trolling

New York to San Francisco: my U.S. conference tour (October 20-29, 2015)

If you happen to be in one of these fine US cities, come meet me. I’ll be on a tour to promote a coupla books of mine. Talks are open (but you have to register), plus it’s always a pleasure to have a chat afterwards.

Tour dates

New York City, The New School
Digital Labor in a Material World
I’ll be presenting my latest book Qu’est-ce que le digital labor? (INA, 2015) at the New School, ft. Richard Maxwell (Queens College, CUNY),  Laura Y. Liu and Trebor Scholz (New School).
Oct. 20, 2015
4:30-6PM
The New School, Orozco Room, 66 West 12th Street, 
Room A712
, New York, NY 10011.

 

Pittsburgh, City of Asylum
Four theses on mass surveillance and privacy negotiation
A salon reading about my book Against the Hypothesis of the End of Privacy (Springer, 2014) at the-now mythical Pittsburgh City of Asylum, a sanctuary for exiled and endangered writers in residence.
Oct. 22, 2015
7-9PM
City of Asylum, 330 Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh,PA 15212.

Boston, Boston Book Festival
Trolls (and what they do to the public sphere)
The French Cultural Center host a talks co-presented with the Boston Book Festival. I’ll be chatting with internet activist Willow Brugh about problematic speech online, its dark sides and how to turn it into a field of opportunities for social justice and civil rights. Somewhat based to my book Les Liaisons Numériques (Seuil, 2010).
Oct. 24, 2015
2-4PM
The French Cultural Center, 53 Marlborough Street, Boston, MA 02116.

 

Berkeley, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley Center for New Media
Negotiating privacy and transparency: a digital labor?
My keynote speech at the Manufacturing Transparency international conference. Based on my books Against the Hypothesis of the End of Privacy (Springer, 2014) and Qu’est-ce que le digital labor? (INA, 2015).
Oct. 28, 2015
9-10AM
Berkeley Center for New Media, 426 Sutardja Dai Hall, University of California Berkeley, CA 94720.

Santa Clara, Santa Clara University, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
How can someone be a troll?
From Montesqieu to internet trolls… A public lecture at the very heart of the Silicon Valley, to define the ethical role of tech companies in overcoming present-day ambivalent attitudes towards trolling. Based on my books Les Liaisons Numériques (Seuil, 2010) and Qu’est-ce que le digital labor? (INA, 2015).
Oct. 29, 2015
7-8:30PM
Santa Clara University, Vari Hall, The Wiegand Center, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053.

NB: unfortunately, due to a time conflict the seminar about “pro-ana” and ED-sufferers online communities previously scheduled at the University of Southern California, Institute for Health Promotion Research, Los Angeles, has been cancelled.

Thanks to the Book Department of the NYC French Embassy and the San Francisco French consulate for building this thing up from scratch.

Troll studies: resources on trolling, vandalism, incivility online [updated Sept. 2015]

This is part of my ongoing research in the field of troll studies. Follow the hashtag #trollstudies on Twitter, or click here for a selection of my videos, articles, and interviews about trolling (French and English).

Peer reviewed articles, conference proceedings, and dissertations

Anderson, Ashley A., Dominique Brossard, Dietram A. Scheufele, Michael A. Xenos, & Peter Ladwig (2014) The “Nasty Effect:” Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19 (3): 373‑387.

Bakioğlu, Burcu S. (2012). Negotiating governance in virtual worlds: grief play, hacktivism, and LeakOps in Second Life®. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 18(4): 237‑59.

Bellanger, Aurélien (2013) Le trolling politique : Comment une pratique du web 2.0 s’est-elle immiscée dans le débat et l’arène politique ?. Master 1 dissertation, Science Politique, Université de Montpellier, France.

Bernstein, Michael S., Andrés Monroy-Hernandez, & Drew Harry (2011) 4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community. Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.

Bishop, Jonathan (2014). 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(1): 7‑24.

Bishop, Jonathan (2013) The art of trolling law enforcement: a review and model for implementing ‘flame trolling’ legislation enacted in Great Britain (1981–2012). International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, 27 (3): 301‑318.

Boyd, Michael S. (2014) (New) participatory framework on YouTube? Commenter interaction in US political speeches. Journal of Pragmatics. Online first.

Buckels, Erin E., Trapnell, Paul D. & Delroy L. Paulhu (2014) Trolls just want to have fun, Personality and Individual Differences. Personality and Individual Differences, Online first.

Burroughs, Benjamin (2013) FCJ-165 Obama Trolling: Memes, Salutes and an Agonistic Politics in the 2012 Presidential Election FibreCulture Journal. “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Cheng, Justin, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil Christian & Jure Leskovec (2015) Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities,  Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI ICWSM).

Coe, Kevin, Kenski, Kate & Stephen A. Rains (2014) Online and Uncivil? Patterns and Determinants of Incivility in Newspaper Website Comments. Journal of Communication, 64(4): 658–679.

Coleman, E. Gabriella (2012) Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls: The Politics of Transgression and Spectacle. In Mandiberg, M. (ed.). The Social Media Reader, New York: New York University Press.

Dalton, Eric J. (2013) Impoliteness in Computer Mediated Communication. Master of Arts in Linguistics Thesis, San Diego State University.

De Seta, Gabriele (2013) FCJ-167 Spraying, fishing, looking for trouble: The Chinese Internet and a critical perspective on the concept of trolling. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Donath, Judith S. (1999) Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. In: Kollock, P. and Smith M. (eds). Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge.

Fuller, Glen, Christian McCrea, & Jason Wilson (2013) Troll Theory?, FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Gershon, Ilana (2014) Publish and Be Damned: New Media Publics and Neoliberal Risk. Ethnography, 15(1): 70‑87.

Golumbia, David (2013) Commercial Trolling: Social Media and the Corporate Deformation of Democracy, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) – Department of English.

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(1): 58–86.

Hardaker, Claire (2010). Trolling in asynchronous computer-mediated communication: From user discussions to academic definitions, Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture, 6(2): 215–242.

Herring, Susan, Job-Sluder, Kirk, Scheckler, Rebecca & Sasha Barab (2002) Searching for Safety Online: Managing “Trolling” in a Feminist Forum. The Information Society, 18(5): 371‑384.

Herwig, Jana (2011) The Archive as the Repertoire. Mediated and Embodied Practice on Imageboard 4chan.org. In Friesinger, G.,  Grenzfurthner, J., Ballhausen, T. (eds.) Mind and Matter. Comparative Approaches Toward Complexity. Bielefeld: transcript.

Higgin, Tanner (2013) FCJ-159 /b/lack up: What Trolls Can Teach Us About Race. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Holmes, Steve (2013) FCJ-160 Politics is Serious Business: Jacques Rancière, Griefing, and the Re-Partitioning of the (Non)Sensical. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Jane, Emma A. (2014) Beyond Antifandom: Cheerleading, Textual Hate and New Media Ethics. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(2): 175‑190.

Jarvenpaa, Sirkka L., & Ann Majchrzak (2010). Research Commentary–Vigilant Interaction in Knowledge Collaboration: Challenges of Online User Participation Under Ambivalence ». Information Systems Research, 21(4): 773‑84.

Karppi, Tero (2013) FCJ-166 ‘Change name to No One. Like people’s status’ Facebook Trolling and Managing Online Personas. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Kirman, Ben, Lineham, Conor & Shaun Lawson (2012). Exploring Mischief and Mayhem in Social Computing or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Trolls ». CHI ’12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York: 121‑30.

Knuttila, Lee (2011) User Unknown: 4chan, Anonymity and Contingency. First Monday, 16(10).

Krappitz, Stefan (2012) Troll Culture: A Comprehensive Guide, Diplomarbeit, Neue Medien, Merz Akademie, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Kunst und Medien, Stuttgart.

 Lamba, Herman, Malik, Momin M. & Jürgen Pfeffer (2015) A Tempest in a Teacup? Analyzing Firestorms on Twitter, ASONAM Proceedings.

Lampe, Cliff, Zube, Paul, Lee, Jusil, Park, Chul Hyun, & Erik Johnston (2014) Crowdsourcing civility: A natural experiment examining the effects of distributed moderation in online forums. Government Information Quarterly, 31(2): 317‑326.

Leaver, Tama (2013) FCJ-163 Olympic Trolls: Mainstream Memes and Digital Discord?. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Cheng, Justin, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Cristian & Jure Lescovec (2015) Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities, AAAI ICWSM, 2015.

Lu, Shuang-shuang. (2010) A Tentative Study of the Impoliteness Phenomenon in Computer-mediated Communication. Cross-Cultural Communication, 6(1): 92‑107.

MacKinnon, Rebecca, et Ethan Zuckerman (2012) Don’t Feed the Trolls. Index on Censorship, 41(4): 14‑24.

Manivannan, Vyshali (2013) FCJ-158 Tits or GTFO: The logics of misogyny on 4chan’s Random – /b/. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Marwick, Alice & Nicole B. Ellison (2012) “There Isn”t Wifi in Heaven!’ Negotiating Visibility on Facebook Memorial Pages. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(3): 378‑400.

McCosker, Anthony (2013) FCJ-161 Productive Provocations: Vitriolic Media, Spaces of Protest and Agonistic Outrage in the 2011 England Riots. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

McCosker, Anthony (2014) Trolling as Provocation: YouTube’s Agonistic Publics. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 20(2): 201‑217.

Miller, Vincent (2012) A Crisis of Presence: On-line Culture and Being in the World. Space and Polity, 16 (3): 265‑285.

Milner, Ryan M. (2013) FCJ-156 Hacking the Social: Internet Memes, Identity Antagonism, and the Logic of Lulz. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Mocanu, Delia, Rossi, Luca, Zhang, Qian, Karsai, Marton, & Walter Quattrociocchi (2014) Collective attention in the age of (mis)information. arXiv, 1403.3344.

Morrissey, Lochlan (2010). Trolling is a art: Towards a schematic classification of intention in internet trolling. Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communications, 3(2): 75-82.

Ortega, F. Javier, Troyano, José A. Cruz, Fermín L., Vallejo, Carlos G. & Fernando Enríquez (2012). Propagation of Trust and Distrust for the Detection of Trolls in a Social Network. Computer Networks, 56(12): 2884‑2895.

Pearce, Katy, & Adnan Hajizada (2014) No Laughing Matter Humor as a Means of Dissent in the Digital Era: The Case of Authoritarian Azerbaijan. Demokratizatsiya, 22(1): 67‑85.

Phillips, Whitney (2011) LOLing at Tragedy: Facebook Trolls, Memorial Pages and Resistance to Grief Online. First Monday, 16 (12).

Phillips, Whitney (2011) Meet the Trolls. Index on Censorship, 40(2): 68‑76.

Phillips, Whitney (2013) The House That Fox Built Anonymous, Spectacle, and Cycles of Amplification. Television & New Media, 14(6): 494‑509.

Phillips, Whitney (2015) This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Cambridge. Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture, MA: MIT Press.

Reagle, Joseph M. (2015) Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Shachaf, Pnina, & Noriko Hara (2010) Beyond Vandalism: Wikipedia Trolls. Journal of Information Science, 36(3) : 357‑370.

Shaw, Frances (2013) FCJ-157 Still ‘Searching for Safety Online’: collective strategies and discursive resistance to trolling and harassment in a feminist network. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Thacker, Scott, & Mark D. Griffiths (2012) An exploratory study of trolling in online video gaming. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning, 2(4), 17-33.

Tkacz, Nathaniel (2013) FCJ-154 Trolls, Peers and the Diagram of Collaboration, FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Whelan, Andrew (2013) FCJ-155 EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER: defining trolling to get things done. FibreCulture Journal, “Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet”, 22.

Younus, Arjumand, Qureshi, M. Atif, Saeed, Muhammad, Touheed, Nasir, O’Riordan, Colm & Gabriella Pasi (2014). Election Trolling: Analyzing Sentiment in Tweets During Pakistan Elections 2013. Proceedings of the Companion Publication of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web Companion: 411‑412.

Florilège de textes sur trolling, vandalisme et discorde en ligne

Hello folks,
vous êtes sans doute arrivés ici après mon interview avec Vinvin et Jean-Marc Manach au Vinvinteur (épisode 28 : “Les trolls, ce douloureux problème”) de France 5. Ce billet vous propose un petit florilège – amoureusement concocté par Votre Dévoué – de mes articles, interviews et présentations sur le trollage, le vandalisme et les formes de la discorde en ligne. Il s’agit des textes qui ont constitué la base de la version extendend play du “Gros t’chat avec Antonio Casilli”. Ps. Tous les textes sont accessibles en ligne. La seule, remarquable, exception est représentée par le chapitre sur le trolling de mon livre Les liaisons numériques pour lequel, paraît-il, il faut encore débourser des €€€ (ou alors il faut être des lecteurs super-motivés…).

trollvinvin (more…)

Who are the #anarcoinsultazionisti? Insurgent trolling and the politics of discord on Twitter

[Scroll down for French translation]

Are Italian trolls uniting to oust celebrities from Twitter? At least one may think so after witnessing the birth of the satirical hashtag #anarcoinsultazionisti (“anarcho-insultationists”).

A little background. Much like his French counterpart Laurent Joffrin, Italian newsman Enrico Mentana doesn’t care for the informal style of conversations going on in social media. So he left Twitter, because he couldn’t take any more abuse from his “anonymous” followers. Laura Boldrini, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, also fulminated against such examples of “online anarchy”. Yet several public figures expressed their disapproval of their colleagues “claims of immunity”, and invited them to abide by the social codes of the potentially anarchic online platforms. But what did the so-called “anonymous Twitter users” do? They tried to make sense of this new moral panic surrounding trolling, by equating – jokingly – their behaviour to a contemporary manifestation of insurrectionary anarchism.

“’Anonymous on Twitter’ is the new ‘anarcho-insurrectionist’ ”.

There’s a fine line between this little pleasantry and the birth of the anarcho-insultationist ephemeral hashtag. The latter is a perfect implementation of the “lulz” modality of political discord, which the troll ethos is so eagerly advocating. To the Italian ear, “anonymity” and “anarchy” rhyme, like in the lyrics of Addio Lugano Bella, a famous revolutionary chant composed by Pietro Gori in 1895: “Anonymous comrades, friends who remain / the social truths do spread like strong people”. To your ear, dear reader, they probably resonate with what I previously discussed elsewhere: how trolling can be regarded as a symptom of the collapse of the public sphere. Exeunt the modern democratic ideals of civilized discourse, as well as the recognizable spokespersons developing structured arguments. Enter the inappropriate comments polluting the debate, which show that the debate itself is delusional – nothing more than a political superstition. To give you a little food for thoughts, here’s a small selection of tweets (with translation): (more…)

Habemus trollum: why the new Pope's Twitter account 'mirrors' its detractors

On February 2nd, 2013 I wrote this post describing trolling as a defining feature of Pope Benedict XVI’s Twitter presence. After establishing the role of online pontiff-bashing in helping redefine Catholicism, I concluded the Vatican should “feed the trolls”. A week later Joseph Ratzinger resigned. Of course, it’s unrelated. Only an idiot would say there’s a link betweet trolling and papal resignation. And here’s an actual idiot who said just that, in an interview with TIME magazine:

grillopopetweet

Italian Comedian-Kingmaker Beppe Grillo on Internet and Politics | TIME.com

Soon after the renunciatio, the @pontifex account was semi-discontinued. All tweets uttered in the name of Joseph Ratzinger were deleted, his avatar replaced by the Vatican symbol, the denomination Benedictus XVI supplanted by Sede Vacante (‘Vacant Chair of St. Peter’).

By now, as you know, everything is back to normal, more or less. The cardinals have elected a new Pope, and the pontifical Twitter account is back in the game… with a surprising ALLCAPS message that kind of freaked the hell out of of me. (more…)

Please Your Holiness, feed the #troll (an open letter to the Pope)

[Update Feb. 11 2013: This post has been also published in the French edition of the Huffingtonpost and featured in Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish as well as in the Catholic Herald.]

> To : Pope Benedict XVI
> From : Antonio Casilli
> Sent:  Sun Feb. 3 2013 03:52:22 PM
> Subject: What to do about Twitter trolling
>

Your Holiness,

let me start by saying that I am not a christian, plus I am not particularly appreciative of your work. I am but a modest scholar of digital cultures who has been following, with a professional eye, your recent effort to rebrand your online image. By now, the general public is aware that you and your staff operate the Twitter account @pontifex – and its multilingual permutations @pontifex_fr, pontifex_it, pontifex_es… My sources indicate that this is the brainchild of Jesuit cybertheologian Antonio Spadaro, counselor of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications 1. So it seems only obvious that the Jesuit magazine Popoli commissioned a study to assess how well your online presence has been perceived after a month on Twitter. On the face of it, you did fine. You have been sending out approximately 100 messages in 9 languages, and earned more than 2 million followers altogether. Moreover, you have generated 270,456 responses from your fellow users.

This impressive amount of comments was also used to perform a “sentiment analysis”, to determine the general attitude of the Twittersphere. About 82% of the feedback received was “neutral”, a meager 10% was positive, and 8% negative. Let me break it down for you, Your Holiness: sentiment-wise, your entrance on Twitter has been saluted by a roaring “meh”… The not so brilliant results are summarized in the following infographic:

The Pope on Twitter. Source: Oogo.com (more…)

  1. Turns out my sources were not completely accurate after all. On Twitter, jesuit theologian Antonio Spadaro clarifies that: