Statement of purpose (what you hope to show/discover)
I hope to articulate the nature and uses of trolling behaviors – whether they can be of any benefit to discourses on politics, philosophies, etc.
What are the “rules’’ of trolling? Who does these things? What need or purpose does it fulfill for them?
Where does this come from? Is it only anonymity that causes certain people to jam up otherwise civil discussions? Gadflies and Devil’s Advocates have always existed, but this is something else entirely. The knee-jerk reactions trolls and their ilk engender don’t seem to be pushing people to refine and rethink their ideas, to stop up the holes. All this does is raise blood pressure, far as I can tell.
Detailed statement of your research question
What is trolling, what is the point of it, and how has it helped or hindered this great, big, shiny idea of the internet as School of Athens/coffeeshop/salon/etc?
List of the information you need to gather
Secondary sources on the phenomenon – articles online and in journals, etc
Samples of actual forums/comment sections where trolling has occurred (doable?)
I’d love an actual dialog with a person who engages in trolling behaviors, but the chances of that actually being possible or worthwhile are really, really slim!
A preliminary list of sources
**I still have to go thru Kean’s journal databases – guess what my weekend plans are now! As for the rest, I’m thinking things like Wired, NYTimes’ online, etc. Big name digital publications that have or cocievably have addressed trolling.
If I have time, I’d like to take a quick dip in the psychology pool, see if any work’s been done there in regards to online antagonism. This would probably be pop-psych, but it’s worth a shot, seeing if I can track something down that holds water.
Plan for gathering your information
I plan to sit at my laptop and dredge up the articles by the power of my mighty database mojo.
I’ll also be going thru other, less scholarly arenas where trolling has come up in “conversation” – I’m thinking online magazines, certain blogs, etc. It’s a ‘net thing, so the use of ‘net sources would not be a detriment, as long as I keep an eye on credibility
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment