Trolls under the bridge
The concept of trolling is an interesting one. I certainly would never condone the online bullying and belittling that happens over the internet but it must be hard to decipher sometimes. The banter that my friends and I use to communicate could easily be taken out of context by somebody who didn’t know we were friends. Olweus (cited in Boyd 2014, p. 131) defined bullying as an act requiring aggression, repetition, and an imbalance in power, and must contain all three of these factors. Trolling takes a similar mentality online by using controversial online messaging to creating discord and emotive responses (Urbandictionary 2019, n.p.). It is interesting to think about whether trolling meets all of Olweus’s criteria, and I would argue that in a lot of cases trolls are not acting aggressively. But does that mean that it is not bullying? To me bullying is more about how the other person feels, and whether the act continues after the victim has expressed a desire for it to stop.
McCosker (2014, p. 201) argues that acts of trolling should be examined through the correct cultural and geographical context to properly understand both the effect and meaning of act. This is an interesting point as cultural differences or even subtle differences in the use of language can change the meaning/interpretation of a message.
A case in point for me is Shannon Noll’s Facebook page. He gets an absolute barrage of comments and takes it all in good humour thankfully, I personally think they are hilarious but perhaps another viewer may not….
He was even good natured enough to make a sports bet add where he read out some of the comments.
According to Boyd (2014, p. 130) parents and journalists believe that social media significantly increases bullying, an assumption that is refuted by the data. This has led to a strong focus on teen suicide from the unquantified journalistic view that the majority of youths are bullied online (Boyd 2014, p. 131). McCosker (2014, p. 202) aligns social media conflict with agnostic pluralism, speaking to the necessity of having a contested space which allows for passionate debate and contested interactions. A study conducted on a short and highly provocative anti-Islam film found that interactions between the content creator, Dutch MP Geert Wilders, and those who commented was minimal (McCosker 2014, p. 206).
YouTube by numbers (Aslam 2019) link: 1.9 billion monthly active users 5+ billion videos shared to date 150 million hours of YouTube watched daily YouTube services 95% of all internet users
After conducting his analysis on YouTube commentary accrued on videos regarding the Christchurch earthquake and a flash haka, McCosker (2014, p. 213) describes YouTube as a “participatory space that incorporates and perhaps also accommodates conflict and cruelty”. The work of Thelwall and Sud (2012, p. 616) found that certain themes, such as religion, trigger lengthy discussion while other genres such as music and comedy were the least commented on. I think overall these works show that emotive subjects are far more likely to attract comment and debate, which also makes them a likely target for trolls who are able to find easy trigger points to gain a response.
References
Aslam, S 2019, ‘YouTube by the Numbers: Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts’, Omnicore, viewed 11 January 2019, https://www.omnicoreagency.com/youtube-statistics/
Boyd, D 2014, It’s complicated: the social lives of networked teens, Yale University Press, New Haven.
McCosker, A 2014, ‘Trolling as provocation: YouTube’s agonistic publics’, Journal of Research into New Mdia Technologies, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 201-217.
Thelwall, M & Sud, P 2012, ‘Commenting on YouTube Videos: From Guatemalan Rock to El Big Bang’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 63, no. 3, pp. 616-629.
Urban Dictionary 2019, ‘Trolling’, Urban Dictionary, viewed 11 January 2019, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Trolling
I love this Shannon Noll example of how he took his trolls on. But for some it's not that simple to rebut, online trolls enter the minds people through there in boxes and make them feel awful about themselves. It’s psychological bullying and it’s horrible. I don’t know why suicide is the answer to some young and old people, I wish they could see there are other options, advice and help out there. I wish we could be more informed as a society, we have the most powerful tool at our fingertips being used to destroy others and I hate it.

















