Political Trolling Research Articles

Visual Representation of Selected Malaysian Political Trolling on Social Media: Disclose the Ideology and Power

The visual variety involving internet political trolling in Malaysia also adds to and impacts the audience's awareness of this resource. The existence of internet trolling encourages the audience's openness to give diverse responses and perceptions in politics in Malaysia. Thus, these responses and views will have a big impact on anything that is depicted visually, especially on social media. This study examines the ideology and power behind visual internet trolling on social media. For this purpose, the research methodology applies a qualitative approach based on visual content. Social media such as Twitter is used as the medium and unit of analysis of this study in visual sources. Adaptation of the theory uses Fairclough's (1995) critical discourse analysis and Visual Semiotics Theory by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) in studying selected visual trolling. By using a combination and adaptation of these theories, visual ideology, and power can be best unraveled. The results of the study found that the visual production of Malaysian politicians' trolling aims to have an impact on the audience's attitude through the ideology and power that is visualized in Malaysian politics. The visual ideological and power construction of trolling also successfully creates an alternative for the audience to express their perceptions and rights, namely the right of expression which underlies to support or criticize Malaysian politics. This study provides knowledge and understanding about the ideology and power behind visual trolling in the Malaysian political context.

Bots influence opinion dynamics without direct human-bot interaction: the mediating role of recommender systems

Bots’ ability to influence public discourse is difficult to estimate. Recent studies found that hyperpartisan bots are unlikely to influence public opinion because bots often interact with already highly polarized users. However, previous studies focused on direct human-bot interactions (e.g., retweets, at-mentions, and likes). The present study suggests that political bots, zealots, and trolls may indirectly affect people’s views via a platform’s content recommendation system's mediating role, thus influencing opinions without direct human-bot interaction. Using an agent-based opinion dynamics simulation, we isolated the effect of a single bot—representing 1% of nodes in a network—on the opinion of rational Bayesian agents when a simple recommendation system mediates the agents’ content consumption. We compare this experimental condition with an identical baseline condition where such a bot is absent. Across conditions, we use the same random seed and a psychologically realistic Bayesian opinion update rule so that conditions remain identical except for the bot presence. Results show that, even with limited direct interactions, the mere presence of the bot is sufficient to shift the average population’s opinion. Virtually all nodes—not only nodes directly interacting with the bot—shifted towards more extreme opinions. Furthermore, the mere bot’s presence significantly affected the internal representation of the recommender system. Overall, these findings offer a proof of concept that bots and hyperpartisan accounts can influence population opinions not only by directly interacting with humans but also by secondary effects, such as shifting platforms’ recommendation engines’ internal representations. The mediating role of recommender systems creates indirect causal pathways of algorithmic opinion manipulation.

Digital Propaganda: The Power of Influencers

Attempts to manipulate public opinion using social media and emerging information communication technologies (ICTs) continue to proliferate internationally. Governments, corporations, extremist groups, and a wide variety of other entities around the globe now commonly use both automated bots and anonymous human "sockpuppet" accounts in efforts to amplify and suppress particular streams of information during elections, security crises, and other pivotal events. They use these same tools to sow disinformation and engage in organized political trolling campaigns. However, the technologies and tactics used in these internet-based "influence operations" are changing. This essay leverages insights from over 70 interviews with people who both produce and track online manipulation campaigns. It compares emerging trends in digital disinformation and computational propaganda across the globe using qualitative data from 12 countries—Burma, Brazil, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United States. In essence, internet-borne manipulation efforts are evolving from relatively unsophisticated "inorganic" campaigns pushed by social media bots and towards more complex "semi-organic" efforts combining both coordinated human users and artificial intelligence software. Additional, related, trends include the increased coercive political use of social media influencers and encrypted and private messaging applications.

The imaginative dimension of digital disinformation: Fake news, political trolling, and the entwined crises of Covid-19 and inter-Asian racism in a postcolonial city.

This article uses the concept of the ‘imaginative dimension of digital disinformation’ to explore how inter-Asian racism in a postcolonial city matters to the way people engage with racially tinged Covid-19 digital disinformation. It pays attention to two key socialities that fake news and political trolling online seek to weaponise: people's existing social narratives as well as their relationally embedded practices of media consumption. Drawing on 15 life story interviews with locals from the Philippines capital of Manila, this article characterises their interpretations of online disinformation campaigns that aim to amplify their shared social narrative of resentment towards China and bank on their communicative practices surrounding this. It also aims to show the value of empirical research that possesses a transnational sensibility in assessing the interpretive and social dynamics surrounding such racist Covid-19 digital disinformation.

Troll Culture in Bangladesh: A Study on social media

Bangladesh's rapid proliferation of online communication platforms has given rise to a pervasive and impactful phenomenon, troll culture.This paper is written on the characteristics of troll culture in our country as online trolling become a new trend in our country, especially on social networking sites. It aims to explore the characteristics of troll culture in the country, shedding light on its various manifestations, the underlying behavioral patterns, and the consequential societal impact.Troll culture has become an integral part of online communication inBangladesh. This study aims to explore the different types of trolls in Bangladesh, their behavior, and the impact of troll culture on society. Social Media has revolutionized the way people communicate, behave, and interact within this virtual landscape people connect with others.These days online trolling gains momentum, particularly on social networking sites, and its nuances become imperative for both academic discourse and societal well-being.The researcher adopted a mixed-methods design incorporating both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis techniques. The quantitative aspect involves the use of surveys and data analytics to quantify the prevalence of trolling and its various forms.On the qualitative part content analysis is utilized to gain a nuanced understanding of troll behavior.Utilized some random sampling techniques to ensure a representative dataset and conducted frequency analysis to quantify the prevalence of trolling and identify patterns. The findings reveal that there are various types of trolls in Bangladesh, including political trolls, social media trolls, and cyberbullies. The study also found that troll behavior is mainly driven by group identity, anonymity, and the desire for attention and validation. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of troll culture by examining both overt and covert scenariosand their implications for the cultural fabric of Bangladesh

Sharp power in social media: Patterns from datasets across electoral campaigns

Using Christopher Walker’s and Jessica Ludwig’s ‘sharp power’ theoretical framework, and based on some preliminary findings from the May 2019 European Parliament election and the two 2019 rounds of elections in Israel, this article describes a novel method for the automatic detection of political trolls and bots active in Twitter in the October 2019 federal election in Canada. The research identified thousands of accounts invested in Canadian politics that presented a unique activity pattern, significantly different from accounts in a control group. The large-scale cross-cross-sectional approach enabled a distinctive perspective on foreign political meddling in Twitter during the recent federal election campaign. Thisforeign political meddling, we argue, aims at manipulating and poisoning the democratic process and can challenge democracies and their values, as well as their societal resilience.

НОВАЯ ВЛАСТНО-ОБЩЕСТВЕННАЯ КОММУНИКАТИВИСТИКА И ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИЕ ПОСЛЕДСТВИЯ ЦИФРОВОЙ ТРАНСФОРМАЦИИ СОЦИУМА

The purpose of the article is to consider the influence of the processes of digital transformation of society on the change of the model of power and public communications. The positions and arguments of technological optimists and alarmists on the prospects for the development or involution of democracy in the context of further digitalization are considered. Scenario variants of the political consequences of the "digital revolution"are presented. A special place is given to the analysis of the discourse, catalyzed by anti-covid events, around the problem of a new type of totalitarianism. The author, pointing to the opportunities of digitalization that are favorable for the development of power and public relations, also notes the risks associated with it for the political sphere. As a result of the research, the author suggests two main directions of digital transformation in the field of political communication in the medium term: 1) creative, enhancing the effectiveness of dialogue communications between the authorities and the public (including through the implementation of the national project "Digital Economy of the Russian Federation"), 2) destructive, forming the language of hostility in society and the activity of anonymous political trolls that generate conflict.

The impact of gender and political affiliation on trolling

Political trolling on social media platforms is more common than ever before, attracting media and scholarly attention. We examined if trolling target’s gender and ideology impact the extent of trolling towards their tweet, based on content analysis of 3,000 Twitter comments. We found both main and interaction effects of gender and political affiliation on trolling, specifically: tweets by female politicians were trolled more than tweets by male; tweets by Republicans were trolled more than tweets by Democrats; and tweets by male Democrats were trolled less than tweets by all other politicians.

Trolls at the polls

This article considers how politically motivated Internet trolling, within the context of the Malaysia from May 2018 until February 2020, made use of affordances of algorithms and platforms to achieve their goals, from targeted attacks on individuals to collective interventions for advancing social and informational justice. Centering on the importance of digital platforms and algorithms in framing and shaping online communication, this article explores the decisions, actions, and policies which, framed and shaped by these algorithms, produced a particular space in Malaysian political discourse that enables Internet-based political trolls. Attention is given to the infrastructure of trolling, as well as the platforms supporting and cultivating the practice of trolling that are usually international in their ownership, development, and user base. By focusing on the trollish practices of a “minor” non-Western community in Asia, we attempt to theorize the effects of digital infrastructure at the periphery of multinational platforms based on participant-observation research and media-textual analysis.

Book Review: Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism and Resistance and Social Media and Politics in Turkey: A Journey Through Citizen Journalism, Political Trolling, and Fake News by Murat Akser and Victoria McCollum and Erkan Saka

Book Review: <i>Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism and Resistance</i> and <i>Social Media and Politics in Turkey: A Journey Through Citizen Journalism, Political Trolling, and Fake News</i> by Murat Akser and Victoria McCollum and Erkan Saka

Digital Disinformation and the Imaginative Dimension of Communication

To nuance current understandings of the proliferation of digital disinformation, this article seeks to develop an approach that emphasizes the imaginative dimension of this communication phenomenon. Anchored on ideas about the sociality of communication, this piece conceptualizes how fake news and political trolling online work in relation to particular shared understandings people have of their socio-political landscape. It offers the possibility of expanding the information-oriented approach to communication taken by many journalistic interventions against digital disinformation. It particularly opens up alternatives to the problematic strategy of challenging social media manipulation solely by doubling down on objectivity and facts.

Linguistic Cues to Deception: Identifying Political Trolls on Social Media

The ease with which information can be shared on social media has opened it up to abuse and manipulation. One example of a manipulation campaign that has garnered much attention recently was the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, with Russia accused of, among other things, using trolls and malicious accounts to spread misinformation and politically biased information. To take an in-depth look at this manipulation campaign, we collected a dataset of 13 million election-related posts shared on Twitter in 2016 by over a million distinct users. This dataset includes accounts associated with the identified Russian trolls as well as users sharing posts in the same time period on a variety of topics around the 2016 elections. To study how these trolls attempted to manipulate public opinion, we identified 49 theoretically grounded linguistic markers of deception and measured their use by troll and non-troll accounts. We show that deceptive language cues can help to accurately identify trolls, with average F1 score of 82% and recall 88%.

A commentary on the special issue Performance and Citizenship: Challenging populist political performances through citizenship as performance?

This piece teases out the links between this special issue’s key themes regarding performance and citizenship and the distinct realities of transitional democracies. To contribute to generating insights into other countries currently in the grip of populist political regimes, it looks at the case of the Philippines. In this context, it matters to think about the diversity of productions that can enable performances of citizenship. This is because contemporary media and communication research in the country has understandably but narrowly prioritised the toxicity of online political discourse brought about by the rise of populist political performances and political trolling. It also matters in the Philippines to think about the role of those involved in productions about performances of citizenship. This is because of the problems posed by how ‘authenticity’ has been hijacked by populism and has been weaponised against those who seek to critique the current political dispensation.

Comment Sections as Targets of Dark Participation? Journalists’ Evaluation and Moderation of Deviant User Comments

ABSTRACTUser comments, as the most prominent form of participation in online journalism, offer multiple options for so-called dark participation, comments that transgress norms of politeness or honesty with partially sinister motives. Strategic forms of dark participation such as political trolling in user comments have both raised attention and global concern. Community managers are expected to guard the gates of their comment sections, carefully disentangling valid opinions from manipulated statements—with the obvious danger of either censoring genuine speech or letting potentially damaging content slip through. So far, empirical studies on how media actors perceive this challenge and how they respond to it, especially in light of strategic attempts at manipulation, are scarce. The current study aims to fill this gap. Based on a series of guided interviews (N = 25), we explored community managers’ experiences with dark participation in German newspaper sites. The qualitative analysis of the content of the interviews identified four types of comment section managers, ranging from unconcerned gatekeepers to relaxed gate-watchers, alarmed guards, and struggling fighters.

Гумор в українському політичному дискурсі

The research focuses on the problem of humor in Ukrainian political discourse, which is interpreted as a manifestation of human activity. The peculiarities of the combination of political and game discourses in Ukrainian political communication were clarified, which resulted in the active use of humorous components in the speeches of politicians. Linguistic means of expression of humor in posts on social networks and speeches of Ukrainian politicians are analyzed. The purpose of our study is to investigate linguistic means of humor representation as the main manifestation of comic relief in Ukrainian political discourse. The purpose was to solve the following tasks: to outline the concept of political discourse in terms of the game concept of communicative activity; to analyze political genres in the speech of Ukrainian politicians; identify the linguistic features of political trolling; to find out the specifics of humor in the Ukrainian political discourse. The material of the research was the statements, speeches and posts in the social networks of famous Ukrainian politicians (L. Kravchuk, P. Poroshenko, V. Zelensky, Yu. Tymoshenko, U. Suprun etc.). Political humor is a communicative strategy in communicating politicians with one another and with ordinary citizens, and is a form of protection and distance from political problems. The appearance of a comic effect in communicative interaction depends on the intensity of the speaker and the extralinguistic factors. The main expressions of political humor are jokes, jokes and trolling. Trolling is featured in social media posts and aimed at ridiculing political opponents. The specificity of the Ukrainian political humor in the linguopragmatic aspect is provocative, irony and personal addressing of speech.

Truth-Telling and Trolls: Trolling, Political Rhetoric in the Twenty-First Century, and the Objectivity Norm

Trolling has received increasing scholarly attention both as an online phenomenon and as an allegedly new strategy of political communication. This article moves trolling out of the digital realm and applies ‘trolling theory’ to political communication by well-known and influential figures on the political front stage. To establish consistency between the online and the offline phenomenon, this paper will focus on a (broadly defined) style of political communication that seems to focus more on provoking outrage, establishing itself as speaking from an outsider position to defend free speech to counter an allegedly totalitarian opponent, and to trigger political sensitivities of opponents and thus cause outrage on ‘the other side.’ Contrary to the vast majority of trolling research that simply dismisses trolling as ‘antisocial,’ ‘nonnormative’ behavior, I argue that trolling in contemporary politics gains effectiveness by reproducing some of the patterns of ‘objective communication’ on a discursive and an emotional level. Political trolling embraces the notion of a universal truth, with the speakers often branding themselves as ‘disinterested’ and thus not emotionally involved and incorruptible, thereby gaining credibility by pointing to their position as discursive outsiders. When trolling rhetoric succeeds and the trolls’ claims are met with outrage by the people the trolls deem to be totalitarian and censors of free speech, the speakers can downgrade their opponents as weak, biased, emotionally involved and thus necessarily illegitimate, gaining a superior position in the conversation.

Satira Politik: Analisis Internet Trolling di Malaysia (Political Satire: Analysis on the Internet Trolling in Malaysia)

Political satire of the internet trolling has been growing in Malaysia. Malaysians seek political information news using new media because they are easy to access and free. Internet trolling can be found in the form of pictures (memes) or recording. This phenomena has taken place in any types of social media. Most of the internet trolling reflected on the political leaders as the satire material. Hence, this article focuses on the effectiveness of political troll in shaping the opinion towards the political leaders. Qualitative content of analysis has been carried on the new media. The comments from Facebook users has been used as unit of an analysis. The findings have found that political troll is a medium among the users to participate in political communication. Thus, theory of mobilization supported the research findings on the function of political troll that provides an indicator of users political knowledge. The study has found that political knowledge among the users through their political trolling on the social media. Interestingly, the trend of trolling in Malaysia has shaped the new phenomenon of social media usage. However, the analysis on each trolling discussed are based on the type of political trolling such as the image of the leaders, theme and concept used. ABSTRAK Satira politik atau dikenali sebagai internet troll telah berkembang di Malaysia. Rakyat Malaysia mendapatkan maklumat berita politik menggunakan media baru kerana kaedah ini mudah untuk mengakses dan lebih bebas. Internet troll boleh didapati dalam bentuk gambar (memes) atau rakaman. Fenomena ini telah berlaku dalam kebanyakan media sosial. Kebanyakan internet troll dilihat pada pemimpin-pemimpin politik sebagai bahan sindiran. Oleh itu, artikel ini memberi tumpuan kepada keberkesanan troll politik dalam membentuk pendapat terhadap pemimpin politik. Analisis kualitatif kandungan telah dijalankan ke atas media baru. Komen-komen daripada pengguna Facebook telah digunakan sebagai unit analisis. Hasil kajian telah mendapati bahawa troll politik adalah medium yang digunakan dalam kalangan pengguna untuk mengambil bahagian dalam komunikasi politik. Oleh itu, teori mobilisasi telah menyokong penemuan penyelidikan tentang fungsi troll politik yang merupakan indikator pengetahuan politik pengguna. Kajian ini telah mendapati bahawa pengetahuan politik di kalangan pengguna melalui trolling politik mereka di media sosial. Menariknya, trend trolling di Malaysia telah membentuk fenomena baru dalam penggunaan media sosial. Walau bagaimanapun, analisis pada setiap trolling yang dibincangkan adalah berdasarkan kepada jenis trolling politik seperti imej pemimpin, tema dan konsep yang digunakan.

Mobilizing the Trump Train: Understanding Collective Action in a Political Trolling Community

Political trolls initiate online discord not only for the lulz (laughs), but also for ideological reasons, such as promoting their desired political candidates. Political troll groups recently gained spotlight because they were considered central in helping Donald Trump win the 2016 US presidential election, which involved difficult mass mobilizations. Political trolls face unique challenges as they must build their own communities while simultaneously disrupting others. However, little is known about how political trolls mobilize sufficient participation to suddenly become problems for others. We performed a quantitative longitudinal analysis of more than 16 million comments from one of the most popular and disruptive political trolling communities, the subreddit /r/The Donald (T_D). We use T_D as a lens to understand participation and collective action within these deviant spaces. In specific, we first study the characteristics of the most active participants to uncover what might drive their sustained participation. Next, we investigate how these active individuals mobilize their community to action. Through our analysis we uncover that the most active employed distinct discursive strategies to mobilize participation, and deployed technical tools like bots to create a shared identity and sustain engagement. We conclude by providing data-backed design implications for designers of civic media.

Social Media in Turkey as a Space for Political Battles: AKTrolls and other Politically motivated trolling

This article focuses on AKTrolls, defined as pro-government political trolls in Turkey, while attempting to draw implications about political trolling in the country in general. It examines their methods and effects, and it interrogates whether (and how) Turkish authorities have attempted to shape or counter politically motivated social media content production through trolling after the Gezi Park Protests that took place in 2013. My findings are based on an ethnographic study that included participant observation and in-depth interviews in a setting that is under-studied and about which reliable sources are difficult to find. The study demonstrates political trolling activity in Turkey is more decentralized and less institutionalized than generally thought, and is based more on ad hoc decisions by a larger public. However, I argue here that AKTrolls do have impact on reducing discourses on social media that are critical of the government, by engaging in surveillance, among other practices.

Online political trolling in the context of post-Gezi social media in Turkey

Abstract Drawing on the approach suggesting that the analysis of social media in relation to democracy should be provided within its own social context, we outline the social media activities adopted by the ruling populist political party in Turkey, namely, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), aimed at reinforcing its political ideology. We also unpack the ‘political online trolling’ as a manifestation of online practices driving the post-truth politics in Turkey. Following the Gezi protests, when social media and, in particular, Twitter gained trust and popularity as a news source due to severe censorship and polarization in the traditional mass media, the AKP adopted an aggressive strategy to attack and destroy all opposition as well as to manipulate public opinion through their political trolling activities. Employing the approach of digital ethnography and drawing on the archive of mass media outputs about the trolling events, we discuss how the ruling party has adopted online political trolling as a strategy, one that is deeply embedded in the political system, politicians and mainstream media. We also explain how trolling practices are facilitated by the coordinated work of these institutions to silence all critical opposing voices, in particular journalists and how they stifle public debate that is grounded in truth and evidence. We have also concluded that the chilling effects of political trolling lead to quitting social media, self-censorship and less participation in public debate of unprotected citizens who are the most vulnerable targets for the trolls. The trolls have targeted the dissent voices not only for criticizing the government publicly, but also to brand them as terrorists and traitors through increasingly polarizing and discriminating language based on nationalist and religious perspectives, which peaked in the aftermath of the 15 July coup attempt and the debates on the presidential regime. Far from condemnation of the trolling activities along with their polarizing and hateful rhetoric, the mainstream culture and public discourse seem to have been taken over by an increasing trolling subculture, which inhibits public debate, discredits the sources of truth, fosters fanaticism and encourages a hate discourse and violence, all of which are undermining democracy.