Keller @ Large: Mayor Michelle Wu Takes On 'Trolls In The Comment Section'
BOSTON (CBS) - Between the Omicron surge and her insistence on vaccine and mask mandates, the heat has been on Boston Mayor Michelle Wu since day one.
And after a recent live feed on Instagram was disrupted by opponents of vaccine mandates, the mayor responded to a news account of the episode with a touch of sarcasm, tweeting: "Trolls in the comment section is not news in 2022."
To which someone responded: "Trolls? More like concerned citizens who cannot sit idly by as you kill children."
And the mayor shot back, tweeting: "Boston's COVID policies will be set by public health officials, not organized efforts to elevate anti-vax conspiracies."
Was this uncharacteristically testy exchange with a constituent valid pushback against a vile online comment, or a case of a new mayor losing her cool?
"Sometimes you just have to do things to stick up for yourself," says social media expert Prof. John Wihbey of Northeastern, who nonetheless suggests it could have been handled better. "I would love to see it expressed with a little more humanity along the lines of 'I see you, you're a human being, there's a lot that we have in common, but I think you're wrong on this.'"
To his Northeastern colleague Prof. Meredith Clark, director of the Center for Communication, Media Innovation and Social Change, it's a sign that Wu's aggressive social media strategy may need a reset. "One of the best things to do with social media when you have lost control of the narrative is to step back and then to think about how you want to approach what was said and how it was handled," she says.
According to a 2019 study of trolling and public figures by the London-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, "by inadvertently helping to expose their followers to conspiracy theories and aberrant information by engaging with trolls, public figures almost inevitably expand the number of people believing a rumour or conspiracy."
And Wu supporter Joe Curtatone, the former Somerville mayor who was equally as active on social media, says "you stop the trolling when you eliminate the oxygen, you don't feed it."
His advice to Mayor Wu: "Don't take the bait, don't feed the trolls, but I would say to her stay the course, I think she's been phenomenal so far."