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http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/online-trolling-is-contagious-and-most-of-us-are-capable-of-it-study-1.3315354
Online trolling is 'contagious' and most of us are capable of it: study
Daniel Otis, CTVNews.ca Writer
@dsotis
Published Tuesday, March 7, 2017 9:56PM EST
According to a recent study, just about anybody can become a troll.
No, we’re not talking about ugly, mythical cave-dwellers or smiling dolls with shocks of psychedelic hair --we’re talking about those who go online for the sole purpose of shocking or offending others.
“Somewhat surprisingly, we found that almost half of the troll posts online can be blamed on regular people like you and me,” Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, an assistant professor at Cornell University’s department of information science and one of the study’s authors, told CTV News Channel.
“We found out that basically, if you see other people trolling and you’re in a bad mood, you’re likelihood of trolling doubles.”
In the study “Anyone Can Become a Troll," a joint project by Stanford University and Cornell University, a team of researchers used online experiments and largescale data analysis to identify two key factors that contribute to online trolling: mood and context.
“The mood in which you are, unsurprisingly, has a big influence on whether you are going to be likely to troll or not,” Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil said. “If you see other people misbehave, you’re also more likely to misbehave.”
Serial trollers, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil added, only account for about half of all online trolling activity.
“Trolling is somehow contagious -- it’s a little bit like the flu,” the researcher said. “You can think of it as a spiral negativity, right? I come in, I have a bad day, and I decide to troll. Other people see me trolling, they’re also going to be more likely to troll, and so on.”
Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil hopes that his team’s research can help foster more constructive online conversations.
“If we want to make our discourse better online and our discussions better, we have to really figure out what the causes of trolling are and try to address those causes rather than just block everybody from participating in the discussion.”
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