Startseite “Trolling is not stupid”: Internet trolling as the art of deception serving entertainment
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

“Trolling is not stupid”: Internet trolling as the art of deception serving entertainment

  • Marta Dynel

    Marta Dynel is Associate Professor in the Department of Pragmatics at the University of Łódź. Her research interests are primarily in pragmatic and cognitive mechanisms of humor, neo-Gricean pragmatics, the pragmatics of interaction, (im)politeness theory, the philosophy of overt and covert untruthfulness (irony and deception), as well as the methodology of research on film discourse. She has published internationally in linguistic journals and volumes, contributing over 70 articles in the space of the past 10 years. She also authored Humorous Garden-Paths: A Pragmatic-Cognitive Study (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009) and edited The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains (John Benjamins, 2011), Developments in Linguistic Humour Theory (John Benjamins, 2013), as well as Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions (with Jan Chovanec, John Benjamins, 2015).

    EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 10. September 2016
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This paper aims to distill the essence of Internet trolling, a prevalent intercultural online communicative phenomenon which appears in many forms and guises. However, the label “trolling” tends to be (mis)used in reference to communicative practices which are not trolling in the traditional sense. It is argued that trolling necessarily relies on deception performed in multi-party interactions, which is conducive to (humorous) entertainment of self and/or other participants, at the expense of the deceived target. Taking data from email communications of the “DontEvenReply” troll, this account not only draws on the literature addressing the focal phenomenon but also integrates findings from several other fields of investigation (the philosophy of deception, humor theory, and the pragmatics of interaction) in order to demystify trolling.

About the author

Marta Dynel

Marta Dynel is Associate Professor in the Department of Pragmatics at the University of Łódź. Her research interests are primarily in pragmatic and cognitive mechanisms of humor, neo-Gricean pragmatics, the pragmatics of interaction, (im)politeness theory, the philosophy of overt and covert untruthfulness (irony and deception), as well as the methodology of research on film discourse. She has published internationally in linguistic journals and volumes, contributing over 70 articles in the space of the past 10 years. She also authored Humorous Garden-Paths: A Pragmatic-Cognitive Study (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009) and edited The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains (John Benjamins, 2011), Developments in Linguistic Humour Theory (John Benjamins, 2013), as well as Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions (with Jan Chovanec, John Benjamins, 2015).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous referees of this paper for their comments and suggestions. I am extremely grateful to Professor Istvan Kecskes for welcoming my paper proposal with enthusiasm and having it reviewed for Intercultural Pragmatics.

References

Adler, Jonathan. 1997. Lying, deceiving, or falsely implicating. Journal of Philosophy 94. 435–452.10.2307/2564617Suche in Google Scholar

Baker, Paul. 2001. Moral panic and alternative identity construction in Usenet. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 7(1). doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2001.tb00136.xSuche in Google Scholar

Beyer, Jessica. 2014. The emergence of a freedom of information movement: Anonymous, WikiLeaks, the Pirate Party, and Iceland. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19. 141–154. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12050Suche in Google Scholar

Binns, Amy. 2012. Don’t feed the trolls! Managing troublemakers in magazines’ online communities. Journalism Practice 6. 547–562.10.1080/17512786.2011.648988Suche in Google Scholar

Bishop, Jonathan. 2012a. The art of trolling: Transgressive representations of Internet trollers by mass media organisations in meta-communicative contexts. Swansea, GB: The Crocels Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Bishop, Jonathan. 2012b. The psychology of trolling and lurking: the role of defriending and gamification for increasing participation in online communities using seductive narratives. In H. Li (ed.), Virtual community participation and motivation: Cross-disciplinary theories. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.10.4018/978-1-4666-0312-7.ch010Suche in Google Scholar

Bishop, Jonathan. 2012c. Scope and limitations in the Government of Wales Act 2006 for tackling internet abuses in the form of ‘flame trolling’. Statute Law Review 33. 207–216.10.1093/slr/hms016Suche in Google Scholar

Bishop, Jonathan. 2014a. Representations of ‘trolls’ in mass media communication: a review of media-texts and moral panics relating to ‘internet trolling’. International Journal of Web Based Communities 10. 7–24.10.1504/IJWBC.2014.058384Suche in Google Scholar

Bishop, Jonathan. 2014b. Trolling for the lulz? Using media theory to understand transgressive humour and other Internet trolling in online communities. In Jonathan Bishop (ed.), Transforming politics and policy in the digital age, 155–172. Hershey: IGI Global.10.4018/978-1-4666-6038-0.ch011Suche in Google Scholar

Bok, Sissela. 1978. Lying: Moral choice in public and private life. NY: Random House.10.2307/1288137Suche in Google Scholar

Buckels, Erin, Paul Trapnell, and Delroy Paulhus. 2014. Trolls just want to have fun. Personality and Individual Differences 67. 97–102.10.1037/e520722015-006Suche in Google Scholar

Burgess, J., and Green, J. 2008. Agency and controversy in the YouTube community. Proceedings IR 9.0: Rethinking communities, rethinking place Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Conference. Denmark: IT University of Copenhagen. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15383/1/15383.pdfSuche in Google Scholar

Carson, Thomas. 2006. The definition of lying. Noûs 40. 284–306.10.1111/j.0029-4624.2006.00610.xSuche in Google Scholar

Carson, Thomas. 2010. Lying and deception: Theory and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577415.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Castelfranchi, Cristino and Isabella Poggi. 1994. Lying as pretending to give information. In Herman Parret (ed.), Pretending to communicate, 276–291. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.Suche in Google Scholar

Chisholm, Roderick and Thomas Feehan. 1977. The intent to deceive. The Journal of Philosophy 74. 143–159.10.2307/2025605Suche in Google Scholar

Chovanec, Jan and Marta Dynel. 2015. Researching interactional forms and participant structures in public and social media. In Marta Dynel & Jan Chovanec (eds.), Participation in public and social media interactions, 1–23. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.256.01choSuche in Google Scholar

Chovanec, Jan. 2015. Participant roles and embedded interactions in online sports broadcasts. In Marta Dynel & Jan Chovanec (eds.), Participation in public and social media interactions, 67–95. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.256.04choSuche in Google Scholar

Crystal, David. 2001. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139164771Suche in Google Scholar

Culpeper, Jonathan. 2005. Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research 1. 35–72.10.1515/jplr.2005.1.1.35Suche in Google Scholar

Dahlberg, Lincoln. 2001. Computer–mediated communication and the public sphere: A critical analysis. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 7(1). doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2001.tb00137.xSuche in Google Scholar

Donath, Judith. 1999. Identity and deception in the virtual community. In Marc Smith & Peter Kollock (eds.), Communities in cyberspace, 29–59. London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2011a. ‘You talking to me?’ The viewer as a ratified listener to film discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 43. 1628–1644.10.1016/j.pragma.2010.11.016Suche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2011b. A web of deceit: A neo-Gricean view on types of verbal deception. International Review of Pragmatics 3. 137–165.10.1163/187731011X597497Suche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2012. Setting our House in order: The workings of impoliteness in multi-party film discourse. Journal of Politeness Research 8. 161–194.10.1515/pr-2012-0010Suche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2013. Impoliteness as disaffiliative humour in film talk. In Marta Dynel (ed.), Developments in linguistic humour theory, 105–144. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/thr.1.07dynSuche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2014. Participation framework underlying YouTube interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 73. 37–52.10.1016/j.pragma.2014.04.001Suche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2016 forthcoming a. Killing two birds with one deceit: Deception in multi-party interactions. International Review of Pragmatics 8.10.1163/18773109-00802002Suche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta2016 forthcoming b On untruthfulness, its adversaries and strange bedfellows. Pragmatics & Cognition10.1075/pc.23.1.01dynSuche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2017 forthcoming a. Lying and humor. Jörg Meibauer (ed.), Oxford handbook of lying. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198736578.013.25Suche in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2017 forthcoming b. No child’s play: A philosophical pragmatic view of overt pretence as a vehicle for conversational humor. In Villy Tsakona and Jan Chovanec (eds.), Creating and negotiating humor in everyday interactions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/thr.7.09dynSuche in Google Scholar

Eelen, Gino. 2001. A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing. encyclopediadramatica.se/Troll.Suche in Google Scholar

Fallis, Don. 2009. What is lying? The Journal of Philosophy 106. 29–56.10.5840/jphil200910612Suche in Google Scholar

Fallis, Don. 2010. Lying and deception. Philosophers’ Imprint 10. 1–22.Suche in Google Scholar

Fallis, Don. forthcoming. Frankfurt wasn’t bullshitting! Southwest Philosophical Studies.Suche in Google Scholar

Faulkner, Paul. 2007. What is wrong with lying? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75. 524–547.10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00092.xSuche in Google Scholar

Ferguson, Mark and Thomas Ford. 2008. Disparagement humour: A theoretical and empirical review of psychoanalytic, superiority, and social identity theories. Humour 21. 283–312.Suche in Google Scholar

Frankfurt, Harry. 2005 [1986]. On bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400826537Suche in Google Scholar

Fuller, Jason, Christian McCrea, and Glen Wilson. 2013. Troll theory? FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet” 22.Suche in Google Scholar

Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Gruner, Charles. 1997. The game of humor: A comprehensive theory of why we laugh. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Suche in Google Scholar

Gully, Adrian. 2012. It’s only a flaming game: A case study of Arabic computer-mediated communication. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39(1). 1–18.10.1080/13530194.2012.659440Suche in Google Scholar

Hancock, Jeffrey. 2007. Digital deception. Why, when and how people lie online. In Adam Joinson, Katelyn McKenna, Tom Postmes & Ulf-Dietrich Reips (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Internet psychology, 289–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Hancock, Jeffrey, Catalina Toma and Nicole Ellison. 2007. The truth about lying in online dating profiles. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2007), 449–452. New York: Associate for Computing Machinery.10.1145/1240624.1240697Suche in Google Scholar

Hardaker, Claire. 2010. Trolling in asynchronous computer-mediated communication: from user discussions to theoretical concepts. Journal of Politeness Research 6. 215–242.10.1515/jplr.2010.011Suche in Google Scholar

Hardaker, Claire. 2013. “Uh. . . . not to be nitpicky… but… the past tense of drag is dragged, not drug.” An overview of trolling strategies. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 1. 58–86.10.1075/jlac.1.1.04harSuche in Google Scholar

Haugh, M. 2012. Epilogue: The first-order distinction in face and politeness research. Journal of Politeness Research 8(1). 111–13410.1515/pr-2012-0007Suche in Google Scholar

Herring, Susan. 1999. The rhetorical dynamics of gender harassment on-line. The Information Society 15. 151–167.10.1080/019722499128466Suche in Google Scholar

Herring, Susan, Kirk Job-Sluder, Rebecca Scheckler, and Sasha Barab. 2002. Searching for safety online: Managing “Trolling” in a feminist forum. The Information Society 18. 371–384.10.1080/01972240290108186Suche in Google Scholar

Hobbes, Thomas. 1996 [1651]. Leviathan. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Johnson, Norman, Randolph Cooper, and Wynne Chin. 2008. The effect of flaming on computer-mediated negotiations. European Journal of Information Systems 17. 417–434.10.1057/ejis.2008.22Suche in Google Scholar

Kupfer, Joseph. 1982. The moral presumption against lying. Review of Metaphysics 36. 103–26.Suche in Google Scholar

LaFave, Lawrence. 1972. Humour judgments as a function of reference groups and identification classes. In Jerry Goldstein & Paul McGhee (eds.), The psychology of humour, 195–210. New York: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-288950-9.50016-XSuche in Google Scholar

La Fave, Lawrence, Jay Haddad and William Maesen. 1976. Superiority, enhanced self-esteem, and perceived incongruity humor theory. In Anthony Chapman & Henry Foot (eds.), Humor and laughter: Theory, research and applications, 63–91. New York: Wiley and Sons.10.4324/9780203789469-5Suche in Google Scholar

Mahon, James. 2007. A definition of deceiving. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 21. 181–194.10.5840/ijap20072124Suche in Google Scholar

Mahon, James. 2008. Two definitions of lying. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 22. 211–230.10.5840/ijap200822216Suche in Google Scholar

Mahon, James. 2015. The definition of lying and deception. In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 edn). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/lying-definition/.Suche in Google Scholar

Martin, Rod, Patricia Puhlik-Doris, Gwen Larsen, Jeanette Gray and Kelly Weir. 2003. Individual differences in uses of humour and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the humour Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality 37. 48–75.10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00534-2Suche in Google Scholar

McCosker, Anthony. 2014. Trolling as provocation: YouTube’s agonistic publics. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 20(2). 201–217.10.1177/1354856513501413Suche in Google Scholar

Meibauer, Jörg. 2016 forthcoming. Aspects of a theory of bullshit. Pragmatics & Cognition.10.1075/pc.23.1.04meiSuche in Google Scholar

O’Sullivan, Patrick & Andrew Flanagin. 2003. Reconceptualizing “flaming” and other problematic messages. New Media and Society 5. 69–94.10.1177/1461444803005001908Suche in Google Scholar

Phillips, Whitney. 2015. This is why we can’t have nice things: Mapping the relationship between online trolling and mainstream culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/10288.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Saul, Jennifer. 2012. Lying, misleading, and the role of what is said. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199603688.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Shachaf, Pnina and Noriko Hara. 2010. Beyond vandalism: Wikipedia trolls. Journal of Information Science 36(3). 357–370.10.1177/0165551510365390Suche in Google Scholar

Simpson, David. 1992. Lying, liars and language. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52. 623–639.10.2307/2108211Suche in Google Scholar

Sorensen, Roy. 2007. Bald-faced lies! Lying without the intent to deceive. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88/2. 251–264.10.1111/j.1468-0114.2007.00290.xSuche in Google Scholar

Stokke, Andreas. 2013. Lying and asserting. Journal of Philosophy 110. 33–60.10.5840/jphil2013110144Suche in Google Scholar

Tepper, Michele. 1997. Usenet Communities and the cultural politics of information. In David Porter (ed.), Internet culture, 39–54. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203948873-3Suche in Google Scholar

Turner, Tammara Combs, Mark Smith, Danyel Fisher, and Howard Welser. 2005. Picturing Usenet: Mapping computer-mediated collective action. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2005.tb00270.xSuche in Google Scholar

Utz, Sonja. 2005. Types of deception and underlying motivation: What people think. Social Science Computer Review 23. 49–56.10.1177/0894439304271534Suche in Google Scholar

Vincent Marrelli, Jocelyne. 2003. Truthfulness. In Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, Jan Blommaert & Chris Bulcaen (eds.), Handbook of pragmatics, 1–48. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Suche in Google Scholar

Vincent Marrelli, Jocelyne. 2004. Words in the way of truth. Truthfulness, deception, lying across cultures and disciplines. Napoli: Edizione Scientifiche Italiane.Suche in Google Scholar

Vincent, Jocelyne & Cristino Castelfranchi. 1981. How to lie while saying the truth. In Herman Parret, Marina Sbisà & Jef Verschueren (eds.), Possibilities and limitations of pragmatics: Proceedings of the Conference on Pragmatics, Urbino, July 8–14, 1979, 749–777. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.7.39vinSuche in Google Scholar

Watts, Richard, Sachiko Ide & Konrad Ehlich. 1992. Introduction. In R. Watts, S. Ide & K. Ehlich (eds.), Politeness in language: study in its history, theory and practice, 1–17. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110886542Suche in Google Scholar

Whitty, Monica. 2002. Liar, liar! An examination of how open, supportive and honest people are in chat rooms. Computers in Human Behavior 18. 343–352.10.1016/S0747-5632(01)00059-0Suche in Google Scholar

Whitty, Monica & Adam Joinson. 2008. Truth, trust and lies on the Internet. London and New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203938942Suche in Google Scholar

Williams, Bernard. 2002. Truth and truthfulness: An essay in genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Zillmann, Dolf, & Joanne Cantor. 1972. Directionality of transitory dominance as a communication variable affecting humor appreciation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24. 191–198.10.1037/h0033384Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2016-9-10
Published in Print: 2016-9-1

©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton

Heruntergeladen am 21.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/ip-2016-0015/html?lang=de
Button zum nach oben scrollen