By Chris Thomson | posted on October 5, 2017
ALL Denmark councillors up for re-election, including Mayor David Morrell, are turning their backs on social media as trolling spins out of control in the troubled Great Southern shire.
Councillor Peter Caron, up for re-election for Scotsdale/Shadforth Ward, said trolling had been part of Denmark’s political landscape for “a couple of years”.
“I’ve been a councillor since April 2016 and social media is pretty brutal on the Denmark Community Noticeboard,” Cr Caron said.
“As a sitting councillor, and a nominee, I’ve withdrawn from the social media community noticeboards because it’s not a productive forum.”
“I also did it for my own mental health because it was a toxic environment.”
Since October 2015, five councillors have resigned from the shire.
Before several of the current crop of councillors were elected, the shire was put on a State Government financial watch list, where it still languishes.
The Oxford Dictionary defines a troll as “a person who makes a deliberately offensive or provocative online post”.
Rather than lock horns with the trolls, Cr Caron has instead gone old-school to get his message across, with two rounds of flyers being delivered across his ward.
“It’s literally shoe leather and on the bicycle,” he said.
Cr Caron said there had been particularly “lively debate” on the Denmark Community Noticeboard Facebook page.
“A lot of people just don’t bother posting on there any more when it comes to council issues,” he said.
“They find the attacks quite personal sometimes, quite calculated, so they’ve just withdrawn.”
An introduction to the page states: “Anyone crossing the line through racist remarks, hate speech or anything of the like will be removed from the group!”
“People who are here to ‘troll’ and cause trouble will also be removed,” the page continues.
Returning officer for the Denmark election, Heather Marr, has stepped in to advise all candidates that election material, including Facebook pages, needs to be properly authorised.
An administrator of the Denmark Community Noticeboard, Janet Ross, said Ms Marr had also been in touch with administrators of her Facebook page.
“There has been an extreme amount of nastiness and slanderous comments about decisions the noticeboard has made,” Ms Ross said of the administrators’ decision to delete some vitriolic political posts.
“The comments are really personal and nasty.”
She said a perception in some local quarters that the noticeboard was a platform for the ‘Get Denmark Back on Track’ band of candidates, all former councillors, was simply not true.
“Any candidate going for the election is more than welcome to put up posts on the noticeboard,” she said.
Get Denmark Back on Track candidate Ian Osborne confirmed the notice board was not operated by that faction.
He said he had been a victim of trolling, which he did not condone and saw as a “destructive” force on local democracy.
Denmark mayor David Morrell said trolling had been a long-term issue in the shire.
He added that two main issues had plagued social media commentary on the election; people playing the person rather than the issue, and the transmission of inaccurate information.
“The shire councillors who are putting up again and the ex-councillors who are putting up are all people who’ve given a lot of their time to Denmark and they should be shown some respect from both sides,” Cr Morrell, who is running again for Town Ward, said.
“I think it’s a shame that all this stuff happens.
“Some of it’s not respectful and I think that’s pretty sad.”
He would not say if he would run again for Shire President if re-elected as a councillor.
“I’m not passionately campaigning,” he said.
“I think I’m reasonably well known.”
Councillor for Kent/Nornalup Ward, Clem Wright, also running again, said he was not on Facebook and preferred the face-to-face approach.
“I spend my time campaigning for this election out and about talking to real people in real situations and not wasting my time sitting in front of the computer monitor playing on Facebook,” Cr Wright said.
“I leave other people to engage in social media wars.
“But I do know it’s been an issue for other councillors and there’s been an ongoing campaign against the current council by other groups, including some ex-councillors who’ve been responsible for the most outrageous comments and the most outrageous misrepresentations of what the council has been doing.”
The fourth Denmark councillor who is running again, Mark Allen, said he rarely flirted with Facebook.
“I don’t believe I need to be on social media to get my point across,” Cr Allen said.
“It’s been out of control for a year.”
