It really has been such a strange process to work on this follow up book. Luckily (luckily?) I have some experience with the pace and overwhelm and also the existential panic that goes into writing an academic study of hellscapes--- my PhD dissertation in 2012 (which was the basis of my first book in 2015) was on trolling on 4chan, which of course quickly moved into the political/Trumpy realm, and since then the MAGA-trolling cusp has been my primary research focus. So I kind of knew what to expect when we dove into the project in January, but it was still completely gutting, a different level of gutting than anything I'd experienced until then. It did help me process things, at least. But there was never an escape from the granularity of what was happening.
As for the media side of things, the book talks a lot about the trolling element and the ways that the information environment created permission and incentive --really, selected-- for Trump and everything we're seeing now. So the conversations are huge and unwieldy and there are so many reasons beyond Trump that we have Trump. Which is why the only reasonable expectation for the foreseeable future is indeed trouble and much more trouble. All the more reason to try to make sense of it all, I think...anyway thanks again for reading the book and kind words, I hope you're finding a healthy balance in all of this! (i.e. appropriate worry and also still living life).
It really has been such a strange process to work on this follow up book. Luckily (luckily?) I have some experience with the pace and overwhelm and also the existential panic that goes into writing an academic study of hellscapes--- my PhD dissertation in 2012 (which was the basis of my first book in 2015) was on trolling on 4chan, which of course quickly moved into the political/Trumpy realm, and since then the MAGA-trolling cusp has been my primary research focus. So I kind of knew what to expect when we dove into the project in January, but it was still completely gutting, a different level of gutting than anything I'd experienced until then. It did help me process things, at least. But there was never an escape from the granularity of what was happening.
As for the media side of things, the book talks a lot about the trolling element and the ways that the information environment created permission and incentive --really, selected-- for Trump and everything we're seeing now. So the conversations are huge and unwieldy and there are so many reasons beyond Trump that we have Trump. Which is why the only reasonable expectation for the foreseeable future is indeed trouble and much more trouble. All the more reason to try to make sense of it all, I think...anyway thanks again for reading the book and kind words, I hope you're finding a healthy balance in all of this! (i.e. appropriate worry and also still living life).