Trolling: Definition, Prevalence and Effects - Essay Sample

Introduction

In the current world, technology has been a critical facilitator in development and communication in various sectors. However, due to continuous of technology advancement in sectors such as social media, the internet has continued to promote attacks in various forms. For instance, trolling has been encountered in various social media. Based on various sectors' grounds, trolling has been defined in various forms. This paper ought to establish various definitions of trolling and whether there exist sufficient protection methods of individuals against trolling.

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Trolling Definitions

Trolling has been defined in various forms from various documents depending on the individual understanding and the trolling effect towards the individuals in the society. Trolling refers to deviant behaviour that has a negative impact on online use. Sanfilippo, Yang, and Fichman (2017,p. 243) describe trolling as the art of secretly and deliberately pissing off people an identity game on the deception that is conducted without the player's consent. The online trolling vary by context, depending on the troller intention (Fichman and Sanfilippo 2015, p.171). Some are motivational, social, or even ideological.

To sustain to be a troll, you prove to be an internet mastery, as well as the practices that support that of your target (Wilson, Fuller, and McCrea's 2013, p.1). You confirm your distinction in the game position that marshal and accumulate technology social capital as well as cultural. (Fuller and McCrea 2013, p.2) Define trolling as the act of cleverly pissing people over the internet by use of dialogue. It involves convincing the targeted victims by making them believe in what you as the troll is saying or giving your targeted victims instructions that are malicious in the name of helping. The author state that the act of trolling requires deceiving, and if the trolling does not involve victim deceiving, it does not fall under trolling. The victims have to know you are trolling.

Donath (2002, p.45) suggests that trolling involves a game on identity deception that is played without the player awareness. The troll aims at passing legitimate contestants who share common group interests and concerns and new members of the group. While to scholars such as (Coleman, 2012 p.45) partakes trolling as a tradition-rich artistic of scene and transgression that incorporates the irrelevant legacy of phreaks and the underground hackers. According to Coleman, the trolls do not fall under disruptors of the community on the internet. Still, they act as their defenders that respond to internet community massification of digital life.

Trolls, cyberbullies, hackers, as well as the flamers, have always been part of the disruption, anger, and upset to online users since the invention of electronic communication methods (Parson 2018, p.11). Despite the troll taking themselves as comedians who may consider their action as harmless, the act of trolling is categorized as a stern social problem that interrupts the society's internet experience that needs to be prevented.

Further, other scholars such as Buckels (2014,p.1) defines trolling as the practice of behaving in a destructive manner in the internet social setting with no apparent reason. He emphasizes by saying, trolls act as the agents of destruction on the internet through the exploitation of hot button issues so as to make the internet users appear foolish in some ways. Further, in the scholars' article, it establishes trolling as the attention-seeking pleasure as well as revenge with the intention of damaging the community in regard to their trolling motivation.

According to Jane (2014, p.532), trolling is defined by the international medias report as an online hostility. The report establishes a version of the latter, which is referred to as the RIP trolling, where the Facebook images are destroyed with images of pornographic or use of comments that are offensive.

Case and King (2018, p.2), in their study on Internet Trolling Victimization, defines online trolling as repetitive online behaviour that is disruptively executed by an individual towards other online users. The perpetrator who is referred to as the troll is described as a member of the online community who causes trouble through posting of videos, photos, or other certain comments. The scholar characterized trolls in various forms such as insult troll, troll on persistence debate, and all caps troll.

Individual Protection Against Trolling

Despite the continuous act of trolling being executed in most of the social media today, no one has taken the critical initiative in ensuring the menace has been stopped. Several incidences have been reported regarding trolling from various individuals such has sexual insult toward women in most of the social media, but generally, very minimal actions have been taken by the social communication media responsible (Ings 2010,p.80). For instance, women are mainly trolled with a threat to physical violence on Twitter, a condition that led researcher Matias to report the incidence to Women Action Media organization. Due to this, Twitter was condemned for lack of taking any action in stopping the trolling act against women (Bishop 2015, p.441). However, in some countries such as Australia, the trolling behaviour has strongly been condemned by imposing strict action against trolls (Dynel 2016, p.263). The Australian Commission for Human Right do acknowledge the misuse of internet hinders free speech and thus the restriction for ensuring the safety of the users need to be recognized as a necessity. For instance, in one trolling incidence in Australia was experience when hatred was posted against model Charlotte on Twitter. The trolling incidence was considered a factor in her suicidal (Nycyk 2017, p.4).

Further, Case and King (2018, p.2) state that trolling offense occurs to online users without protection, a study that consisted of 134,000 social media offenses found that over 88% of the post was experienced on Twitter. Further, according to the children charity organization NSPCC in the U.K. established that every one youth among four has been experiencing upsets on social media communication, a condition that was admitted by the Twitter general counsel Vijaya Dadden that Twitter has been responding slow when dealing with trolls. However, due to the continuous occurrence of trolling, some social media have begun initiating changes. For instance, in the year 2010, Twitter social media came up with a new default profile for its customers who previously had not uploaded to their account platform (Durden and Gaynor 2013, p. 558). Further, in the year 2016 Twitter started the identification process of the users who had received a ban due to their abusive behaviour and created search feature that is safe and has the potential of removing sensitive tweets content as well as the tweets from the muted and blocked account from the search result (Kolpin and Singell 2017, p.411).

Case and King (2018, p.3) states establish that despite being no existing law for prohibiting online abuse in the U.S., the law has been enacted in 35 states and Washington, D.C. In the year 2016, a Virginian man, together with his family were awarded $1.4 million civil judgment by the jury, which was considered as the highest penalty on the case of internet trolling in the history of the U.S. (McCright and Dunlap 2018,p. 216).

In Australia, the law has taken a step forward in punishing the trolling acts. The current Australian troll legislation prosecution lies under the office of the Attorney Generals Department Act (No.2) 2004. Based on Part 10.6 Division 474.17(1), the act aims at regulating internet services when an individual uses the internet to cause an offense such as the harassment to other users. The current Australian laws have been applied in prosecuting the trolls. For instance, the law has been enforced in trolling whereby when individuals set up memorial pages, and later they are dishonored through trolling comment. Such trolling causes debate among the public, calling for steep action against trolls. Mostly, in such incidences, the trolls tune to fake accounts, but some never hide their identity.

Additionally, Fokin's study (2014, p.3) established that the trolling process has been promoting warfare, a situation that shows how unprotected the situation is. The case has established social media to be the main supporter of increasing military actions. For instance, in the conflict between Russian Ukrainian, it was demonstrated how the false accounts and identities were utilized in disseminating the narratives via the social media, blogs as well as the web comments with the aim of deceiving and manipulate the opponent (Yang and Quan-Haase 2017,p. 83). However, despite the lack of published strategies that are official, the Russian government does not endorse the trolling activity. Thus, since the trolling is not outlined in any strategy from the law, it facilitated the Russian to deny accusations regarding trolling activities Fichma & Sanfilippo, 2015, p.177).

According to AI-Powered protection (2019,p.8), many individuals fall in trolling due to lack of public oversight, which gives the roll a room to engage in unacceptable social behavior that violates the social norms or leading to a collision with the perpetrators in their own offline contexts. The criminality model, along with other analyses of RAT, established that the day to day situations facilitate individuals to troll over others without technology guardian that has the capability of limiting trolling. Further, internet users do not treat other users as being anonymous despite them knowing their real identity.

While Nyst and Monaco (2018,p.1), on their report, explains how various governments sponsors online hate as well as the harassment campaigns. For instance, the report describes how the United States is being used for intimidating and silencing government critics. Further, other states that were established to contain the harassment campaigns included Ecuador, Turkey, Venezuela, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan. The report contained various policies that are implemented by the businesses and the government in reining into individual digital abuse, advocates as well as the journalists critical of the government (Bishop 2014, P.169).The state-sponsored trolling use similar mechanisms such as causing deaths, amplifying attacks using boats as well as using malicious P.R. firms in disseminating hyper-partisan in their governments. In Venezuela, trolls signed-in Twitter account and Instagram account for the government sanction in town were rewarded for their participation in accessing scares foods. Further, in the report, a self-described Indian former troll confessed to having been given half a dozen Facebook account, including eight cell phones after him joining the team of 300 that cooperated in intimidating the prime ministers Narendra opponent. While in Ecuador, the contacting document contained payment of government to a public company that was responsible for setting up and running a trolling farm that was used for harassing the opponent on the political side.

Conclusion

Based on the various definitions of trolling, it can be evidenced that the menace is executed in various forms to which are all aimed at causing harm to the online users. Several definitions of trolling have established how the condition has caused various harms to individuals, both private as well as in the government sectors. The menace has been established to cause several harms in various social media communication channels such as Twitter and Facebook, a condition that has rendered several users annoyed with the individuals responsible for controlling the communication media.

Additionally, it has been established how unsafe the...