ComPol Comunicazione Politica 2/2017, 297-308 297 ISSN 1594-6061 @ Società editrice il Mulino Strumenti Nagamallika Gudipaty Gendered Public Spaces Online trolling of women journalists in India 297 1. Introduction Abuse and harassment of online media users has become as common place as the usage of internet and social media today. Such harassment manifests in the form of name calling, embarrassing someone online, or trolling to a much more disruptive behaviour including cyber stalking, threats of rape and murder. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 73% of adult internet users have seen someone be harassed in some way online while 40% have personally experienced it. Of these, women and young adults were more likely than others to experience harassment on social media (Duggan, 2014). Harmful bullying behaviour includes posting rumours about a person, threats and sexual remarks, disclose victims’ personal information, or hate speech. Internet trolling is one common form of such bullying. In academic literature, trolling is defined as «acting in a deceptive, disruptive and destructive ways in internet social settings with no apparent purpose» (Lenhardt, 2013; Dawson, 2014). In contrast, cyber stalking or other forms of harassment might be targeted at a particular individual with a specific intent (Buckels et al., 2014; Daw- son, 2014). Trolling can also be defined as an act of deliberately instigating emotional reactions from others through inflammatory or offensive interactions online (Burcham, 2016). Internet trolls target victims for a variety of reasons, and trolling topics can range from politics and current events to celebrity gossip and sports (Burcham, 2016). While acknowledging that the equation between dark humor and online harassment is very problematic (see Nyst 2013), in this paper I intend to look at trolling as a comprehensive concept that spans from «ludicrous rants, inane threadjackings, personal insults and abu- Acknowledgements: Ms Annapurna Y. M. for helping me in data collection and research work. Dr Maya Ranganathan for suggestions and checking through my drafts.