Rise and Impact of Trolls as a Form of Social Reaction on Social Media in India

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Sr. No.

CONTENTS

Pg.

No.

1.

INTRODUCTION

1.1 History of Trolls

1.2 Types of Social Media Trolls

1.3 Examples of Social Media Trolling

1-4

2.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

5-7

3.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Statement of the problem

3.2 Objectives

3.3 Research Questions

3.4 Research Design

3.5 Sampling

8-9

4.

DATA ANALYSIS & INTERPRETATION

10-16

5.

FINDINGS

17

6.

CONCLUSION

18

7.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

19

8.

APPENDIX

20

INTRODUCTION

The word 'troll' is used for a mythical creature in the Scandinavian folklore who is known to be an ugly, dirty and angry creature that lives in dark places, waiting to get hold of anything that passed by for a quick meal. In some ways, the mythical troll is similar to the internet troll. But what exactly is an internet troll and what is meant by trolling?

According to Jiwon Shin, Ph.D., of the Teachers College of Columbia University, "A troll is a person who interrupts communication on the internet and is often seen as problematic or even (as) criminals." A troll is also someone who stirs up drama online by purposely sowing the seeds of hatred, misogyny, racism or just simple bickering between others. Even though internet troll is a new breed of annoyance is it also sometimes a breed of hilarity.

We use the term "trolling" to describe anything from innocent pranks to mean tweets to vicious harassment. The most striking feature of worst trolls is that the person is extremely strong on her or his views and won't change it for anything and will stick to whatever they have said or posted on social media. Trolling also means the act of creating pictures or videos or posting comments online either to hurt a person or to prank well-known public figures for a small mistake which they must have done knowingly or unknowingly.

1.1 History of trolls

As most people think, 'troll' is not a creation of Twitter or Facebook but the troll is almost as old as the World Wide Web.

According to Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest known mention of the word in the context of the internet was December 14, 1992 on a internet forum called Usenet.

“Trolling was used as a general, condemnatory, post-hoc descriptor of an online encounter,” Mercer University professor Whitney Phillips wrote in The Atlantic back in 2012. “It was—and in many circles remains—something you accused someone else of being.” She also said that the term entered the public consciousness largely due to media interventions.

Trolling evolved from humorous to cutting, said troll researcher Jonathan Bishop. “At one point in time all trolling was ‘trolling for the lolz’, [Ed note: laughter] but then Anonymous used it for ‘trolling for the lulz.’ i.e. laughter at someone else’s expense. In 2011, a man named Sean Duffy from U.K. made