奧巴馬首條Twitter遭遇侮辱性回復
奧巴馬首條Twitter遭遇侮辱性回復
WASHINGTON — When President Obama sent his inaugural Twitter post from the Oval Office on Monday, the White House heralded the event with fanfare, posting a photograph of him perched on his desk tapping out his message on an iPhone.
華盛頓——當奧巴馬總統(tǒng)周一在橢圓形辦公室發(fā)出第一條Twitter帖子時，白宮高調地對此事進行了通報，發(fā)布了一張奧巴馬靠坐在辦公桌邊緣用iPhone點送帖子的照片。
The @POTUS account — named for the in-house acronym derived from “President of the United States” — would “serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him,” a White House aide wrote that day.
這個叫做@POTUS的賬號——以內部對“美國總統(tǒng)”的英文首字母縮寫命名——將“成為奧巴馬總統(tǒng)直接與美國民眾進行交流的新途徑，而上面的Twitter帖子都將由他本人發(fā)出”，一名白宮幕僚當天寫道。
But it took only a few minutes for Mr. Obama’s account to attract racist, hate-filled posts and replies. They addressed him with racial slurs and called him a monkey. One had an image of the president with his neck in a noose.
但是僅僅過了幾分鐘，奧巴馬的賬戶就吸引了一批充滿仇恨的種族主義帖子和回復。它們用帶有種族偏見的侮辱性語言跟奧巴馬打招呼，稱他為猴子。其中一則帖子還帶有奧巴馬的脖子被套在繩索里的圖片。
The posts reflected the racial hostility toward the nation’s first black president that has long been expressed in stark terms on the Internet, where conspiracy theories thrive and prejudices find ready outlets. But the racist Twitter posts are different because now that Mr. Obama has his own account, the slurs are addressed directly to him, for all to see.
這些帖子反映了美國第一任黑人總統(tǒng)遭遇的種族敵意。長期以來，網上一直存在以毫不隱晦的方式表達的這種敵意。在網絡中，陰謀論蓬勃發(fā)展，偏見也找到 了現成的發(fā)泄渠道。但是這批種族主義的Twitter帖子有所不同，因為奧巴馬擁有了自己的賬號，這些誹謗就直接針對他本人，所有人都能看到。
Within minutes of Mr. Obama’s first, cheerful post — “Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really!” it began — Twitter users lashed out in sometimes profanity-laced replies that included exhortations for the president to kill himself and worse.
在奧巴馬發(fā)出第一條愉快的帖子——“你好，Twitter!我是貝拉克。如假包換!”——之后幾分鐘，一些Twitter用戶就用時常帶有侮辱性字眼的回復發(fā)動了攻擊，其中還有人勸奧巴馬自殺，有的甚至更糟。
One person posted a doctored image of Mr. Obama’s famous campaign poster, instead showing the president with his head in a noose, his eyes closed and his neck appearing broken as if he had been lynched. Instead of the word “HOPE” in capital letters as it appeared on the campaign poster, the doctored image had the words “ROPE.”
其中一人發(fā)布了一張圖片，其中對奧巴馬著名的競選海報進行了修改，從而顯示的是奧巴馬的頭顱被套在繩索里，雙眼緊閉，脖子似乎斷了，好像被用過私刑一樣。在這張經過修改的圖片中，上面的字不再是原來競選海報上大寫的“HOPE”(希望)，而是“ROPE”(繩索)。
The accompanying message said “#arrestobama #treason we need ‘ROPE FOR CHANGE.’ ” It was addressed to @POTUS by a user calling himself @jeffgully49, who has posted other images of Mr. Obama in a noose, and whose Twitter profile picture shows Mr. Obama behind bars. “We still hang for treason, don’t we?” his post said.
這張圖片配的文字稱，“#arrestobama(逮捕奧巴馬)#treason(叛國)我們需要‘變革的繩索’”。這是一條圈送給@POTUS的 帖子，發(fā)布者是一個名叫@jeffgully49的用戶。此人還發(fā)布了奧巴馬被套在繩索里的其他圖片，而他的頭像是關在鐵窗之后的奧巴馬。他的帖子寫道， “我們還是會因為叛國罪動用絞刑，對吧?”
The writer, Jeff Gullickson of Minneapolis, Minn., subsequently posted on Thursday that his reply to Mr. Obama had earned him a visit from the Secret Service at his Minnesota home. Reached for comment, Mr. Gullickson responded by asking in an email how much The New York Times would pay him for an interview.
隨后，這名身在明尼阿波利斯的用戶杰夫·格利克森(Jeff Gullickson)周四發(fā)帖稱，他給奧巴馬的回復致使特勤局去了一趟他在明尼蘇達州的住所。在聯(lián)系格利克森置評時，《紐約時報》得到的回復是他在郵件里詢問時報愿意為采訪付他多少錢。
White House officials and a Twitter spokesman said they could not determine the percentage of postings to Mr. Obama that were racist. But they appeared to be a small number in what was an otherwise social-media-fueled show of love for Mr. Obama, who was drawing followers at a breakneck pace — nearly 2.3 million by Thursday afternoon — and hundreds of worshipful messages that welcomed him to Twitter and praised him on everything from his appearance to his policies.
白宮官員和Twitter公司的發(fā)言人稱，他們無法確定寫給奧巴馬的帖子中有多少比例帶有種族偏見。但是，這類言論似乎頗為有限，淹沒在了社交媒體 引爆的對奧巴馬的眾多愛慕之聲中。奧巴馬以極快的速度吸引了眾多關注者——周四下午已將近230萬——以及成千上萬的對他表達崇敬之情的帖子。人們歡迎他 來到Twitter，并且對他從外形到政策的方方面面進行了贊揚。
“I love you, @POTUS,” wrote one person, @camerondallas, who has nearly five million followers, in a posting marked as a favorite more than 15,000 times.
“我愛你，@POTUS，”一個名叫@camerondallas的用戶在帖子中寫道。該用戶有近500萬關注者，這篇帖子也被收藏了逾1.5萬次。
But there was one measure of a specific slur. According to analytics compiled by Topsy, a research company that collects and analyzes what is shared on Twitter, the number of postings that included Mr. Obama’s name and one particular racial epithet jumped substantially on Monday, the day of the president’s first posting, to 150.
不過，針對某個具體的侮辱語是有衡量標準的。Topsy是一家搜集和分析Twitter上的分享內容的研究公司。從它進行的分析來看，在總統(tǒng)發(fā)出第一條帖子的當天，也就是周一，同時包含奧巴馬的名字和一個有種族主義色彩的特定修飾語的帖子的數量大幅增至150條。
One Twitter user who did not use that specific racial slur responded to the president with just two words: “Black monkey,” a comparison that was not uncommon. “Get back in your cage monkey,” another person wrote.
在回復總統(tǒng)時，一名未使用那個具體的種族侮辱詞語的Twitter用戶只用了三個字：“黑猴子。”這個比喻并不罕見。“猴子，回籠子里去，”另一個人寫道。
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the language directed at Mr. Obama was unfortunately “all too common on the Internet,” and that officials would probably not spend much time trying to block abusive commenters from the president’s account.
白宮新聞發(fā)言人喬希·歐內斯特(Josh Earnest)說，針對奧巴馬的這些辱罵“在互聯(lián)網上太過常見”，這很糟糕，但官員可能不會花太多時間去試圖阻擋總統(tǒng)帳號遭受的惡毒評論。
“What we believe is that the president’s new Twitter handle is one that can be used to important effect and to communicate with the American people and to engage the American people,” Mr. Earnest said. “We’re pleased with the early response to it.”
“我們相信，總統(tǒng)新的Twitter帳號可以發(fā)揮重要影響，并與美國公眾溝通，激發(fā)他們的參與感，”歐內斯特說。“我們對它獲得的初步反響感到滿意。”
The Twitter account @BarackObama, which was created eight years ago and is controlled by the liberal activist group Organizing for Action, has long been a target of racist postings, as has the official @WhiteHouse.
Twitter賬戶@BarackObama是“行動組織”(Organizing for Action)在八年前申請的，目前也由這個自由派活動人士的組織來管理。該帳號長期以來都是種族主義帖子的目標，就像官方帳號@WhiteHouse一樣。
Top advisers to Mr. Obama, who pioneered the use of technology in his campaigns, regard such hate speech as a relatively minor price to pay for the opportunity Twitter and other platforms provide to reach voters directly. Twitter, which has been criticized for not cracking down on so-called trolls who post abusive or inappropriate comments on the social networking platform, does not police individual users or initiate its own action against them.
奧巴馬的一些頂級顧問首開先河地在其競選活動中使用了科技手段，在他們看來，Twitter等平臺提供了直接觸及選民的機會，遭遇這種仇恨言論只是 一個相對較小的代價。有人批評Twitter沒有整頓其平臺上那些發(fā)表辱罵性或不適當評論的“噴子”，但Twitter不愿意像警察一樣管轄個人用戶，也 不愿意主動采取行動來阻擊這些言論。
“The potential for anonymity allows people to say offensive, horrible things on Twitter that they would never say anywhere else, but we’re talking about a tiny fraction of the community,” said Dan Pfeiffer, Mr. Obama’s former senior adviser and longtime aide who pushed the president to engage on social media, including urging White House officials to create Twitter accounts.
“由于發(fā)言在很大程度上是匿名的，有人會在Twitter上發(fā)表一些在其他地方永遠不會說的令人厭惡的攻擊性言論，但這只是Twitter社區(qū)上很 小的一撮人，”丹·法伊弗(Dan Pfeiffer)說。他是奧巴馬的前高級顧問和長期助手，曾推動總統(tǒng)參與社會化媒體，例如敦促白宮官員創(chuàng)建自己的Twitter賬戶。
“We know those sentiments exist, we know those comments are on Twitter or other social media platforms, but you’d be missing a terrific chance to engage with a lot of really good non-trolls if you stayed off of them because of the tiny fraction of people who are doing it.”
“我們知道這些情緒的存在，我們知道Twitter或其他社交媒體平臺上有這樣的帖子，但如果你因為一小部分人這么做而不上社交媒體，你就會錯過與非常優(yōu)秀的網友互動的絕佳機會。”
Still, the rise of social media, coinciding as it did with Mr. Obama’s political ascent, has made this president a frequent target of hate-filled Internet speech and threats. The phenomenon spiked during his campaign and the days leading up to his inauguration in 2008 but has since subsided.
盡管如此，由于社會化媒體的興起與奧巴馬在政治上的崛起正好在時間上同步，這位總統(tǒng)常常成為互聯(lián)網仇恨言論和威脅針對的目標。在他的競選過程中，以及2008年就職典禮之前一段時間，這種言論和威脅出現飆升，但后來逐漸平息下來。
The Secret Service has a special “Internet Threat Desk” that monitors them, assessing whether they constitute a genuine danger and what should be done in response.
特勤局有一個特別的“網絡威脅工作組”(Internet Threat Desk)來監(jiān)控這些問題，評估它們是否真正構成了威脅，以及應該如何應對。
“People have the right to free speech,” said Brian Leary, a Secret Service spokesman. “We also have the right and an obligation to determine a person’s intent when they say something.”
“人們有言論自由的權利，”特勤局發(fā)言人布賴恩·利里(Brian Leary)說。“但當一個人發(fā)表言論時，我們也有權利和義務來判斷此人的意圖。”
The response can range from a conversation determining someone’s intent all the way up to working with the local United States attorney’s office to prosecute someone, Mr. Leary said.
反應范圍輕至用談話來確定此人意圖，重至與當地聯(lián)邦檢察官辦公室合作來起訴此人，利里說。
Law enforcement agencies can also submit requests to Twitter when postings appear to pose immediate physical danger to someone, and Twitter will provide information about the account. A Twitter transparency report for the second half of 2014, the latest available, showed that the government had made more than 1,600 such requests. Twitter had furnished information in 80 percent of those cases.
當貼子中出現馬上會對某人造成人身傷害的跡象時，執(zhí)法部門也可以向Twitter發(fā)出申請，Twitter將提供相關的帳戶信息。Twitter最新的2014年下半年透明度報告表明，政府已經發(fā)出過逾1600個這類申請。而Twitter已經為其中80%提供了信息。
