Anyone Can Become a Troll

Abstract

In online communities, antisocial behavior such as trolling disrupts constructive discussion. While prior work suggests that trolling behavior is confined to a vocal and antisocial minority, we demonstrate that ordinary people can engage in such behavior as well. We propose two primary trigger mechanisms: the individual’s mood, and the surrounding context of a discussion (e.g., exposure to prior trolling behavior). Through an experiment simulating an online discussion, we find that both negative mood and seeing troll posts by others significantly increases the probability of a user trolling, and together double this probability. To support and extend these results, we study how these same mechanisms play out in the wild via a data-driven, longitudinal analysis of a large online news discussion community. This analysis reveals temporal mood effects, and explores long range patterns of repeated exposure to trolling. A predictive model of trolling behavior shows that mood and discussion context together can explain trolling behavior better than an individual’s history of trolling. These results combine to suggest that ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, behave like trolls.

News Values, Cognitive Biases, and Partisan Incivility in Comment Sections

“…We extend this research by looking at behavior on a live news site in response to a diverse range of comments. Other work has treated flagging as an indicator of trolling (Cheng, Bernstein, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, & Leskovec, 2017). Here, we treat flagging not as a proxy, but as a meaningful indication of how users react to the attributes of a comment.…”

A Bad Workman Blames His Tweets: The Consequences of Citizens' Uncivil Twitter Use When Interacting With Party Candidates

“…However, this by no means indicates that the presence of such responses to candidates' tweets should not alter how they approach their social media communication. Politeness and civility are fundamental requirements for democratic discourse (Mutz & Reeves, ; Papacharissi, ) and the anonymity behind which many users choose to hide themselves allows for limitless abuse (Cheng, Danescu‐Niculescu‐Mizil, & Leskovec, ; Davis, ), which can ultimately influence the motivations behind the communication style of candidates.…”

Normative Change and Culture of Hate: An Experiment on Online Environments

“…This claim is based on the observation that presenting a context where antisocial behavior is common brings about more antisocial behavior, such as littering, stealing, or jaywalking (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990;Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg, 2008;Keuschnigg & Wolbring, 2015). A similar process has been found in online contexts, where prior troll comments affect the likelihood of subsequent trolling (Cheng, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Leskovec, & Bernstein, 2017). This cascading dynamic is linked to a process of spreading norm violations: people learn from each other which kind of behavior is approved and which behavior people are to expect in particular situations.…”