Trolling is one of the types of virtual communication in which one of the parties - the troll - is engaged in unconsciously escalating the conflict or begins to intentionally, explicitly or implicitly, belittle and bully another participant in communication, violating the ethics of network behavior. Trolling is expressed in the form of abusive, mocking and aggressive behavior. In real life, it is similar to energy vampirism. It is used by both anonymous participants and personified users interested in outrageousness, publicity and recognition.
Origin and study
The term appeared at the beginning of the 21st century. Then no one knew what troll means. Those interested in this topic created networking organizations and communities for the exchange of experience, where the most effective ways of inciting conflicts were discussed. In the academic literature, trolling was first mentioned in 1996 by the researcher Judith Donat, who gave several curious examples taken from conferences in Usenet (the network). Donat emphasized that in a “virtual society” this identification is ambiguous.
Origin of the term
What is the meaning of the word troll? This term is not related to the field of scientific discourse, and came from the slang of users of virtual communities. “Fishing for baubles” - such is the literal translation from the English word “trolling”. In general terms, this phenomenon can be described as the process of posting provocative messages on communicative resources on the network in order to create a conflict situation by violating the ethical rules of Internet interaction. We hope you now understand what it means to troll people. Move on.
Troll - this is the designation received by a person who is engaged in trolling. Irina Ksenofontova (employee of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences) believes that this term has become popular because of its meaning in Scandinavian mythology. There, trolls, especially in children's tales, are portrayed as ugly, unpleasant creatures created to do evil and do harm. They are very colorful depicted in the cinema.
Trolling environment
We figured out what it means to troll on the Internet. Now let's talk about places where this can be done. These include social networks, conferences, thematic forums, news sites, portals and chats. The design features of these spaces allow the user to create a virtual alter ego, constructed at his discretion. Virtually every virtual community has special fields where participants can form their data by entering the main and additional (hobbies and interests) characteristics. This is a great opportunity for organizing provocations by people who know what trolling a person is. After all, this process is not controlled by anyone, and any participant in the virtual space can generate the desired image.
The nature of the impact on virtual spaces
The provocateur pretends to be an ordinary user, sharing common problems and interests of a community or group. If the conference participants are aware of what it means to troll, then they try to identify provocative publications, and if this succeeds, they force the attacker to leave the group. The success of the identification will depend on the skill of recognizing hints that determine the goals of the post creator. Also, a lot depends on the troll itself, and more precisely, on the level of his professionalism. Skillful provocateurs can troll for a very long time without revealing their true face.
Trolls cause significant harm to communications: they spoil the discussion, spread destructive ideas or harmful advice, and destroy the feeling of community members' trust in each other. In groups with a high level of falsifications in space that are particularly sensitive to trolling, most questions that are naive in content are rejected and are not considered provocations.
Features
Trolling as a form of social aggression has characteristic features. The first is the possibility of its existence only in virtual communities. Although in real society there are people who know what it means to troll, and they do it with pleasure. The second is the rapid release of avalanche-like aggression that instantly spreads to almost all users of the virtual community. And the third is the inability of the trolling victim to make visual or physical contact with the initiator of the conflict.
