Editorial
JK Rowling has broken her silence on a recent death threat and the controversy she has faced online.
The ‘Harry Potter’ author appeared on Graham Norton’s Virgin radio show and discussed the dangers surrounding social media after she received a concerning tweet following the attack of writer Salman Rushdie, who she showed support for.
At the time, she penned: “Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be okay.”
Watch Miriam Margoyles defend JK Rowling amid the author’s controversy below…
A Twitter user then replied: “Don’t worry you are next.”
Reflecting on social media, Rowling told the British host that she enjoys the ‘pub argument aspect’, saying: “Social media can be a lot of fun and I do like the pub argument aspect of it.
“That can be a fun thing to do. But there’s no doubt that social media is a gift for people who want to behave in a malign way.”
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When the 57-year-old was then asked if there was anything that could be done to prevent social media trolls, she continued: “I think on one level I’m not sure I can.
“I’m not sure any individual can. I try to behave online as I would like others to behave. I wouldn’t ever want to… I’ve never threatened anyone, obviously, and I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to go to their houses or anything like that.”
Rowling then discussed her new book, ‘The Ink Black Heart’, which is written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
It follows a cartoonist which is trolled by fans online.
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Denying that it’s related to her own experiences, Rowling commented: “More echoes than I realised because I should make it really clear after some of the things that have happened to me online in the last year, I had written the book before certain things happened to me online.
“I said to my husband, “Everyone is going to see this as a response to what happened to me’.
“But it genuinely wasn’t. The first draft of the book was finished at the point where certain things happened to me.”
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