Internet troll is in each of us
To clarify, an Internet troll is a person convinced of his anonymity in the network, engaged in publishing provocative, offensive comments, whichórych purpose is to irritate and offend other usersóon the Internet.
Ogóhe common perception of Internet trolls is that they are lonely, complacent people, sitting at their computers in their basements at night, living only to insult someone online. Meanwhile, the results of the researchers indicate that trolls are not so different from us at all ró¿nią.
The study was prepared for this year’s Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. It involved an experiment to whichóhe more than 650 people reportedób. In the first part of the experience, participants were divided into two groups. One of them was asked easy questions, the other difficult ones. Participants in both groups then answered questions thatóre were to determine their mood. Of course, those whoóers had more difficult questions were in a worse mood.
Another part of the experiment consisted of reading a specific article on the Internet and engaging in a forum discussion. The requirement was to publish at least one comment. The article, about whichórym they were supposed to discuss was the same, but some respondents encountered normal, factual discussion in the forum, while others ended up in the „throwing mud”.
An Internet troll sits inside each of us
The researchers then performed an analysis of the left-overs from the participant’sóin the experience of comments. They considered trolls to be people whoóre attacked other interlocutorsów or used vulgarityów. The results showed that 35 percent of. those whoóers hit the forum for a substantive discussion and answered easy questions, leave hateful comments. This indicator wzrósł up to 50 percent. for osób, które answered tougher questions or encountered troll comments left earlier. The highest percentage of trolling osób was obtained from among theód osób whoóre answered more difficult questions and encountered hateful comments. There were as many as 68 percent.
According to the resultóIn the study, bad humor combined with provocation causes a spike in the risk of becoming trolls ourselves. The researchers additionally analyzed data from the CNN website forum from 2012. During this period, 1,158,947 Internet users participated in 200,576 established discussion threadsów, leaving 26,552,104 comments. It turned out that on Mondays, i.e., a day in which aórym most have worse nastrój, the most provocative and insulting comments appeared. Least on Fridays. In addition, more trolls showed their face in póThe most important is the fact that in the evening hours. Researchers have linked it to fatigue, or de facto worse mood. Another factor was the removal of a comment by a forum moderator. This irritated the author and the risk that a similar post would appear again in the forum was much higher.
– One person in a bad mood, can cause a spark, która in turn can influence the negative behavior of others. It’s a spiral of negative emotions – explained wspóhe author of the paper, Professor Jure Leskovec of Stanford University.