Trolls are going to troll: A look at flame trolling responses on twitter

Abstract

Flame trolling has become a common phenomenon amongst online communication and has been covered widely by the media. Previous studies have found that vulnerable and minority groups such as women and feminists are more likely to be targeted by flame trolls who gain a lot of enjoyment from sending offensive and threatening messages. However there has been little research focussed on the form and construction of trolling. This study wanted to investigate what types of negative responses a high profile Twitter user's posts received. The study also looked in detail at the form and construction of these responses. What was found from analysing the data was that the different types of posts that the user tweeted did appear to receive different types of responses. The responses mainly contained derogatory language regarding her gender, attacks against her intelligence as well as threats and wishes of physical and sexual violence against her.