Why people troll on social media sites

BOREDOM is the main cause of “trolling” and “cyberbullying” on social media sites, a study shows.

People troll on Twitter and Facebook for seven reasons including boredom, amusement and revenge, according to experts.

In a study looking at 4 000 online cases of trolling, linguist expert Dr Claire Hardaker found culprits were from all ages and backgrounds.

Hardraker, of Lancaster University’s faculty of arts and social sciences, said: “Aggression, deception and manipulation are increasingly part of online interaction, yet many users are unaware not only that some of these behaviours exist, but of how destructive and insidious they can be.

“An incredible amount of time and strategy can be involved in trolling, as my research into the techniques they use highlights.”

She found people trolled for seven main reasons, such as digressing from a topic at hand and moving on to sensitive issues.

Trollers also criticised faults which they displayed themselves, such as punctuation errors, to deliberately provoke exasperated responses.

Some asked deliberately naive questions to make people feel guilty, while others gave dangerous advice to encourage risky behaviour.

She also found trolls broached taboo topics in an insensitive way, or plainly attacked people without any justification.

Another technique was to send the same offensive message to multiple groups of people in a “spamming” tactic.

Hardaker, whose findings were published in the latest edition of the Journal of Language, Aggression and Conflict, added: “The image of trolling is that it is mainly the work of young people, but the fact is trolls come from all ages and backgrounds.

“They will use different strategies to trigger the response they want from people. Some of these are a lot sneakier than others. It is not just about personal abuse.

“Trolls are also becoming more and more sophisticated. The aggravation typically springs from the degradation of the ‘signal-to-noise’ ratio.

“The time-wasting noise of one troll post is relatively easily ignored, but the noise of hundreds of replies to the troll post, and complaints about those replies, can entirely drown out the worthwhile content.”

Hardaker also warned that trolling could develop into more serious behaviour, including cyberharassment and cyberstalking. —