As trolling became an integral part of online communities, use of the term evolved and expanded significantly. This paper proposes a typology of trolling behaviors and compares the use of the terms troll and trolling by North American college students with scholarly and media uses. The study provides conceptual nuance based on two focus groups and four follow-up individual interviews. Participants differentiate between light-hearted trolling and anti-social trolling, which is the dominant focus of published works. The paper distinguishes between four behavioral types: serious trolling (implying that it is not funny and likely motivated by social or political ideology), humorous trolling, serious non-trolling behaviors, and humorous non-trolling behaviors. Key behavioral dimensions are identified, including: 1) pseudo-sincerity; 2) intentionality; 3) provocativeness; 4) repetition; 5) satire; 6) communicating serious opinions; and 7) representing public opinions. Formal concept analysis clarifies relationships between behavioral dimensions and types.

Question answering (Q&A) sites, where communities of volunteers answer questions, may provide faster, cheaper, and better services than traditional institutions. However, like other Web 2.0 platforms, user-created content raises concerns about information quality. At the same time, Q&A sites may provide answers of different quality because they have different communities and technological platforms. This paper compares answer quality on four Q&A sites: Askville, WikiAnswers, Wikipedia Reference Desk, and Yahoo! Answers. Findings indicate that: (1) similar collaborative processes on these sites result in a wide range of outcomes, and significant differences in answer accuracy, completeness, and verifiability were evident; (2) answer multiplication does not always result in better information; it yields more complete and verifiable answers but does not result in higher accuracy levels; and (3) a Q&A site’s popularity does not correlate with its answer quality, on all three measures.

Online trolling has become increasingly prevalent and visible in online communities. Perceptions of and reactions to trolling behaviors varies significantly from one community to another, as trolling behaviors are contextual and vary across platforms and communities. Through an examination of seven trolling scenarios, this article intends to answer the following questions: how do trolling behaviors differ across contexts; how do perceptions of trolling differ from case to case; and what aspects of context of trolling are perceived to be important by the public? Based on focus groups and interview data, we discuss the ways in which community norms and demographics, technological features of platforms, and community boundaries are perceived to impact trolling behaviors. Two major contributions of the study include a codebook to support future analysis of trolling and formal concept analysis surrounding contextual perceptions of trolling.

ICTs are pivotal in the existing social order and especially during the COVID‐19 global pandemic. This panel focuses on the use of ICTs by different actors, including individuals, nonprofit organizations, and governments around the globe in responding to this COVID crisis. We tackle three essential questions about ICTs and the global crisis. First, what role do ICTs play in a global crisis? Second, how do ICTs affect social order when tensions between control, autonomy, and power shift? Third, what are the theoretical and practical implications of ICT use during a global health crisis? Each of the panelists will discuss their ongoing research in social informatics or health informatics as relates to the panel theme and central questions in order to provide a holistic view of the role of ICTs during this global pandemic.

Abstract