Dynamics of Online Trolling in Social Media
Summary
Online trolling constitutes a multifaceted phenomenon characterised by the deliberate disruption of digital discourse through provocative, demeaning or malicious messages. Trolling emerges across platforms as individual or organised activity, ranging from banal annoyance to sophisticated influence campaigns. Motivations span entertainment, ideological enforcement, strategic disinformation and identity-based harassment. Behavioural patterns include asymmetric response strategies that exploit conversational norms, covert harassment disguised as legitimate debate, and deliberate targeting of vulnerable groups to provoke emotional escalation. The complex ecology of trolling involves interplay between user psychology, platform affordances and algorithmic amplification. Recent advances have illuminated the linguistic signatures of troll messages, the sociological underpinnings of troll communities, and the efficacy of hybrid moderation techniques blending automated detection with human oversight. Understanding these dynamics is critical for designing more resilient online communities, informing policy on platform governance and enhancing digital literacy initiatives worldwide.
Research from Nature Portfolio
Recent studies have explored the gendered dimensions of trolling, focusing on female influencers’ experiences of gender-based harassment. Drawing on qualitative interviews, this research reveals how women on Twitter navigate misogynistic attacks, deploy coping strategies and negotiate platform governance. Findings highlight the normalisation of gender-specific trolling tactics, the emotional labour involved in countering online threats and the role of community solidarity in mitigating harm. These insights underscore the importance of intersectional analysis in understanding how platform design and societal norms shape the distribution and impact of trolling.
Dynamics of Online Trolling in Social Media publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in dynamics of online trolling in social media across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Trolling: The act of intentionally provoking or upsetting others online through inflammatory or deceptive messages.
Covert disruptive behaviour: Subtle forms of trolling that disguise harassment as normal discourse, using deception to evade detection.
Conversational action: A unit of interaction in dialogue analysis, such as questions, responses or interruptions, used to study trolling strategies.
Common grounding: The shared understanding participants in a conversation build and maintain to ensure mutual comprehension.
References
- Detecting Covert Disruptive Behavior in Online Interaction by Analyzing Conversational Features and Norm Violations. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (2024).
- Disruptive online communication: How asymmetric trolling-like response strategies steer conversation off the track. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (2021).
- Indian female Twitter influencers’ perceptions of trolls. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2022).
- Online Trolls: Unaffectionate Psychopaths or Just Lonely Outcasts and Angry Partisans?. Politics and Governance (2022).
About these summaries
This Nature Research Intelligence Topic summary is created with the cited references and a large language model. We take care to ground generated text with facts, and have systems in place to gain human feedback on the overall quality of the process in line with our AI principles. We strive to create accurate and useful summaries for people unfamiliar with the research topic and that supports this goal. These pages are a beta release and will be updated as we learn how best to help people gain value from a research topic summary.
Turn complex research questions into confident strategic decisions
When you're under pressure to set direction, justify investment, or understand your competitive position, you need more than raw data — you need trusted insights you can act on.
Benchmark your performance against global peers using robust, methodologically sound analysis.
Combine quantitative metrics with qualitative expert insight to uncover strengths, gaps and emerging opportunities.
Gain tailored, decision-ready recommendations aligned to your strategic priorities.
Talk to us to learn more about our data dashboards and bespoke strategy reports.
Grow research skills, confidence and careers with training built for every stage of the research lifecycle.
Developed with Nature Portfolio journal Editors and internationally renowned experts. Discover three ways to learn:
Self-paced, online courses in convenient bite-sized units, covering key skills across scientific writing, publishing, grant writing, data analysis, and more.
Expert trainer-led workshops with hands-on exercises and real-time feedback across core research skills, delivered via interactive group sessions.
Editor-led workshops combining core principles in writing and publishing, personalised 1:1 feedback from Nature Portfolio Editors and hands-on exercises.
Explore course catalogues and workshop agendas, enquire about the options or request institutional pricing.