The people behind the cloak of anonymity
Social media brings together public communication and individual contributions, in a new online society. With this digital citizenship comes new norms, responsibilities and unfortunately, potential misuses. Enter the term ‘trolling’, which has evolved as a way to describe cyberbullying, yet its meaning can vary significantly (McCosker 2014, p.202). Anyone can be a troll, sometimes purposefully harmful, and other times unintentionally. Sometimes they even feel like they’re helping the world. The truth is that people are fuelled by existing socio-cultural factors (Phillips 2015, p.169). One thing to consider, is the cloak of anonymity, which makes it easier for us to fall prey to our darkest impulses.
(Irresistibly Fish 2014)
Aren’t all trolls just deceitful creatures with malicious intentions?
While trolls may seem callous, they represent the uncomfortable reality that these behaviours are actively celebrated in our society (Phillips 2015, p.168). Watch how European countries trolled Donald Trump with “hilarious parodies” (What’s Trending 2017).
Or how activists are trolling Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, in a bid to raise awareness of human rights violations in Turkmenistan: http://mashable.com/2017/08/04/turkmenistan-viral-video-parody-trolling/#zouO7T3iUOqt So wait, anyone can be a troll? Even me? Unfortunately, yes. While some trolling may be satirical or for the greater good (although subjective), commentary trolling is not confined to an antisocial minority. Anyone can be triggered by two factors: their mood and the discussion contexts (Cheng, Berstein, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil & Leslovec 2017, p.1217). That is, that the time of day, and day of the week affects our mood. While the second factor means, that if a discussion starts with a vitriolic comment, it is twice as likely to be trolled; and the more troll comments in the overall discussion, the more likely future users will continue this trend (Cheng et al. 2017). Steering, Kraut & Dabbish (2017, p.111) also discovered this, in their study of Twitch user interactions, explaining that “users imitated examples of behaviour that they saw”. Highlighting just how susceptible we are to propagating negative behaviour. If we’re all trolling each other, then what’s the big deal? This behaviour is replicated by younger users, who mimic popular behaviours to compete for social commodities. If an adolescent gains admiration from their peers, they’re more motivated to act accordingly (Reio, Jr. & Ledesma Ortega 2016, p.149). This is nothing new in the teenage world. However, cyberspace now provides anonymity. Which makes trolling more appealing to young internet users, as it vails the effects that their online behaviours have on victims (Ozden & Icellioglu 2014, p.4383).
(Jayvay 2012) Anonymity also creates the issue of adolescents anonymously trolling themselves. Teenagers involving themselves is known as digital self-harm. They do so to gain attention, support and/or validation (Boyd 2014, p.141). This behaviour is linked to depression and an increased risk of suicide attempts (Patchin & Hinduja 2017, p.761). It has also been found that an average of 6% of highschool students have participated in digital self-harm (Patchin & Hinduja 2017, p.761). This study was prompted by the unfortunate cases of Hannah Smith, 14, and Natalie Natividad, 15, who both anonymously sent hurtful messages to themselves in the weeks leading up to their suicides (Brantley 2017).
(Gemini Designs) It is evident that trolling is highly contextualised, subjective, and still evolving (McCosker 2014, p. 202). The fact that we can be an entirely different person online, makes it easy to lose ourselves and our ethics. Recognising why we engage in these particular acts is crucial in creating a diverse digital community with shared morals and ethos, without stifling personal freedom. What are you thoughts on this complex issue? References: Boyd, D 2014, 'Bullying: Is the Media Amplifying Meanness and Cruelty?', in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Yale University Press, New Haven, USA, pp. 128-152. Cheng, J, Berstein, M, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C, & Leslovec, J 2017, ‘Our experiment taught us why people troll’, The Conversation, 2 March, viewed 16 December 2017, https://theconversation.com/our-experiments-taught-us-why-people-troll-72798. McCosker, A 2014, ‘Trolling as provocation: YouTube's agonistics publics’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 201-217. Ozden, M. S. & Icellioglu, S 2014, ‘The perception of cyberbullying and cybervictimization by university students in terms of their personality factors’, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 16, pp. 4379-4383. Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S 2017, ‘Digital Self-Harm Among Adolescents’, Journal of Adolescent Health’, vol. 61, no. 6, pp. 761-766. Phillips, W 2015, This is why we can’t have nice things: Mapping the relationship between online trolling and mainstream culture, MIT Press; Cambridge, Massachusetts. Reio Jr., T. G. & Ledesma Ortega, C. C. 2016, ‘Cyberbullying and Its Emotional Consequences: What We Know and What We Can Do’, in S. Y. Tettegah (ed.) Emotions, Technology, and Behaviors, Elsevier Inc, London, UK; San Diego, USA; MA, USA; Oxford, UK, pp. 145-158. Steering, J, Kraut, R.E., & Dabbish, L 2017, ‘Shaping pro and anti-social behaviour on Twitch through moderation and example-setting’, CSCW ’17 Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, ACM, New York, pp. 111-125.