issue22
Issue 22: Trolls and the Negative Space of the Internet
Troll Theory? We only talk about trolls inside a polemic. To aver that someone is trolling is to allege that their participation conceals the aims of their disruption; by implication, they are to be excluded or dismissed. The Internet’s folk wisdom for trolls says: ‘Do not feed them!’ This remedy rests on a belief that acknowledgement and interaction are the barest matters of subsistence in an attention economy. To call out a troll is thus to recognise who ought or ought not speak or be listened to. Since to describe an interlocutor as a troll is to invite a third party to put them beyond the pale, the charge is often contested. We can understand this as, at once, an artefact of agonistic politics and as an attempt to avoid it. It is reassertion of the ‘table manners’ (Arditi, 2006) of liberal civility; like any such insistence it can be a way…
FCJ-163 Olympic Trolls: Mainstream Memes and Digital Discord?
Tama Leaver Curtin University [Abstract] Introduction During 2012, the Australian and international press frequently deployed the accusation of ‘trolling’ as part of a wider moral panic about supposedly anonymous online abuse facilitated by social media. The term trolling has been applied to a range of activities, many of which are simultaneously labelled abuse, (cyber)bullying and general mischief. Despite clear early work on trolls in Usenet discussion groups (Donath, 1999), there is surprisingly little detailed research on trolling, and what exists is largely focused on the provocative and ephemeral internet image board 4chan, and the related Anonymous movement (Phillips, 2011b; 2012a). As 4chan has been a hotbed for the creation of online memes—jokes and images, often combining text and visuals, following a particular style or grammar, which are rapidly spread across the internet—memes and trolling have often been tied together. However, this paper focuses on a more banal example of memes…
FCJ-159 /b/lack up: What Trolls Can Teach Us About Race
Tanner Higgin Independent Scholar [Abstract] I hate racists (even if I sometimes play one on the internet). Paulie Socash (Phillips, 2012) Closing Pools, Posing Questions I’d been a fringe observer of 4chan and /b/ for years, aware but ignorant of its pleasures and horrors. Then in a particularly aimless night of YouTube browsing, I watched something that plunged me into the /b/ abyss. It was a player made World of Warcraft (WOW) machinima video featuring a white human avatar dressed in plain clothes and a wide brimmed hat. This wasn’t remarkable, but what followed him—a group of dark skinned human avatars—was. Couched in a Benny Hill sensibility, the video featured a pack of ‘slaves’ who chased and were chased by the ‘slave master’ through the city of Stormwind to crowds of (one can assume) perplexed, entertained, and offended onlookers. The ‘slave chase video’ as I refer to it (it’s long…
FCJ-166 ‘Change name to No One. Like people’s status’ Facebook Trolling and Managing Online Personas
Tero Karppi University of Turku, Finland [Abstract] Whitney Phillips (2012: 3) has recently argued that in order to understand trolls and trolling we should focus on ‘what trolls do’ and how the behaviour of trolls ‘fit[s] in and emerge[s] alongside dominant ideologies.’ [1] For Phillips dominant ideologies are connected to the ‘corporate media logic.’ Her point is that social media platforms are not objective or ‘neutral’, but function according to certain cultural and economic logic and reproduce that logic through the platforms at various levels. [2] The premise, which I will build on in this article, is that the logic of a social media platform can be explored through the troll. In the following I will discuss how trolls and trolling operate alongside Facebook’s politics and practices of user participation and user agency. I provide a material “close reading” of two particular types of trolls and trolling within Facebook –…
FCJ-162 Symbolic violence in the online field: Calls for ‘civility’ in online discussion
Shannon SindorfUniversity of Colorado, Boulder [Abstract] Introduction In light of early high hopes for the democratic potential of online discussion, the reality of attacks, hostility, vitriol, and at times racist and sexist sentiments can be alarming (Coffey and Woolworth, 2004; Carlin, Schill, Levasseur, and King, 2005; Hlavach and Frievogel, 2011; Richardson and Stanyer, 2011; Herring, Job-Sluder, Scheckler, and Barab, 2012). According to some, if these spaces are to be valuable, the participants should have to maintain some level of mutual respect. Concerns over vitriol in anonymous online comments have led some newspapers that maintain online forums to alter their commenting systems. Some have abandoned anonymity, some require comments be tied to Facebook identities, and in some cases, newspapers have closed their comments sections entirely (Mart, 2010; Bangert, 2011; Crider, 2011; Kennedy, 2012). The rationale for freedom of expression is that healthy democracy requires that its citizens be able to freely…
FCJ-154 Trolls, Peers and the Diagram of Collaboration
Nathaniel Tkacz University of Warwick [Abstract] I begin with two images. The first image is actually a diagram. [1] Call it the new diagram of work; specifically, of working together online. It is the diagram of collaboration. The diagram of collaboration is abstracted from any particular setting or function. There is no representation of time, and its spatial logics are purely relational, or topological. Collaboration takes place in the open, under conditions of openness. Workers, or participants, are first and foremost equal. The two-dimensional bodies are literally cut from the same stuff, and their synoptic gaze is spread symmetrically and indiscriminately. Their circular arrangement and lack of distinguishing qualities further emphasises the non-hierarchical or ‘peer’ nature of this mode of work. Difference is only registered in the varying colours of the 2D cutouts. The vibrancy of these colours suggests they are to be celebrated, that they are generally and vaguely…
FCJ-154 Trolls, Peers and the Diagram of Collaboration
Nathaniel Tkacz University of Warwick [Abstract] I begin with two images. The first image is actually a diagram. [1] Call it the new diagram of work; specifically, of working together online. It is the diagram of collaboration. The diagram of collaboration is abstracted from any particular setting or function. There is no representation of time, and its spatial logics are purely relational, or topological. Collaboration takes place in the open, under conditions of openness. Workers, or participants, are first and foremost equal. The two-dimensional bodies are literally cut from the same stuff, and their synoptic gaze is spread symmetrically and indiscriminately. Their circular arrangement and lack of distinguishing qualities further emphasises the non-hierarchical or ‘peer’ nature of this mode of work. Difference is only registered in the varying colours of the 2D cutouts. The vibrancy of these colours suggests they are to be celebrated, that they are generally and vaguely…
FCJ-164 ‘Don’t be Rude on the Road’: Cycle Blogging, Trolling and Lifestyle
Steve Jones Nottingham Trent University [Abstract] Introduction In her introduction to Cyclebabble: bloggers on biking (2011: ix), the British journalist Zoe Williams argues that, whatever cyclists’ differences, ‘We revel in our differences: Lycra mankini or tweed trousers tucked into your sock? Traffic lights – a suggestion or an order? Racer or hybrid, helmet or commando, freewheel or fixie. Nothing sours the bond’. And yet the Guardian’s ‘Bike Blog’, the on-line discussion board from which the selection of posts in Cyclebabble is drawn, is partly constituted by precisely such a souring of the bond. Accusations of trolling abound, from both within and outside cycling’s various practices and subcultures. In particular, discussion is regularly prefaced or framed–as in the quote above–by a set of negative conventions (such as riding through red lights, the exemption of cycling from ‘road tax’, or the wearing of ‘inappropriate’ clothing), which are variously used to condemn all…
FCJ-167 Spraying, fishing, looking for trouble: The Chinese Internet and a critical perspective on the concept of trolling
Gabriele de Seta Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. [Abstract] ‘There is always need for a certain degree of civilisation before it is possible to understand this kind of humor" Wang Xiaobo, Civilisation and Satire’ Introduction: Why trolls, why China? As an interdisciplinary field, Internet research is in the challenging position of having to work out useful concepts and categories from precarious jargons, concepts and categories that are constantly tested against, and challenged by, the magmatic and unpredictable development of Internet cultures. From “netiquette” and “hacking” to “cyberspace” itself (The Economist, 1997), the fascinating vocabulary of Internet research constantly runs the risk of falling out of date and revealing the failure of academia to keep pace with the fast metamorphoses of online interaction. The ephemeral vernaculars of Internet cultures are often preserved by academic accounts in partial renditions of terms decoupled from their current usage, crystallised…
FCJ-161 Productive Provocations: Vitriolic Media, Spaces of Protest and Agonistic Outrage in the 2011 England Riots
Anthony McCosker Swinburne University, Faculty of Life and Social Sciences Amelia Johns Deakin University, Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation [Abstract] To act, then, is neither arriving at a scene nor fleeing from it, but actually engaging in its creation. (Isin, 2008: 27) Introduction The intense social upheaval that spread through a number of UK cities in what became known variously as the ‘London riots’, ‘England’s summer of disorder’, or more generally the ‘2011 England riots’, signalled the terrifying speed with which passionate disaffection can turn to uncontained violence. In the aftermath, much investment was made in searches for causes, as governments, scholars and the general public wondered how normally peaceful city streets across the country could come to resemble a war zone. Much of the commentary in the mainstream media reflected traditional ideological debates between the left and right of the political spectrum. Conservative politicians blaming the events on the…
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