{"id":7834,"date":"2015-05-04T06:29:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T11:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7834"},"modified":"2015-05-04T06:29:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T11:29:58","slug":"online-partisan-trolls-a-new-fact-of-elections-international-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7834","title":{"rendered":"Online partisan trolls a new fact of elections, international politics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Online partisan trolls a new fact of elections, international politics<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

Some foreign governments are paying trollers to provide internet propaganda. Are political parties?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was the kind of story that was almost guaranteed to bring out the internet trolls.<\/p>\n

On April 15, Margaret Trudeau, wife of the late prime minister and mother of the\u00a0current Liberal leader, was interviewed by CBC Radio’sOttawa Morning<\/em>. She was\u00a0promoting her new memoir,\u00a0The Time of Your Life<\/em>, but she also took\u00a0the\u00a0opportunity to opine on the current state of federal politics in the run-up to the\u00a0coming election.<\/p>\n

“I’m not looking forward to the attack ads,” she told host Robyn Bresnahan. “I\u00a0think it’s straight out bullying, and I’m ashamed of Canadians for doing this.”<\/p>\n

Although she didn’t mention the Conservatives by name, it was clear she was\u00a0referring to the negative ads targeting her son that the governing party has been running ever since Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader.<\/p>\n

And when his mother’s opinions appeared online in an article published on cbc.ca,\u00a0 readers were ready to rumble. Within 24 hours, the\u00a0story had attracted 2,698 comments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The number of comments is not surprising considering that the people involved \u2014\u00a0Margaret and Justin Trudeau, and the current prime minister, Stephen Harper\u00a0\u2014\u00a0are\u00a0all polarizing figures who attract very loyal and vocal supporters, and detractors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nor was the nasty and combative tone of the comments surprising, because that’s what we have come to expect from the partisans who troll the web looking to\u00a0pounce at every opportunity.<\/p>\n

“Will Mommy be participating in the debates to make sure those big meanies don’t say anything bad to Wonderboy?” asked LarryRight, in one of his several\u00a0comments about the article.<\/p>\n

“Economy is in the toilet. Senators on trial. Deficit after deficit. But yup Justin is\u00a0the problem lol,” responded Skippy, who then went on to observe, “it’s unfortunate\u00a0that paid Conservative Posters are so nasty.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Online partisan trolls a new fact of elections, international politics Some foreign governments are paying trollers to provide internet propaganda. Are political parties? It was the kind of story that was almost guaranteed to bring out the internet trolls. On April 15, Margaret Trudeau, wife of the late prime minister and mother of the\u00a0current Liberal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1339,4623,1426,637,655],"class_list":["post-7834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-internet","tag-internet-trolls","tag-misinformation","tag-politics","tag-propaganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7835,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7834\/revisions\/7835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}