[Air-L] Is there any published research on "trolling"?

Wed Jul 25 09:46:32 PDT 2012

I agree with Thomas over here. Fighting trolling is a losing business, the
more you respond, thousand times more they respond. All of these readings
mentioned here possibly won't give you any more insight on fighting it.
Especially in virtual worlds this is rampant under a slightly different
name: griefing, but it is the same deal. i have a long list of reading on
the phenomena but didn't want to spam everyone with the reading list. If
you are genuinely trying to stop trolling on your blog or anywhere else:

-ignore disruptive behavior... these guys are mainly attention whores
(their term, not mine). So if you ignore them, they get bored and go away...
-turn on any protective settings like moderation, if you are in a virtual
world you would have ban capabilities in your sim/region
-in the online piece that someone else had mentioned, Judith Donath's
piece, there are some useful cues and how these guys act. The piece is a
bit outdated but still useful. Donath mentions: They usually pretend to be
in on the cause and start asking silly questions, you explain, they pretend
not to understand, you explain more etc... In Second Life for instance, the
blogger/character Prokovy Nova pretends to fight griefers and defend free
speech and stuff, and at the same time, trolls and antagonizes bunch of
blogs from Henry Jenkin's blog to Techcruch to Terra Nova with epic long
blog comments... from which s/he is banned... I think she is banned from 10
blogs at least.
-or they attack you somehow, you defend, they attack more etc...
-Also in Cole Stryker's Epic Win for Anonymous, there is a useful troll
category list earlier in the book... the book is not exclusively about
trolling, but it does touch upon it...

It takes various shapes and forms. But the truism is the same: don't feed
the troll. Meaning ignore/delete/block... fighting is not an option.

My two cents...

BsB

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Thomas Jones <tajone02 at syr.edu> wrote:

> Lost the original message, but I would be apprehensive about being able to
> fight or combat trolling, psychologically or sociotechnically. Online
> community governance is a slippery slope sometimes.
>
> Though, I would be interested in reading Griefer Wars when published.
>
> Thomas Jones
> @othertomjones
> http://about.me/othertomjones
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 25, 2012, at 11:38 AM, "Burcu Bakioglu" <bbakiogl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I am also co-authoring a book with Peter Ludlow called Griefer Wars
> > that focuses on trolling and griefing in online and virtual spaces.
> > But not published yet...
> >
> > Sent from Merlin
> >
> >
> > On Jul 25, 2012, at 10:33 AM, Alexander Furnas <zfurnas at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Tom,
> >> It is on the old side (talks about trolling in UseNet etc.), but I
> think Judith Donath's "Identity Deception in the Virtual World" from
> Kollock and Smith (eds.) Communities in Cyberspace is really really
> excellent.
> >> It talks about how trolling is a form of identity signaling/identity
> deception with specific community level ramifications and goals. It is
> absolutely worth a read   and quite highly cited (~910 cites).
> >> In fact, I imagine perusing the google scholar list of articles that
> cite it would be of help to you as well.
> >> Here is an html version of the paper:
> http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Zander
> >> On Jul 25, 2012, at 2:11 PM, matt g wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi Tom,
> >>>
> >>> You might check out the following pieces from Gabriella Coleman:
> >>>
> >>> "Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls and the Politics of Transgression and
> >>> Spectacle." In _The Social Media Reader_, ed. Michael Mandiberg. New
> York:
> >>> NYU Press, 2012.
> >>>
> >>> "Hacker and Troller as Trickster."
> http://gabriellacoleman.org/blog/?p=1902
> >>>
> >>> Best,
> >>>
> >>> Matt
> >>> --
> >>> Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D.
> >>> http://mkgold.net | @mkgold
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 3:14 AM, Tom Williamson <tom at skepticcanary.com
> >wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hello everyone,
> >>>>
> >>>> I am new to Internet research, and I was wondering if anyone had
> published
> >>>> anything on "trolling"? Trolling is a big problem in the blogosphere,
> and I
> >>>> am interested in ways to combat it.
> >>>>
> >>>> I come from a bioinformatics background, and I have devised an
> experiment,
> >>>> based on randomized double-blind controlled trials, to test the
> various
> >>>> ways to combat trolling. Would anyone be interested in such a trial?
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks,
> >>>>
> >>>> Tom
> >>>>
> >>>> ------------------------------**-------
> >>>> Read by blog at www.skepticcanary.com
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-- 
Thanks,

Burcu S. Bakioglu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow in New Media
Lawrence University

http://www.palefirer.com
http://palefirer.com/blog/

--
"Come to the dark side, we have cookies."
~Anonymous