Mission: To support and assist women journalists, bloggers, and publishers who are the targets of online trolls and cyber-harassment.

Background: According to a 2104 study by the Pew Research Center, 25 percent of young women online have been sexually harassed and 26 percent have experienced cyber-stalking, while a different study found that almost two-thirds of women journalists have experienced intimidation, threats, or abuse online related to their work. At the International Women's Media Foundation hackathon for women news entrepreneurs in New York City in 2015, Michelle Ferrier, associate dean for innovation, research, creative activity, and graduate studies at Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication, presented the idea for TrollBusters, an online service aimed at helping women writers and journalists combat the online trolls who attack, harass, and threaten them on a regular basis. A former journalist herself, Ferrier was the first African-American columnist at the Daytona Beach News-Journal but was driven to quit her job by a constant stream of online threats and racist hate mail. Inspired by Gamergate — an organized backlash against female gamers and journalists engineered by misogynistic male gamers — TrollBusters emerged as a "just-in-time rescue service" for women writers who have been harassed or trolled online.

Outstanding Web Features: A female target of online abuse, or a third party who is aware of such an incident, can alert the TrollBusters site (with or without the knowledge of the targeted individual), which will respond within an hour by inserting positive messages, endorsements, and testimonials into online feeds at the point of attack. A second, longer-term goal is to encourage the creation of reputation-repair teams comprising friends, family, and colleagues. The idea is that positive messaging from robust support networks can help women writers maintain their voices online despite harassment. The site also aims to be a resource for women publishers and writers who have been targeted by trolls and are looking for legal or psychological support, and it eventually hopes to be able to eliminate online "troll nests" with software that "out-trolls" the trolls while also assisting in identifying and reaching out to targets of such attacks.