved just for the attention. Even moderators made it their personal crusade to post every negative article they could find about Morrissey. Grown men with families and careers who spend hours trying to debunk a pop star are difficult to make sense of but maybe this is the answer.
Perhaps Morrissey's statement about believing nothing unless you hear it from his lips was true. Those interviews about Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey seemed very out of character. Yet they were perfectly timed for maximum publicity. I realize that Kevin Spacey's crimes would have made Oscar Wilde roll his eyes and mutter "amateur" but it did seem strange for Morrissey to go after people claiming to be victims of powerful men.
This theory might make sense of Morrissey's politics which seem to lean left in the United States but right in the United Kingdom. Having an integral point of view doesn't matter. The idea is to create discord.
Perhaps Ketamine Sun was right when she wrote "we just can't know."
A media researcher based in the United States has triggered a fierce debate about what exactly fuelled the intense backlash towards 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
With his study, Morten Bay, from the University of Southern California, has attempted to shed light on why there was so much online outrage towards the film, and says the resulting paper has been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journal First Monday.
"It shows [around] 50 per cent of criticism directed at Rian Johnson [the film's director] was political trolling, some of it likely from Russia," Bay tweeted. "Also shows haters [were a] small minority."
Earlier this year, The Last Jedi actress Kelly Marie Tran left social media after being on the receiving end of racist abuse for months. Her Wookieepedia page - Star Wars' answer to Wikipedia - has also been locked down due to a constant stream of offensive revisions.
Hundreds of people have also tweeted abuse at Johnson, accusing him of ruining the Star Wars franchise, while some trolls have gone so far as to create a crowdfunding page in a bid to redo the film. Others want it scrubbed from the Star Wars canon entirely.
But could Russian bots have also targeted Morrissey?
Posters such as Benny the British Butcher, Brummie Boy, and others openly waged a campaign to destroy Morrissey's career. Lesser trolls got involved just for the attention. Even moderators made it their personal crusade to post every negative article they could find about Morrissey. Grown men with families and careers who spend hours trying to debunk a pop star are difficult to make sense of but maybe this is the answer.
Perhaps Morrissey's statement about believing nothing unless you hear it from his lips was true. Those interviews about Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey seemed very out of character. Yet they were perfectly timed for maximum publicity. I realize that Kevin Spacey's crimes would have made Oscar Wilde roll his eyes and mutter "amateur" but it did seem strange for Morrissey to go after people claiming to be victims of powerful men.
This theory might make sense of Morrissey's politics which seem to lean left in the United States but right in the United Kingdom. Having an integral point of view doesn't matter. The idea is to create discord.
Perhaps Ketamine Sun was right when she wrote "we just can't know."
