Disaster Trolls: 9. What They Don’t Tell You About Terror
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BBC
2.8 • 947 Ratings
🗓️ 30 October 2022
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Travis survived the Westminster Bridge attack, but he didn’t expect what came next. Are victims of terrorism taken seriously enough when they seek help against abusive trolling?
A terror attack outside the Houses of Parliament in March 2017 left five people dead, while 50 more - including Travis - were injured. As Travis lay recovering in hospital, he opened his phone and saw a death threat that accused him of being a “crisis actor” paid to fake the attack. More were to follow.
But Travis says when he sought action to stop the abuse, he came up against a lack of awareness. He feels badly let down by the response he received. So is this a problem that society should be doing more to combat, and if so whose responsibility is it?
In this BBC Radio 4 podcast series, the BBC’s disinformation and social media correspondent Marianna Spring, investigates how survivors of UK terror attacks and tragedies are targeted with horrific conspiracy theories, online abuse and threats.
Across this series - and in this episode - there are graphic descriptions of violence.
Presenter: Marianna Spring Producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Ed Main
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | An early start here. |
| 0:02.7 | It's time to kick off. |
| 0:04.0 | Your day. Morning! |
| 0:05.8 | What a line-up. |
| 0:07.2 | Oh, thanks very much. |
| 0:08.3 | We do get some great guests on the show. |
| 0:10.1 | The crowd is loving this. |
| 0:12.2 | Thanks, guys. Thank you. Too kind. |
| 0:14.1 | From morning chaos to match day commentary. |
| 0:17.6 | And everything in between. |
| 0:19.0 | BBC Sounds packed with between. BBC Sounds. Packed with personality. |
| 0:24.1 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:28.3 | We're on campus at Edgill University. |
| 0:31.1 | We're just walking past the library at the moment. |
| 0:32.7 | We're on a pristine campus, all manicured lawns and well-kept paths. |
| 0:37.4 | It's here that Travis Frayne is doing his PhD. |
| 0:40.8 | I'm doing history primarily, but my thesis area for the PhD is essentially the history of |
| 0:47.4 | Islamist extremism. |
| 0:49.7 | There's a reason why he's particularly drawn to this subject. |
| 0:53.7 | He's a survivor of the 2017 Westminster terror attack. |
| 0:57.5 | And after he's shown us to a classroom where we can speak more privately, |
| 1:01.4 | he tells us about the online abuse and conspiracies he was targeted with in the days after the attack. |
... |
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