Adolescent trolling in online environments: a brief overview

Over the last couple of years there has been increasing media coverage about trolling among teenagers. The term ‘troll’ appears to have originated from a method of fishing, where an individual would fish by trailing a baited line behind a boat. However, many Internet users often use the description of being a ‘troll’ as a mythological creature that hides under bridges, waiting for an opportunity to pounce (Herring, Job - Sluder, Scheckler and Barab, 2002). With the latter definition, one can see the comparison with the modern day world with hiding under bridges being the online world waiting for an opportunity that may warrant a troll to take action. With the first definition, it is clear that casting a baited line as a form of provoking individuals into some form of emotional response. This article briefly examines a growing phenomenon – trolling by adolescents

Esports should not be confused with video gaming when reporting cyberbullying

The present communication provides clarifications and constructive criticism to the letter by Sharma et al. (2018) concerning cyberbullying in esports

Тролінг і його комунікативний потенціал

У статті представлено матеріал про тролінг як одну із сучасних комунікативних практик. Для дослідження були використані такі методи: зіставлення, спостереження, описовий метод і його основні прийоми – інвентаризацію та систематизацію мовних одиниць, метод анкетування, класифікаційний метод, метод когнітивної інтерпретації, елементи статистичного методу. Розглянуто сутність понять «троль», «тролінг», визначено основні мотиви й ознаки тролінгу, його комунікативну специфіку. Простежено явище тролінгу в динаміці, з’ясовано місце й семантику тролінгу в мовній свідомості сучасних українців

Seminar Users in the Arabic Twitter Sphere

We introduce the notion of "seminar users", who are social media users engaged in propaganda in support of a political entity. We develop a framework that can identify such users with 84.4% precision and 76.1% recall. While our dataset is from the Arab region, omitting language-specific features has only a minor impact on classification performance, and thus, our approach could work for detecting seminar users in other parts of the world and in other languages. We further explored a controversial political topic to observe the prevalence and potential potency of such users. In our case study, we found that 25% of the users engaged in the topic are in fact seminar users and their tweets make nearly a third of the on-topic tweets. Moreover, they are often successful in affecting mainstream discourse with coordinated hashtag campaigns.Comment: to appear in SocInfo 201

Стратегії тролінгу

У статті розглянуто стратегії тролінгу. З'ясовано, що для вибору стратегії комунікативної поведінки троля вирішальними чинниками є: 1) його роль (грубий чи тонкий троль); 2) спосіб досягнення цілей (відкрито чи намагання приховати справжні мотиви своєї діяльності); 3) тип майданчика для комунікації; 4) особливості цільової авдиторії

IN[The Hate Booth]: a gamified installation to counteract hate speech

Playing an online game, interacting on a social network or in a digital gaming community is part of the daily lives of most children and youth, with effects on the development of the personality, influence on the behavior and on the ability to manage conflicts. Studies and reports have been analyzing the interactions of online players, on gaming platforms and communities, as consumers and content producers, with the aim of understanding and finding effective ways to prevent hate speech from proliferating in these digital environments. In this article, we present a gamified installation, combining narrative and participatory approaches, as a response to the proliferation of online hate speech. The game-installation [IN]The Hate Booth consists of a light booth, where the interactor can find an interactive fiction game inspired by the videogame universe. This game will be the basis of a pedagogical itinerary, aiming to reflect on experiences with online hate speech and its effects inside and outside the virtual world [1, 2]. The initiative seeks to contribute to achieving and developing the sixteenth goal of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: the construction of peaceful and just societies, and effective, accountable and inclusive democracies at all levels.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

When Code Governs Community

We present a qualitative study of governance in the community of League of Legends, a popular Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game developed by Riot Games. To cope with toxic behaviors such as griefing and flaming, Riot Games initially implemented a crowdsourcing system inviting players to participate in governing their own community. However, in May, 2014, they automated the system, relying heavily on code while minimizing the level of human participation. We analyzed both players’ and Riot Games’ narratives to understand their attitudes towards the relationship between human judgment and automation, as well as between alienation and community. We found stark differences between players and Riot Games in terms of attitudes towards code and value in designing online governance. We discuss how the design of governance might impact online community

Gender differences in the association between cyberbullying victimization and perpetration: the role of anger rumination and traditional bullying experiences

Studies investigating the similarities and differences in traditional bullying and cyberbullying experiences have demonstrated considerable gender differences concerning its determinants. The aim of the present study was to provide further evidence for the differential role of determinants for males and females by investigating the moderating role of traditional bullying and anger rumination in the relationship of past cyberbullying victimization and recent cyberbullying perpetration in respect to gender. A total of 1500 Hungarian adolescents and adults (57.9% male, Mage = 28.9 years, SD = 8.7) completed an online survey on bullying experiences. Results indicated that males were more likely than females to engage in cyberbullying when they had been previously bullied online. Furthermore, high anger rumination elevated the risk of perpetration among male cyberbullying victims, while repeated victimization in traditional bullying increased the risk of cyberbullying perpetration among females. These results underline the importance of considering gender differences in intervention efforts against bullying

The toxicity of our (virtual) cities: Prevalence of dark participation in games and perceived effectiveness of reporting tools

Dark participation in games (i.e., trolling and toxic behavior) have been gaining ever-increasing academic attention as a negative aspect of online gaming. Much of the literature in this area has focused on the personality and identity of the perpetrators, but this has been largely outside of the gaming context. The present study aims to explore the prevalence rates of dark participation in the online gaming community, the reporting function to punish deviant players, and the importance of dual identities (troll and gamer) in the perpetration of deviant in-game behaviors. Our results indicated that nearly all players in our sample had been victims of dark participation or witnessed in-game victimization, suggesting that it is a major problem in the community, but that many players also use the reporting function. Troll identity was predictive of these behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed