Talking trolls into existence: On the floor management of trolling in online forums

Much has been said about the problems of internet trolls in recent mainstream media reporting of online communication, yet surprisingly little empirical work has been conducted on the pragmatics of trolling. Existing studies of trolling come from different disciplines and provide different interpretations and definitions of trolls, leaving many questions about the phenomenon unanswered. The present study aims to narrow this empirical gap by providing a discourse-analytic account of online trolling. Specifically, the study utilizes the notion of floor spaces to uncover how online users discursively orient themselves to trolling behavior and why such responses vary from one message thread to another. The findings show that the extent to which an alleged troll is accepted into a discussion is partly related to how contributors discursively orient themselves to floor spaces, or in other words, co-establish appropriate forms and ways of communication. The finding that any given message can potentially be treated as an attempt to troll is helpful in understanding the extent to which trolling should be viewed as deviant behavior.