Trolling on the internet or cyber-trolling is online behavior to intentionally anger, hurt, or frustrate someone. It is purposely posting inflammatory messages or comments that are meant to provoke negative emotional reactions. Generally, internet trolling involves remarks related to bigotry, racism, misogyny, and just simple bickering. More recently, cyber-trolling has been equated to online harassment, which has become a very common behavior on the internet.
Cyber-trolling
mostly takes place in online discussion forums and the comment sections of
blogs. Off lately, a lot of cyber-trolling has been taking place on social
networking sites, especially Twitter. Trolling taking the form of online
harassment has become quite common on Twitter.
Many
people have expressed their experience of the harassment that they have faced
after posting a simple tweet. A lot of celebrities in the past couple of years
have been constantly complaining about how trolls attack them with their
venomous remarks for just expressing an opinion. The trolling becomes so
hurtful that some even have decided not use Twitter at all or spend very little
time on it.
Cyber-trolling,
clearly, creates a lot of problems for its victims. In the form of
cyber-trolling, people have faced humiliation, disgust, and even death threats.
Such inflammation tends to be very disturbing and can lead to severe negative
consequences to an individual’s mental health.
Communication
on the internet has certain features that sometimes makes cyber-trolling to be
a natural phenomenon. Some people use an anonymous identity, while
communicating on the internet. Being anonymous makes them feel that they can
say whatever they feel like and get away with it, without facing any
consequences. This creates a reduced sense of public self-awareness.
Even
if people are using their real identities on Facebook or Twitter, they still
feel a reduced public self-awareness, due to a sense of obscurity. While interacting
online, individuals feel that whatever they are saying is in the cyberspace and
has little to do with the real life, where they have face-to-face interactions
with people who they know and meet quite often.
Along
with a reduced public self-awareness, individuals while communicating on the
internet, due to social distance and often being alone in their own comfortable
private space, feel a heightened sense of private self-awareness. This heightened
private self-awareness also makes the person feel that he/she will not face any
consequences of speaking his/her mind.
Both
reduced public self-awareness and heightened private self-awareness together
makes individuals feel little or no hesitation, while interacting online. The relative
obscurity and social distance gives them a sense of power in which they feel they
can say whatever they feel like. Quite often this lack of hesitancy makes them
use inflammatory remarks, which they may perhaps resist during face-to-face
interaction.
The
perceived obscurity and social distance, during online interaction, also quite
often makes people de-individuated from their individual identity and form a
stronger online social identity. People often become a very different person on
the internet. They behave differently in comparison to face-to-face
interaction. This may make them a hostile and bigotry person on the internet,
and get involved in cyber-trolling, when in actuality they may be calm and sensible.
The
characteristics of reduced public self-awareness and heightened private
self-awareness lead to the experience of cyberdisinhibition. Cyberdisinhibition
refers to an inhibition in communication on the internet due to lack of social.
The social brain – brain areas, mainly the prefrontal cortex and the limbic
system, that act together and help in smoothening social interactions – gets activated
in face-to-face interactions, due to receiving proper social cues in terms of
facial expressions and body language.
The
mirror neurons – neurons found in the social brain – are not able to function
properly during online communication, and thus, lead to improper communication.
The mirror neurons, in face-to-face interaction, get appropriate real-time
feedback in the form of social cues. It is these social cues that help the
mirror neurons to monitor individual’s and others responses, which enable
appropriate social interaction.
The
social cues being absent in online interaction make the mirror neurons unable
to function properly, leading inappropriate communication, which often involves
a lack of empathy. This lack of empathy, due to social cues being absent, causes
people to indulge in hostility and harassment on the internet, in the form of
cyber-trolling.
Apart
from the characteristics of online communication, personality can also be a
factor in cyber-trolling. For instance, the personality of passive aggressiveness
can be associated with cyber-trolling. Research suggests that passive
aggressive individuals thrive on the internet.
Passive
aggressiveness is a deliberate and indirect expression of anger. Such behavior
may usually be due to the fear of expressing anger directly. The relative obscurity
and social distance on the internet can work as a mask to express anger.
For
a person with passive aggressiveness, the internet becomes an appropriate
medium to express their anger. Knowing that inflammatory remarks and comments
on the internet are met with almost no consequences, such individuals easily become
involved in behaviors like cyber-trolling.
Besides
passive aggressiveness, sadism has also been found to be associated with
cyber-trolling. Sadism is deriving pleasure in inflicting pain on others. Recent
research suggests that internet trolls actually have sadistic tendencies. People
who are involved in cyber-trolling have a lot of fun in the distress of others.
They have no real purpose of expressing inflammatory remarks and causing
disturbance on online discussion forums or sending hateful tweets. They simply
like the idea of causing trouble to people on the internet.
This
can be clearly seen when people troll celebrities on Twitter. Many people just
get a high in sending extremely abusive and hurtful remarks at famous people. They
see it as exciting and fun. Even in online discussion forums, some people see
it as fun deviate from the main topic and hurl abuses for no reason. They very
well know that they cannot be harmed for hurling such remarks and thus, they do
so with pleasure.
Personality
being a factor in cyber-trolling seems to be a plausible explanation. There are
innumerable people who everyday interact on the internet. However, everyone
does not get involved in cyber-trolling. Many people, in fact, are very polite,
sensible, and intelligent on the internet. The characteristics of communication
on the internet combined with personality of individuals can be seen as the
possible causes of trolling on the internet.
Internet
usage has become an integral aspect of everyday life. With the increase in
internet usage, there has been an incessant rise in behaviors like cyber-trolling.
A reduced sense of public self-awareness and heightened private self-awareness
on the internet, cyberdishinibition, passive aggressiveness, and sadism can be
seen as the causes of cyber-trolling.
2 comments:
Quite frankly, I think it is poor that trolls are allowed to run amok online. There should be harsh and immediate consequences for that type of behavior.
It's strange that same thing can be a boon and and bane. Public self awareness and private self awareness can lead the person to speak out mind which they can't because of anxiety, shyness, low confidence or not being comfortable but at the same time it leads to trolls. But I guess that's why its wisely said that every coin has two sides. Will written and informative.
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