In the 2013
political cartoon below, Peter Schrank addresses the development of a Twitter
button to “report abuse” a user might be facing. This is occurring mainly due
to the multiple “rape and death threats to historian Mary Beard, British
feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, and the British MP Stella Creasy,”
that year. Depicted in the cartoon, is a woman sitting on a bench on her phone.
Surrounding her are numerous little blue “twitter” birds looking rather
maliciously at her. One even seems to be pooping on her head. Although most of
them represent the abusive messages that can be found on Twitter, some of them
look like ordinary birds to show that not all tweets are offensive. In addition,
down at the bottom of the image, next to his signature, Schrank writes “with
apologies to Alfred Hitchcock.” This adds a little humor to it since the scene
is similar to one someone might have seen in his movie The Birds. Even the woman on the bench looks strikingly similar to the
character in the movie, Melanie Daniels. That little allusion could earn a
snicker or two from anyone who could catch the reference. I think that could
also mean something in relation to the people receiving these abusive tweets.
Since in the movie, everyone is steadily being bombarded by birds just like it
may feel getting nasty words thrown at you over the internet on more than one
occasion.
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