Social Media Trolls, How To Spot and Deal with Them
Troll is a member of an Internet community who posts offensive, divisive and controversial comments and they usually make obvious and inflammatory statements that are meant to bait new users into reacting (Techopedia 2019). This action is called trolling. Trolling is the act of leaving an offensive or insulting message on the internet in order to annoy someone (Cambridge Dictionary 2019). If you are an active social media user, chances are you have experienced trolling in one way or another. Growing up in the era of a rise in social media usage, I have witnessed a lot of trolling. As I am mostly active in Instagram, I have seen a lot of messages people leave in the comment section, trolling others for what they look like, what they wear or simply just for being there. It makes you think what have these trolls experienced in their personal life that they seem to be so negative about others and everything.
So, how to know that you are actually dealing with a troll? There are a lot of ways to know if you are dealing with a troll. Below are a few ways you can spot a troll:
Firstly, they will try to make you angry. I think troll exist for the sole purpose of upsetting people. If you someone stirring trouble in social media by starting an argument and posting inflammatory content, chances are high that they are trolls. Secondly, they act entitled. Many trolls have an inflated sense of worth. They function as if the world revolved around them, or they actually believe the world does really revolve only around them. Thirdly, they love to exaggerate a lot in their comments. They use strong words such as ‘never’ and ‘every’ as using extremes and superlatives words are the easiest way to inflame people. Next, trolls always make the arguments personal. Rather than opting to discuss the matter reasonably and logically, they tend to attack an opponent’s character. They will call people names and say things that appeal not to intellect but to feelings and prejudices. Lastly and weirdly enough, trolls often cannot spell. They spell the words wrong, use words wrong, avoids using commas and periods, type in all caps and a lot more. Cornell and Stanford researchers did a study about anti-social behaviour online and trolls fail standard, readability metrics for the stuff they write (Cheng, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil and Leskovec, 2015).
Now, how to deal with these social media trolls? There are no definite ways of handling the trolls (Sanfilippo, Yang and Fichman, 2017). According to the survey research they have done, they believe there are a few ways we can handle the trolls both as an individual or in a community. Among the solutions provided are by blocking the trolls and deleting their comments, unmasking their identities, just simply ignore them and set-up strict rules or a peer review system to actually monitor their behaviour. The peer review system is basically sharing the information about the trolls with the community that a person is in, for example, the gaming community. They, as a group will provide a conclusion of whether a person is a troll or not according to evidence that have been gather about someone’s behaviour.
The internet should be a good place. Social media is a great way to engage the world around you and a great way for brands and businesses to engage with users. Although it can be a very positive thing, on the internet you are likely to run into trolls. Trolls can be a bad thing or a good thing! You've got to know how to handle trolls. It is important to remain on the offense as well as knowing how to respond to the comments and criticism of a troll.
Resources: Cheng, J., Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C. and Leskovec, J. (2015). Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities. Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. [online] Available at: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/view/10469/10489 [Accessed 10 May 2019]. Dictionary.cambridge.org. (2019). TROLLING | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. [online] Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/trolling [Accessed 10 May 2019]. Sanfilippo, M., Yang, S. and Fichman, P. (2017). Managing Online Trolling: From Deviant to Social and Political Trolls. Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2017). Techopedia.com. (2019). What is a Troll? - Definition from Techopedia. [online] Available at: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/429/troll [Accessed 10 May 2019].
