2.1 What Is Trolling?
It's ambiguous where the terms “troll” and “trolling” emerged from or when they started to be used. A common view among scientific articles is that the application of the term trolling, regarding its use on the internet, springs from a form of fishing where a baited line is set in the water and dragged slowly by a boat to encourage the fish to bite (Cambria, Chandra, Sharma & Hussain, 2010; Binns, 2012; Bishop, 2014a; Golf-Papez & Veer, 2017; Jussinoja & Terho, 2018). According to Hardaker (2013) said that Usenet, one of the first worldwide discussion systems on computers has been recognised as the place where trolling started, even though there is no direct convincing proof for it.
Despite decades of research that aims to create typologies, shed light on trolls' motives and motivations, and theorise the wider ramifications of the phenomena, scholars cannot agree on how to define or operationalize trolling. Comparing studies on trolling is extremely challenging due to the wide variety of theoretical frameworks, contexts, and sampling frames. Indeed, researchers contend that trolling is contextually dependent and irrational; what users see as trolling in one area, like Wikipedia, may not be considered such in another, like Instagram (Hardaker, 2010; Ortiz, 2022). However, researchers cited that “Trolls” are those who take pleasure in stirring up conflict online, seeking to initiate conversations, and upsetting other people (Aydn et al., 2021). Presenting purposefully offensive content in a specific context with the intention of misleading other people into responding angrily is one common form of trolling, according to Hardaker (2010). According to many researchers (Buckels et al., 2014; Hardaker, 2010; Phillips, 2015; Sanfilippo et al., 2018), trolling is effectively an umbrella word encompassing a spectrum of multifaceted, hostile, antisocial, or deviant behaviours and motivations online. Trolling is an identity-deception game that is performed without the consent of other players. He also noted that trolls try to pose as real users, interrupt conversations, and undermine confidence (Jussinoja & Terho, 2018).
There is no agreed-upon definition for trolling, but it is a phrase that is used in the literature to refer to a wide range of offensive online behaviours. The practise of trolling is a recent phenomenon that is changing from a rather anarchic kind of individual internet harassment to one that is more systematic. It defines trolling as an online behaviour that takes place in settings where debate is encouraged (e.g., social media platforms, online forums, comment and discussion threads, online gaming, chat groups, etc.). Investigators defined trolling as a situation-specific, intentional, controversial and repetitive (Fichman & Sanfilippo, 2016) behaviour by a person towards other people or groups (Sanfilippo, Yang & Fichman, 2017). The cross-national variability of online trolling was noted by Phillips (2015), who also discussed the diverse causes of trolling behaviour in Australia, Britain, and the US, respectively (Sun & Fichman, 2018). The idea of trolling has undergone a significant transformation from a distinctive type of online behaviour to an archetypically anti-social person in online communities—the troll—as the obnoxious and deceitful features of trolling behaviour become more common (Cruz, Seo, & Rex, 2018).