Internet Trolling - Serious Problem or New Kind of Sport?

Internet Trolling ­ serious problem or new kind of sport? Trolling is a real plague of the internet. Seen everywhere, trolls engage flame wars, vandalise Facebook walls and do many more unpleasant things. People, who want to fight with it seek its cause in excess of freedom in the internet and propose restricting it. Is it the right way with dealing with internet trolling? I do not think so. By examining a few cases of trolling I have drawn a conclusion, that although internet anonymity is a beginning factor responsible for trolling, the real reason for existence of this phenomenon are reactions of people, that trolls gets, that are providing him attention and amusement he desires. It is difficult to define for sure the term trolling. It’s meaning departed greatly from the original meaning. Originally, as Susan Herring, author of a research on trolling on online forums states, this term was used mainly on discussion forums and referred merely “luring others into pointless and timeconsuming discussions.”1 Troll uses intentionally incorrect or controversial statements to draw naive and liable to manipulation users into the argument they could not possibly win. This kind of trolling is still the most common way of work for trolls. Yet, nowadays this term does not seem to cover every phenomenon that is referred as trolling. In fact, four cases of trolling I am going to cite to establish main reason for trolling are completely out of bounds of this definition. That is why, for remainder of this work, I refer to trolling as to every mean, that troll uses to cause chaos, confusion and emotions in the internet society the sake of his own amusement. It seems to be commonly agreed, that the feel of anonymity that the internet gives is one of the main factors, that makes existence of trolls and flamers possible. Tim Adams, staff writer for the

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Herring, Susan; Job­Sluder, Kirk; Scheckler, Rebecca; Barab, Sasha (2002). "Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling"

References: 1.  Herring, Susan; Job­Sluder, Kirk; Scheckler, Rebecca; Barab, Sasha (2002). "Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum", Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University. 2. Tom de Castella, Virginia Brown, “Trolling: Who does it and why?”, BBC News Magazine, September 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine­14898564 3. Mattathias Schwartz, “The Trolls Among Us”, The New York Times Magazine, August 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls­t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0 4. Tim Adams, “How the internet created an age of rage” , The Observer, July 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet­anonymity­trolling­tim­adams