Marianna Spring On Why Understanding Online Trolls Is Important

Marianna Spring’s reporting on the darkest tenets of social media for the BBC has resulted in vicious slurs and death threats. But she’s met her trolls head on, finds Charlotte Metcalf

Conversations At Scarfes Bar: Marianna Spring

Who Is Marianna Spring?

Marianna Spring is suddenly everywhere. After becoming the BBC’s first Specialist Disinformation and Social Media Reporter in September 2023, Marianna published her first book Among the Trolls last March (now in paperback as Conspiracyland), a valiant attempt to explain how tectonic shifts in global social media are affecting us. Marianna’s job title is now Social Media Investigations Correspondent and her trajectory is soaring. 

I was intrigued to meet Marianna, not yet 30, who perseveres with investigating the internet’s darker reaches despite being constantly, viciously trolled. She has had to consider extra security measures for when leaving her home. 

Marianna starts by apologising she’s unable to reveal any personal details. ‘I don’t share anything people can seize on to target me,’ she says. ‘I’ll talk about my journalism but I keep the people I love very protected. I also feel for my colleagues, those brilliant producers and editors who, unfortunately, have their names associated with me. My parents worry but they understand I really believe what I’m doing is important, which is an absolute privilege and makes me happy.’ 

Marianna does seem remarkably cheerful: ‘I’m a very positive person, which you have to be to do this job. I’m entering a hornet’s nest so I expect to be trolled to some extent but sometimes the endless misogynistic slurs, rape and death threats can overwhelm me. So I relish finding out who’s doing the trolling and why, and particularly tracking down those who’ve threatened me personally to have a face-to-face conversation.’ 

 

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Her job started taking shape when Marianna worked on Newsnight and looked into how the 2019 election was unfolding on social media. During the pandemic she found herself perfectly positioned to report on the deluge of misinformation and conspiracy theories. ‘The pandemic was a period of extreme uncertainty and we crave certainty,’ she says. ‘People want to latch on to something really black and white, even if it’s extreme, because the grey area is so overwhelming.’ 

Marianna believes that the benefits of understanding trolls are huge. The gap between what the person is like online, and what they’re like as a real person tells us so much about how toxic and polarised things can become on social media because of the recommendation systems. These push people down rabbit holes of certain ways of thinking and exploit their vulnerabilities. A lot of people are drawn to the online world because they’re unhappy, dissatisfied or unfulfilled. On social media, people feel disinhibited and disconnected from their real selves so they have zero regard for the consequences of what they’re saying. But when I meet them, they’re often very likeable and respectful and it turns out to be fairly positive experience.

The Dangerous Impact Of Social Media

Stories in Conspiracyland include the heavily pregnant woman photographed emerging bleeding from a bombed Ukrainian maternity hospital and accused of being an actor by the Russian government; Olly Stephens, the 13-year-old stabbed to death after being lured to a field by teenagers he met on social media; and Martin Hibbert, who, after suffering life-changing injuries in the Manchester bombing, had to face conspiracy theorists insisting the bombing was a hoax. ‘I’m trying to tell gripping stories that humanise the problem and show all the different ways social media can harm us,’ she says. 

The fundamental issue though is that recommendation systems and algorithms favour engagement over everything else, and when bad stuff is amplified to millions of people, it can have a devastating impact,’ she continues. ‘Here’s a conversation to be had about the way Elon Musk is redefining how and whether social media companies can be held accountable. He says X continues to protect the user’s voice and spends a lot of time talking about how what he calls the “mainstream media” are just mouthpieces for government or powerful people who don’t hold power to account. Yet he’s an incredibly powerful person who’s doing just that. He’s ignored all my requests for interview and when I did a Panorama investigation on him, he didn’t respond to any point but subsequently shared the investigation, triggering a wave of extreme online abuse against me.

The power of vast companies like X without accountability is having dire consequences. Algorithms and recommendation systems are redrawing the lines of how society works and is rejected in how polarised society has become. It’s an increasingly urgent issue to investigate and report on. On a positive note, people increasingly want to be able to spot what’s not true and equip themselves against bad online stuff.’

It’s Marianna’s youth, courage and positive attitude that distinguishes her. While many of us feel helpless against the social media tsunami, she is heroically determined to prevent us from being sucked in unwittingly. Justin Webb, one of Marianna’s co-hosts on the BBC’s Americast podcast remarked during the Today programme’s 2024 news review that ‘one day Marianna will be our boss’. He might well be right.

Conspiracyland: Trolls, True Believers and the New Information War by Marianna Spring is published by Atlantic Books.