Internet Trolling

The Guy Fawkes mask has become a symbol of the internet group Anonymous. This paper seeks to understand why this happened. The Guy Fawkes Mask takes us back to a 17th Century Catholic renegade, a 1980s graphic novel, a millennial movie based on the graphic novel, social media visual communication practicing internet memes on 4chan and YouTube, and physical demonstrations in public space. It will show how the Guy Fawkes Mask changed meaning during this process, and how this symbol works as a meaningful signifier in a digital age.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/279418299/The-Guy-Fawkes-Mask-as-Visual-Communication-of-the-Internet-Group-Anonymous

http://research.crocels.com/research/1564/the-guy-fawkes-mask-as-visual-communication-of-the-internet-group-anonymous-lars-konzack/

The current study yielded a number of important findings. We managed to build a neural network that achieved an accuracy score of 91 per cent in classifying troll and genuine tweets. By means of regression analysis, we identified a number of features that make a tweet more susceptible to correct labelling and found that they are inherently present in troll tweets as a special type of discourse. We hypothesised that those features are grounded in the sociolinguistic limitations of troll writing, which can be best described as a combination of two factors: speaking with a purpose and trying to mask the purpose of speaking. Next, we contended that the orthogonal nature of these factors must necessarily result in the skewed distribution of many different language parameters of troll messages. Having chosen as an example distribution of the topics and vocabulary associated with those topics, we showed some very pronounced distributional anomalies, thus confirming our prediction.

Trolling has become an imperative feature of online communication. The boom of new media and innovative technologies has favoured this acceleration. Trolls hold an undeniable position in gauging public opinion and attitudes on almost every subject. With the advent of several Facebook troll communities, Malayalam speaking internet users have also started experimenting with this new genre of online communication. This study attempts to analyse the characteristics of Malayalam online troll communities. Troll posts from two popular Facebook groups are used for the purpose. The analysis has been done using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis, based on the form and content of the media texts produced by the trolls. It is seen that making use of unique production techniques and behavioural practices, trolls are developing themselves into a distinctive group of likeminded people. The trolls, in course of time, are evolving as a cyber-subculture over the networked societies of internet.

This chapter begins by considering the definition of an online political troll.  We argue that in the Philippines, as in many other contexts, one needs to be careful in approaching such a contested term.  We then look at the role of the online political troll in Philippine politics.  We attend to how they have gained unprecedented popularity through the distinct dynamics of the country's democracy but also to how they have undermined the possibility of making better this very same democracy.  We conclude by turning to normative frameworks that might help the public sphere move away from the pernicious predominance of toxic online political trolling.  We suggest two particular approaches to re-imagining the country's media so that it could move toward a mode democratic future.

http://www.ateneo.edu/ateneopress/product/duterte-reader-critical-essays-rodrigo-dutertes-early-presidency

This chapter is an attempt to pull together the three contexts sketched above: the multitude of practices experienced in one’s infra-ordinary use of social media; the sensationalist narratives mustered under buzzwords throughout news media narratives; and the scholarly representation of a variety of practices often described as deceiving, confrontational, offensive, negative, disruptive, abusive, unethical, non-normative, deviant or antisocial. A reader might be expected to ask: What is trolling? Why do some social media users troll others? Is trolling good or bad? How can trolling be stopped? Unfortunately, my contribution is not meant to answer any of these questions. As I summarize in the first half of this chapter, more than twenty years of research into problematic social media practices have already tackled many of these interrogatives, providing a wide variety of comprehensive answers, and producing a rich and detailed cartography of the possibilities of academic approaches to trolling. The broader theoretical question that this chapter addresses is, rather: Where next? How can we write about trolling, and about other problematic social media practices, while avoiding both the oversimplification of popular media narratives and the overdetermination that results from academic treatments?

This article draws on British newspaper reports in order to demonstrate that trolling, and the media's subsequent framing of trolling, involves " silencing strategies ". It is important to examine how trolling is discussed within the media to understand how it might frame public opinion, debate and action, and implicitly victim blame. The article presents findings on: the forms of (online) abuse and behaviours related to trolling in media reports, including rape threats, death threats and body shaming. It also explores the media portrayal of victims of trolling, and the advice given concerning how to respond to trolls. To comply with the message to women, which is propagated in media and popular discourses: " do not feed the troll " , means that " symbolic violence " is exercised with the complicity of the victim(s) of trolling, which has broader implications.

To nuance current understandings of the proliferation of digital disinformation, this article seeks to develop an approach that emphasizes the imaginative dimension of this communication phenomenon. Anchored on ideas about the sociality of communication, this piece conceptualizes how fake news and political trolling online work in relation to particular shared understandings people have of their sociopolitical landscape. It offers the possibility of expanding the information-oriented approach to communication taken by many journalistic interventions against digital disinformation. It particularly opens up alternatives to the problematic strategy of challenging social media manipulation solely by doubling down on objectivity and facts.

The internet has had a paradoxical effect with regard to truth claims. On the one hand, it has hastened the dissolution of ‘strong’ truth-claims by creating an irreducibly plural and decentred world. On the other, the internet allows a retreat into a world in which you are surrounded only by your own worldview, accessing information through one-sidedly religious, ethnic and/or political filters. Beyond truth-claims, the internet has raised important questions for ethics, with the anonymity it provides acting as a ‘shield’ to one’s true identity. This lecture will explore the philosophical and ethical issues pertaining to the internet.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
 Social media/networks literacy (e.g., critical thinking, scams, phishing)
 Social media/networks users (e.g., QOL, FOMO, addiction, cyberbullying, trolling, social distancing, loneliness, anxiety, depression, children, older adults...)
 Ethical and privacy concerns
 Social identity and social polarization (e.g., populism, democracy, social identity frames, catfishing)
 Social media/networks marketing (e.g., social media influencers)
 Social media/networks as a tool for misinformation (e.g., Fake news,
hoaxes, conspiracies, trustworthiness)
 Social media/networks sentiment, public opinion (e.g. hate speech,
immigration, COVID-19, policy issues, elections, climate crisis)
 Unconventional views on social networks (e.g., historical ...)

'Trolling' refers to a specific type of malicious online behaviour, intended to disrupt interactions, aggravate interactional partners and lure them into fruitless argumentation. However, as with other categories, both 'troll' and 'trolling' may have multiple, inconsistent and incompatible meanings, depending upon the context in which the term is used and the aims of the person using the term. Drawing data from 14 online fora and newspaper comment threads, this paper explores how online users mobilise and make use of the term 'troll'. Data was analysed from a discursive psychological perspective. Four repertoires describing trolls were identified in posters online messages: 1) that trolls are easily identifiable, 2) nostalgia, 3) vigilantism and 4) that trolls are nasty. Analysis also revealed that despite repertoire 01, identifying trolls is not a simple and straightforward task. Similarly to any other rhetorical category, there are tensions inherent in posters accounts of nature and acceptability of trolling. Neither the category 'troll' nor the action of 'trolling' has a single, fixed meaning. Either action may be presented as desirable or undesirable, depending upon the aims of the poster at the time of posting.

Drawing on theories of internet trolls and trolling to contemplate how media producers and/or fans are often perceived to be intentionally inciting negative responses, my goal is to forward more general theory of fan toxicity as emerging from the feedback loop between creator, text, and fan. Accordingly, this article explores how toxic fan/producer relationships emerge from the intersection of industrial attentiveness to representational diversity, producorial imperatives to connect with and court fan communities, and growing concerns around fan ‘entitlement.’ Utilizing Kristen J. Warner’s (2017) concept of plastic representation, this article hones in on an array of representational controversies (from ‘queerbaiting’ to fan proxy characters to fan edits that function as an attempted injunction against shifting industrial approaches to representational parity) to consider what these instances of ‘trolling’ reveal about the potentially performative nature of ‘toxic fan practices.’

AbstrAct This article focuses on AKTrolls, defined as pro-government political trolls in Turkey, while attempting to draw implications about political trolling in the country in general. It examines their methods and effects, and it interrogates whether (and how) Turkish authorities have attempted to shape or counter politically motivated social media content production through trolling after the Gezi Park Protests that took place in 2013. My findings are based on an ethnographic study that included participant observation and in-depth interviews in a setting that is under-studied and about which reliable sources are difficult to find. The study demonstrates political trolling activity in Turkey is more decentralized and less institutionalized than generally thought, and is based more on ad hoc decisions by a larger public. However, I argue here that AKTrolls do have impact on reducing discourses on social media that are critical of the government, by engaging in surveillance, among other practices.

Currently, there is a lack of research investigating how the unique structural conditions of cyberspace may influence the expression of ‘dark’ personality and the role of such e-personality in explaining instances of online misconduct. Using a theoretical framework of context-dependent personality, this study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by using self-report survey data to explore whether the internet may decrease, increase, or intensify the expression of psychopathy. Quantitative data analysis in this study shows that when controlling for social context, internet users exhibit higher levels of psychopathy online than offline, which is especially pronounced in male subsamples. Further multivariate models examine the role of this ‘cyber-psychopathy’ in understanding misconduct behaviours on the internet, such as cyber-stalking, trolling, flaming, and digital piracy. Results demonstrate that primary cyber-psychopathy is positively correlated with one’s level of acceptability toward online misconduct behaviours, while both primary and secondary cyber-psychopathy are positively associated with one’s tendency toward engaging in such transgressions. This study serves to highlight the potential impacts of heightened psychopathic personality online, while suggesting practical implications that emphasize the need to foster empathy and close psychological distance between internet users in online communities.

This course explores the ethical issues inherent in our use of digital and online media. We will engage a range of current issues and topics through the application of important moral theories, attending to how new technologies often challenge what we know about morality, virtue, and the good life. We will use the analysis of case studies to encourage reflection and discussion over contemporary issues in digital ethics. Topics to be covered include the ethics of hacking, Anonymous operations, online privacy, blogging ethics, online shaming and activism, revenge pornography, online free speech, trolling, social media and virtue, WikiLeaks and issues in online journalism, as well as other contemporary topics dealing with digital media.

Ja es ikdienā redzu Jāni, tad visdrīzāk viņš stāv un runā – vai nu ar mani, vai ar kādu citu. Jānis tik labi spēj sarunas biedru pārliecināt, ka viņu ik pa laikam esmu redzējis televīzijā. Turklāt gan tādos raidījumos un tematos, kur viņam var un ir pamatots skatījums, jo tas saistīts ar viņa nodarbošanos, gan tādos, kur Jānim nav un nekādi nevarētu būt jebkāda pierādāma kompetence. Bet viedoklis noteikti ir. Jānis ir aktīvs sociālajos tīklos. Man jau kādu laiku šķiet, ka Jānis interneta vidē, visizteiktāk – mums visiem diezgan labi zināmajā tīklā “Facebook”, saturiski nodarbojas ar Kremļa propagandu. Man tā šķiet. Turklāt jau sen. Bet mūsu (ne jau nu ļoti biežajās, bet tomēr) sarunās temati, ko varētu šādi nodēvēt, nekad neparādās. Mēs esam runājuši par daudz ko, pārsvarā par jautājumiem, kur mūsu pieredzes pārklājas. Tomēr ne par to, ko varētu saukt par Kremļa propagandu.

This article uses the concept of the 'imaginative dimension of digital disinformation' to explore how inter-Asian racism in a postcolonial city matters to the way people engage with racially tinged Covid-19 digital disinformation. It pays attention to two key socialities that fake news and political trolling online seek to weaponise: people's existing social narratives as well as their relationally embedded practices of media consumption. Drawing on 15 life story interviews with locals from the Philippines capital of Manila, this article characterises their interpretations of online dis-information campaigns that aim to amplify their shared social narrative of resentment towards China and bank on their communicative practices surrounding this. It also aims to show the value of empirical research that possesses a transnational sensibility in assessing the interpretive and social dynamics surrounding such racist Covid-19 digital disinformation.

There is a general trend amongst mass media organisations around the world towards concentration of the visual, written and audio packaging and of newspapers, websites and television as channels of information. These platforms are explored in detail in this paper in relation to the moral panics around ‘internet trolling’. This paper discusses the history of trolling in the context of mass media, specifically ‘classical trolling’ and ‘Anonymous trolling’. A review of different media headlines finds that whether or not a story is portrayed in newspapers, online, or on television, the media will use a variety of ways to convey their messages. In the case of ‘trolls’, they show a darker, sinister and transgressive side of cyberspace in the form of abuse and vitriol (i.e., anonymous trolling). The paper concludes that future research should look in detail at the different character types of internet troller and how these affect the way so called ‘trolls’ are represented in the media and the effect this has on the attitude towards young internet users and trollers in general.

It is now a matter of scientific consensus that priming, a recency effect of activation in memory, has a significant impact on language users' choice of linguistic means. However, it has long remained unclear how priming effects coexist with the creative aspect of language use, and the importance of the latter has been somewhat downplayed. By introducing the results of two experiments, for English and Russian native speakers, this paper seeks to explain the mechanisms establishing balance of priming and language creativity. In study 1, I discuss the notion of collective language creativity that I understand as a product of two major factors interacting: cognitive priming effects and the unsolicited desire of the discourse participants to be linguistically creative, that is, to say what one wants to say using the words that have not yet been used. In study 2, I explore how priming and antipriming effects work together to produce collective language creativity. By means of cluster analysis and Bayesian network modelling, I show that patterns of repetition for both languages differ drastically depending on whether participants of the experiment had to communicate their messages being or not being able to see what others had written before them.

The Red Pill (r/theredpill) (TRP) subreddit lies at the heart of an interconnected network of misogynistic blogs and websites known as the manosphere. It disseminates radical anti-feminist and discriminatory content across Reddit and the broader internet. Acknowledging the community’s staggering size - with membership that numbers in the hundreds of thousands - this research fills a gap in standalone investigations into the toxic subreddit. Using mixed-methods critical discourse analysis (CDA), qualitative and quantitative research methods identify how misogynistic ideologies are constructed, consumed, and exchanged by RedPills on their virtual platform, Reddit. This study does not seek to define their discursive strategies as uniquely RedPill. Instead, it situates them in the context of a growing community based in gendered rage and the validation of violence. As result, it reveals the complex affordances Reddit provides, to create, engage, and disseminate RedPill discourses online.

While trolling has existed as a term since the 1990s and as a reality even earlier there has been an exponential increase in the prevalence of the abusive kind-'flame trolling'. Mistakenly the media calls these flame trollers, 'trolls', when in fact there are more often than not 'Snerts' and 'E-Vengers'. The justice system in Great Britain has taken a sporadic approach to dealing with flame trolling, and the wide range of legislation that has existed since the 1980s has no strategic method to assign its usage on the basis of the nature of the flame trolling as its use often depends on the whim of different police forces. This paper hopes to change this. After a brief presentation of the background of Internet trolling in Great Britain and in general a new framework is presented. This allows prosecutors to easily classify flame trolling based on the facts of the case and pick the appropriate level based on the severity.

This article addresses the issues and possible solutions of the Pandemic Covid-19. In addition, it also addresses the political, economic and conflict situations around the world. This article addresses the dire need for a One Earth Nation in light of the Pandemic, the Polarized World, seventy years of on going Conflicts, Tragedies, Trauma, Displacements, Refugees, Genocide ...

Today computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been beneficial to users by providing quick and easy communication between humans, separated by time and space. However, it can also provide the safety of anonymity that may encourage a sense of impunity and carelessness to users, from being held accountable for inappropriate online behaviour. The researcher has found this especially on social media and Facebook pages.
The anonymity which internet communication affords its users, changes the communicative behaviours of some users, by allowing them to regulate the amount of identity revealed online and they are able to hide behind a fake persona. That is when trolls are born and they grow to menacing proportions. Generally, a troll makes offensive comments in response to a remark made by a user on his timeline or on a public forum page, which never happens in face-to-face communication. The anonymity gives them courage, which the researcher likes to think they would never indulge in, in real life.
This article examines the pragmatic act of trolling and seeks to provide a schema for classification of the intentions within the practice. The paper will use Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's Relevance Theory to draw parallels with the theory and Facebook trolls posts. The theory seeks to explain the second method of communication based on implicit inferences. It argues that the "hearer/reader/audience will search for meaning in any given communication situation and having found meaning that fits their expectation of relevance, will stop processing. Specifically the recipients’ and other readers understanding of the informative and communicative intentions of the troll on Facebook page threads, which the researcher has downloaded from the page archives.
CMC is a perfect space for studying impoliteness, whether it occurs in response to a perceived threat (flaming), or as an end in its own right (trolling). Currently, first and second order definitions of terms such as impoliteness (Brown and Levinson 1987), in-civility (Lakoff 2005), rudeness (Beebe 1995 ), and etiquette (Coulmas 1992), are subject to much discussion and debate, yet the CMC phenomenon of trolling is not adequately captured by any of these terms. Four interrelated conditions of aggression, deception, disruption, and success are discussed.
 

Internet memes have become the centre of academic attention in recent years, they have motivated many studies attempting to understand and re-define political propaganda (Bradshaw, 2017) online identity, public conversation (Milner, 2016) and revolutionary digital design (Metahaven, 2013). They have been at times ridiculed by academia or made into the idealized carrier of revolutionary messages and participatory democracy.
They originated on esoteric message boards such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, before proliferating in mainstream media and spreading to all corners of the internet. Since they have become part of mainstream media in 2014 (Barton, 2017) ( fig. 4) they have endlessly evolved and established themselves as an essential component of culture in the 21st century.
This research on Meme artists standing at the intersection of digital art, activism and trolling is motivated by the desire to expand the understanding and exploration of memes. It echoes the words of Limor Shifman (2014) in their concluding chapter on ‘Future directions for internet meme research’:

“Understanding the individuals who participate in the process of generating and diffusing Internet memes and finding out how their participation patterns relate to race, ethnicity, gender and power is a worthwhile endeavour. (…) Further work, spanning a wider range of case studies, would help us discover to what extent Internet memes do indeed serve as alternative routes of expression for marginalized groups, and to what extent they reflect well-entrenched power structures” (Shifman, 2014 : 172)

The interviews conducted for the purpose of this research have uncovered a deep-rooted discourse of marginalization and discursive resistance. Each meme artist enriched the discussion with their personal experience of power, counter power and marginalization. As suggested by Shifman, the concept of alternative expression is in fact a driving factor in their creation processes. Exploring the views of these artists can therefore serve a double purpose of giving recognition to the struggle and the voice of those who use memes as a form of communication; whilst contemporaneously encouraging the legitimization of memes, meme artists and their messages. Further ignoring the expression of those behind digital art has for far too long contributed to the silencing of alternative artists and marginalized groups of society. It comforted traditional art in its right to exert its supremacy over all, in the glory of its privileged hierarchy and ever-growing elitism. It participates in the everyday process of forced conformity for the sake of a seemingly fair society where alternative voices are cast out.

In two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of their Internet commenting styles. Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct underlying the measures. Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both enjoyment ratings and identity scores. Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated to sadism. Thus cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism.

This paper describes some of the history of white supremacy online, its morph into its current most popular format (i.e. The so called 'Alt-Right'), and the processes by which the Alt-Right has insinuated fascist ideology into popular internet culture. My research shows that fascist discourse online is the product of a prolonged, persistent campaign that prepared the ground for a series of accidental and intentional incidences which culminated in the 2016 presidential election. The election of Donald Trump to the office of President was taken as both validation and license to openly attack Jews, women, immigrants, and other minority people online and in popular media. Overcoming this problem entails grounding our understanding of the content we are consuming in physical-world results before sharing on social media, not clever symbolic online intentions.

Recently, academic attention has turned to understandings of online misogyny, e-bile (Jane, 2014), trolling (Herring et al. 2002; Hardaker 2010; Mantilla 2015; Phillips 2015) and online hate. This includes the abuse received by feminist activists online (Megarry 2014; Lewis et al. 2016). However, the various (online/offline) discourses and representations of online misogyny are still relatively understudied (Lumsden and Morgan, 2017), as are victims’ everyday experiences of online abuse, and the ways in which online abuse and trolling is framed, defined, constructed and understood by online users – both victims and the perpetrators. This chapter adds to the growing body of literature on online misogyny by focusing on an online culture which perpetrates and encourages forms of online misogyny and violence. It focuses on Men’s Rights Activists’ (MRA) discussions of trolling and gendered violence, and their online othering of ‘outsiders’. This includes the denigration and abuse aimed at feminists and social-justice warriors (SJWs). These previously unexplored online discourses and interactions provide us with a valuable insight into the construction of notions of online acceptability and deviance vis-à-vis digital communication, the boundaries between online/offline violence, and (online) culture wars. The article analyses threads and comments from the MensRights subreddit, an understudied digital space.

Twitter is repeatedly positioned as a space of hostility for women  with research identifying women being disproportionate targets of misogynist ‘e-bile’ and trolling. Social media in general is presented largely as a space of distraction, and gendered and sexualised risk, addiction, and harm for young people evident in widespread mobile phone regulation and banning at secondary schools in UK and internationally. Use of Twitter amongst school aged children remains under-researched. In this brief chapter, we explore how despite the negative associations of Twitter with cyberbullying and ‘cyberhate’ this platform also offers the possibility of consciousness raising, solidarity and empowerment amongst young people. Specifically, we explore how teenaged feminist girls use the digital affordances of Twitter to connect their personal experiences of sexism and sexual harassment at school to wider cultural critiques of rape culture creating mediated affective solidarities.

Trolling is often enacted against women and minority groups on social media platforms, such as Twitter, as a means of limiting or undermining participation in virtual space(s). This chapter considers trolling as a form of gendered and symbolic violence. Drawing on an analysis of British national newspaper reports focusing on cases of trolling, we demonstrate that trolling can be viewed as a 'silencing strategy'. Trolling leaves its victims in a powerless position as freedom of expression for perpetrators is defended via social media ideologies. The initial promise of social media – to provide democratizing spaces – in practice creates space for the percolation of misogynist, sexist, racist, and/or homophobic attitudes. The chapter focuses on trolling in the form of rape and death threats, women as doubly deviant when deemed to be entering men's (online) domain(s), responses to trolling, and feminist activism.

Through comparison and contrast with similar discursive practices, the paper singles out some of the main semiotic ingredients of trolling: topic-insensitive provocation; time-boundless jest; sadistic hierarchy of sender and receiver; anonymity of both the troll and his or her audience; choral character of the ‘actant observer’ of trolling; etc.

This is an investigation into the case of Mitchell Henderson seen in the light of heroes and villains. The MySpace page commemorating Hendersons suicide was subject to a form of activity known as “trolling”, of such intensity that Henderson became an iconic figure, a “meme” in the troll community known as “Anonymous.” Examination of this singular event leads eventually to a wider discussion of  what it means to be a hero and whether or not Anonymous should be considered villains, heroes, tricksters or vigilantes. Furthermore, it attempts an understanding of what  Anonymous are, how they operate, and insight into their distinctive Internet culture.

http://research.crocels.com/research/1555/an-hero-and-the-trolls-lars-konzack/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/279418300/An-Hero-and-the-Trolls#scribd

In the years since the dissolution of the USSR in 1990, Russia has used
advances in technology to create new and more diverse channels for the
spread of propaganda and disinformation. However, the West often holds
misconceptions and falls prey to blanket generalities about the strength of
the Russian propaganda machine.
This paper examines Russia’s propaganda capabilities through Russianlanguage sources themselves, to give a more balanced and nuanced picture
of the situation, particularly with regard to Canada. While propaganda
was always a staple of both Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union,
the 2014 conflicts in Ukraine and Crimea touched off a more intensive
information war against the West. However, Russia’s resources are finite
and its capabilities against Canada are limited. The peril exists – and thanks
to the latest technology, it is being perpetrated by bots, trolls, hacktivists
and other entities – but it should be neither under- nor over-estimated.

Le trolling, ou troll, est une pratique communicationnelle qui consiste principalement à susciter des discussions polémiques ou enflammées sur l'Internet. Cet article tentera d'analyser le phénomène à partir d'outils déjà existants en sociologie de la communication, mais s'efforcera surtout d'ajouter à cela une définition d'un type nouveau à l'aide de concepts artistiques et esthétiques, pour montrer en quoi le trolling peut s'apparenter à l'exercice d'un style et à une performance artistique.

'Trolling' has become a term to denote a wide range of behaviour we find in internet communication, ranging from what appear to be harmless japes through to bullying, abuse and hate speech. I argue that by using tools from the philosophy of language, and by considering trolling as a type of speech act, we can start to see some of the structural similarities between these seemingly disparate acts. Once these similarities become clearer, we can then understand better what trolling is and why it has become such a pervasive feature of internet discussion. Viewing trolling in such a way leads us to understand the importance of the trolling dilemma: that is, in many acts of trolling the directions of reply are either to respond seriously to an utterance and so be trolled, or to acknowledge it as an unserious act of trolling, and so dismiss it as mere trolling. 0. Introduction The acceptance of trolling as a feature of internet communication, and the clustering together of behaviours that range from playfulness to abusive bullying under the term 'trolling' has interesting moral implications.

According to a view widely held in the media and in public discourse more generally, online hating is a social problem on a global scale. However, thus far there has been little scientific literature on the subject, and, to our best knowledge, there is even no established scholarly definition of online hating and online haters in the first place. The purpose of this manuscript is to provide a new perspective on online hating by, first, distinguishing online hating from the phenomena it is often confused with, such as trolling, cyberstalking, and online hate speech, and, second, by proposing an operational definition of online hating and online haters based on ethnographic interviews and surveys of the existing scholarly literature.