[Air-l] Trolling

Lois Ann Scheidt lscheidt at indiana.edu
Sun May 23 07:20:49 PDT 2004


I have been thinking, of late, that it is interesting that this list has
some of its most detailed and insightful discussions on subjects prompted
by trolling or via discussions that appear to degenerate to trolling over
time.  (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll and
http://www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/afaq/posts/trollfaq.html for discussion of
the behavior.)  As such I have been thinking about the following
questions:  

*  Do such posts benefit an academic forum, particularly in the early
stages of the discussion?  

*  What are the lines, fuzzy though they may be, between differing
opinions and trolling?  Are we as educators more tolerant of trolling
behaviors, be they initially overt or arrived at late in the conversation,
because of our teaching mindset?

*  At what point does a well-meaning discussion degenerate into the overt
baiting common in trolling exchanges?  Is there a clear catalyst to this
de-evolution?  How does "time," "space," and "culture" impact on this
change?

* Is a trolling post always posted by a troller, or are the phenomena
innately separate entities?

*  Can the distinctions, broached in the thought questions above, be
viewed or is the motivation, for such exchanges, so individual that
text-only discussion loses the nuanced differences?  Of course there are
articles that broach this subject.  For a general discussion of cues and
CMC see Walther & Parks (2002).   And of course Donath (1999) discusses
identity and deception in online forums.  Articles related to trolling
include:  Herring, Job-Sluder, Scheckler, & Barab (2002) discuss overt
trolling in a feminist forum.

Some of these and other related questions have been posed on the list
during previous trolling interactions and have bubbled to the surface
during the last couple of weeks.

Interesting webpages that discuss the phenomena:  

http://www.urban75.com/Mag/troll.html  The Subtle Art of Trolling

Reference List

Donath, J. (1999). Identity and deception in the virtual community. In
M.A.Smith & P. Kollock (Eds.), Communities in Cyberspace (pp. 29-59).
London: Routledge.

Herring, S. C., Job-Sluder, K., Scheckler, R., & Barab, S. (2002).
Searching for safety online:  Managing "Trolling" in a feminist forum. The
Information Society, 18, 371-383.  Available:
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/WP/WP02-03B.html 

Walther, J. B. & Parks, M. R. (2002). Cues filtered out, cues filtered in:
Computer-mediated communication and relationships. In M. L. Knapp & J. A.
Daly (Eds.), Handbook of Interpersonal Communication (3rd ed., pp.
529-563). Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications.

Lois Ann Scheidt MPA MIS SPHR CCP
Doctoral Student
School of Library and Information Science
Indiana University
Bloomington IN USA
Webpage:  http://www.loisscheidt.com
Blog:  http://www.professional-lurker.com





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