The Psychology of Trolling and Lurking: The Role of Defriending and Gamification for Increasing Participation in Online Communities Using Seductive Narratives Jonathan Bishop Centre for Research into Online Communities and E-Learning Systems, UK ABSTRACT The rise of social networking services have furthered the proliferation of online communities, transferring the power of controlling access to content from often one person who operates a system (sysop), which they would normally rely on, to them personally. With increased participation in social networking and services come new problems and issues, such as trolling, where unconstructive messages are posted to incite a reaction, and lurking, where persons refuse to participate. Methods of dealing with these abuses included defriending, which can include blocking strangers. The Gamified Flow of Persuasion model is proposed, building on work in ecological cognition and the participation continuum, the chapter shows how all of these models can collectively be used with gamification principles to increase participation in online communities through effective management of lurking, trolling, and defriending. INTRODUCTION of-friends’ (COF) for managing friends lists in online communities (Romm & Setzekom, 2008), The study of online communities has led to such the use of the Internet to build online communities, colourful expressions as trolling, flaming, spam- especially using social networking services has ming, and flooding being developed in order to grown – but so has the amount of Internet abuse on describe behaviours that benefit some people while these platforms. Facebook is currently one of the disrupting others (Lampe & Resnick, 2004). Since more popular COF-based websites (Davis, 2008). the proliferation of technologies like the ‘circle- In addition to this, microblogging, such as Twitter, have ‘status updates’, which are as important a DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0312-7.ch010 The Psychology of Trolling and Lurking part of social networks Facebook and Google+, and functioning (Maxwell & Miller, 2008). It is as the circle of friends is. These technologies known that if an online community has the right have made possible the instantaneous expression technology, the right policies, the right content, of and access to opinion into memes that others pays attention to the strata it seeks to attract, and can access quickly, creating what is called, ‘The knows its purpose and values then it can grow public square’ (Tapscott & Williams, 2010) . The almost organically (Bishop, 2009c). A potential public square is the ability to publish and control problem stalling the growth of an online commu- editorial policy, and is currently available to all nity is lack of participation of members in posting with access to and competency in using the Internet content, as even with the right technology there is and online social networking services. often still a large number of ‘lurkers’ who are not It is clear in today’s age that there are a lot of participating (Bishop, 2007b). Lurkers are defined demands on people’s time, and they have to pri- as online community members who visit and use oritise which social networking services, or other an online community but who do not post mes- media or activity they use. This is often based on sages, who unlike posters, are not enhancing the which is most gratifying and least discomforting. community in any way in a give and take relation- It has become apparent that introducing gaming ship and do not have any direct social interaction elements into such environments, where they with the community (Beike & Wirth-Beaumont, would not usually be – a concept called ‘gamifica- 2005). Lurking is the normal behaviour of the most tion’ – can increase interest and retention in them. online community members and reflects the level Such systems can promote positive activities by of participation, either as no posting at all or as members and reduce the number of people not tak- some minimal level of posting (Efimova, 2009). ing part, called ‘lurkers’ (Bishop, 2009c; Efimova, Lurkers may have once posted, but remain on the 2009). It can also promote activities like ‘trolling’ periphery due to a negative experience. where content is created for the ‘lulz’ of it – that Indeed, it has been shown that lurkers are is for the fun of it. These can have upsides and often less enthusiastic about the benefits of com- downsides, but it is clear gamification can play a munity membership (Howard, 2010). Lurkers part in managing it. may become socially isolated, where they isolate themselves from the peer group (i.e. social with- The Problem of Lurking drawal), or are isolated by the peer group (i.e. and Trolling Behaviour social rejection) (Chen, Harper, Konstan, & Li, 2009). Trolling is known to amplify this type of Besides social software, gamification and consum- social exclusion, as being a form of baiting, troll- erisation have been identified as the big themes ing often involved the Troller seeking out people for cloud applications (Kil, 2010). Gamification who don’t share a particular opinion and trying to offers online community managers, also known irritate them into a response (Poor, 2005). as systems operators (sysops), the opportunity for a structured system that allows for equitable The Practice of Defriending distribution of resources and fair treatment among in Online Communities members. Finding new ways to makes ones’ website grow is a challenge for any sysop, so While the Circle of Friends allows the different gamification may be the key. Often this is looked techno-cultures that use online communities on in a technical way, where such platforms are to add people as friends, it also gives them the encouraged to move from simple resource archives power to remove or delete the person from their toward adding new ways of communicating social network. This has been termed in the The Psychology of Trolling and Lurking United States of America as ‘unfriending’ or in the or 1 per cent of the world’s population with an United Kingdom as ‘defriending’. Defriending is average of 70 minutes played weekly (Hurley, done for a number of reasons, from the innocent 2000). Concepts like “Gamification”, which try to the malicious to the necessary. For instance, to bring video game elements in non-gaming a user can innocently suspend their account or systems to improve user experience and user en- want to ‘tidy-up’ their Circle of Friends, so that gagement (Yukawa, 2005) are therefore going to only people they actually know or speak to are be an important part in current and future online in it. There can be malicious and ruthless acts of communities in order to increase participation of ‘cutting someone dead’ or permanently ‘sending constructive users and reduce that of unconstruc- them to Coventry’ so that they are no longer in tive users. It seems however the gaming elements one’s network or able to communicate with oneself of online communities need not be ‘designed’ by (Thelwall, 2009). And users can do it, through a the sysops, but developed independently by the us- ‘blocking’ feature to cut out undesirable people ers, in some cases unintentionally or unknowingly. who are flame trolling them so much that it impairs For instance, it has become a game on Twitter their ability to have a normal discourse. Being able for celebrities to try and outdo one another by to ‘block’ the people they don’t want to associate exploiting the ‘trending’ feature which was de- with, this means that it is impossible for them to signed to tell users what was popular. Celebrities reconnect without ‘unblocking’. Such practice on like the interviewing broadcaster, Piers Morgan, social networking sites can lead to users missing and reality TV personality Alan Sugar talked up out on the context of discussions because they in the press their programmes which went head are not able to see hidden posts from the person to head, and Ms Morgan claimed victory because they blocked or who blocked them, to them seeing he and his guest, Peter Andre, on his Life Stories ghost-like posts from people whose identities are programme appeared higher in the most mentioned hidden but whose comments are visible for the topics on Twitter. Also, consumers joined in this same reason. Any form of defriending, whether activity which could be called ‘ethno-gamification’ intended innocently or otherwise, can lead to the by agreeing to prefix ‘RIP’ to various celebrities user that has been defriended feeling angry and names in order to get that term to appear in the violated, particularly if the rules for killing a com- trending column. In the same way ‘hypermiling’ munity proposed by Powazek (2002) haven’t been has become a term to describe ethno-gamification followed. This can turn the user into an E-Venger, where people try to compete with one another where by the user will seek to get vengeance against on how can use the least amount of fuel in their the person that defriended them through all means vehicles, so this could be called ‘hypertrending’ possible. If they’re a famous person then this could as people seek to try to get certain terms to trend mean posting less than flattering content on their higher than others. Examples of both of these are Wikipedia page or writing negative comments in Figure 1. about them in other online communities. If they’re So it seems that gaming is essential to the way a close friend whose personal details they have humans use computer systems, and is something to hand, then it could mean adding their address that needs to be exploited in order to increase to mailing lists, or sending them abusive emails. participation in online communities, which may not have the membership or status of established Gamification platforms like Facebook and Google+.