User:Kay mei/Internet troll

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A meme depicting the behavior of an internet troll

Trolling, identity, anonymity

Early incidents of trolling were considered to be the same as flaming, but this has changed with modern usage by the news media to refer to the creation of any content that targets another person. The Internet dictionary NetLingo suggests there are four grades of trolling: playtime trolling, tactical trolling, strategic trolling, and domination trolling. The relationship between trolling and flaming was observed in open-access forums in California, on a series of modem-linked computers. CommuniTree was begun in 1978 but was closed in 1982 when accessed by high school teenagers, becoming a ground for trashing and abuse.

Some psychologists have suggested that flaming would be caused by deindividuation or decreased self-evaluation: the anonymity of online postings would lead to disinhibition amongst individuals. Others have suggested that although flaming and trolling is often unpleasant, it may be a form of normative behavior that expresses the social identity of a certain user group. According to Tom Postmes, a professor of social and organisational psychology at the universities of Exeter, England, and Groningen, The Netherlands, and the author of Individuality and the Group, who has studied online behavior for 20 years, "Trolls aspire to violence, to the level of trouble they can cause in an environment. They want it to kick off. They want to promote antipathetic emotions of disgust and outrage, which morbidly gives them a sense of pleasure." Someone who brings something off topic into the conversation in order to make that person mad is trolling.

The practice of trolling has been documented by a number of academics as early as the 1990s. This included Steven Johnson in 1997 in the book Interface Culture, and a paper by Judith Donath in 1999. Donath's paper outlines the ambiguity of identity in a disembodied "virtual community" such as Usenet:

In the physical world there is an inherent unity to the self, for the body provides a compelling and convenient definition of identity. The norm is: one body, one identity ... The virtual world is different. It is composed of information rather than matter.

Donath provides a concise overview of identity deception games which trade on the confusion between physical and epistemic community:

Trolling is a game about identity deception, albeit one that is played without the consent of most of the players. The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group's common interests and concerns; the newsgroup's or forum's members, if they are cognizant of trolls and other identity deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real from trolling postings, and upon judging a poster a troll, make the offending poster leave the group. Their success at the former depends on how well they – and the troll – understand identity cues; their success at the latter depends on whether the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently diminished or outweighed by the costs imposed by the group.

Trolls can be costly in several ways. Due to the ability to make yourself unidentifiable online, cyber bullying and internet trolling can flourish in internet spaces without consequence and this is what ultimately feeds into internet trolls being malicious online. In Whitney Phillips' book This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture, Even with the various types of trolls and trolling styles, certain behaviors are consistent. First, trolls of the subcultural variety self-identify themselves as a troll. Trolls are also motivated by what is known as lulz, a type of unsympathetic, ambiguous laughter. The final behavior is the insistent need for anonymity. According to Phillips, anonymity allows trolls engage in behaviors they would not replicate in professional or public settings. On the contrary, trolling is often successful and dependent on the target's lack anonymity. This can included disclosing attachments, interests, and vulnerability that the target cares about in real life.

A troll can disrupt the discussion on a newsgroup or online forum, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the online community. Furthermore, in a group that has become sensitized to trolling – where the rate of deception is high – many honestly naïve questions may be quickly rejected as trolling. This can be quite off-putting to the new user who upon venturing a first posting is immediately bombarded with angry accusations. Even if the accusation is unfounded, being branded a troll may be damaging to one's online reputation. Social media has become a place for discussion and debate on controversial topics and, thus, provides an opportunity to influence public opinion. This possibility has given rise to a specific behavior known as trolling, which is something seen more within popular online culture. Social media itself has become a public sphere and is now integrated into the lives of a majority of the postmodern world.

Susan Herring and colleagues in "Searching for Safety Online: Managing 'Trolling' in a Feminist Forum" point out the difficulty inherent in monitoring trolling and maintaining freedom of speech in online communities: "harassment often arises in spaces known for their freedom, lack of censure, and experimental nature". Free speech may lead to tolerance of trolling behavior, complicating the members' efforts to maintain an open, yet supportive discussion area, especially for sensitive topics such as race, gender, and sexuality.

Cyberbullying laws vary by state, as Trolling is not a crime under Federal law. In an effort to reduce uncivil behavior by increasing accountability, many web sites (e.g. Reuters, Facebook, and Gizmodo) now require commenters to register their names and e-mail addresses.

Trolling itself has become its own form of internet subculture and has developed its own set of rituals, rules, specialized language, and dedicated spaces of practice. The appeal of trolling primarily comes from the thrill of how long one can keep the ruse going before getting caught, and exposed as a troll. When understood this way, internet trolls are less like vulgar, indiscriminate bullies, and closer to countercultural respondents to a (so called) overly sensitive public.

The main elements of why people troll are interactions; trolling exists in the interactive communications between internet users, influencing people's views both from objective and emotional standpoints, and lastly trolling does not target a single individual, but rather targets multiple members of a discussion. Ways to identify trolling include the situation to utilizing the Internet as a platform, offensive and emotional content, and an intended reaction from an audience.

Bibliography

• Coleman, E. Gabriella. "Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls: The Politics of Transgression and Spectacle." The Social Media Reader, New York University Press, 2012, pp. 99-119. https://archive.org/details/TheSocialMediaReader/
• Biały, B. (2017). Social Media—From Social Exchange to Battlefield. The Cyber Defense Review, 2(2), 69–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26267344
• Paavola, J., Helo, T., Jalonen, H., Sartonen, M., & Huhtinen, A.-M. (2016). Understanding the Trolling Phenomenon: The Automated Detection of Bots and Cyborgs in the Social Media. Journal of Information Warfare, 15(4), 100–111. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26487554