18.

Flaming and trolling

Claire Hardaker

Abstract: In the last two decades, pragmatic explorations of flaming and troll-
ing in computer-mediated communication have gained momentum. However,
although there is little doubt that “attacks, assaults and contemptuous remarks”
(Jucker and Taavitsainen 2000: 73) have always been commonplace, some
researchers (cf. Moor, Heuvelman and Verleur 2010; Nitin, Bansal and Kanzashi
2011) have recently argued that certain types of conflict, such as flaming and troll-
ing are particularly native to social media. To this end, this chapter aims to provide
new insights into current pragmatic research into flaming and trolling, including
how these terms are defined and deployed, case studies that illuminate how these
behaviors are accounted for by existing literature, and the current challenges that
face these fields and their development into the future.

1. Introduction

In recent years, the media has pounced on what I have, in previous research, loosely
termed negatively marked online behaviors (NMOB) (Hardaker 2010, 2013, 2015;
Hardaker and McGlashan 2016). NMOB is behavior that, for whatever reason,
others consider to fall outside of the bounds of social decorum for that particular
online interaction. It could involve something as mild as raising a topic that falls
outside of the scope of a given forum, or more seriously, posting crude jokes on a
tribute page set up to honor a deceased person. At the criminal end of the scale, it
might consist of repeatedly sending threats via emails or text messages, or sharing
someone’s personal, private details on public platforms.
The media’s interest in NMOB is unsurprising. The sheer breadth, depth, and
range of unpleasant online behaviors provide an endless source of attention-grab-
bing headlines and exposés. Likewise, the people behind that behavior, whether
characterized as trolls, cyberstalkers, or online predators, make for simplistic,
almost cartoon-like villains that the vast majority of media-consumers can readily
position themselves against.
This fervor of interest in online abuse, however, though so pervasive now, is a
relatively new phenomenon. The internet could be described as well-established
across numerous countries by the 1990s, yet as late as 2010, antisocial online
behavior was virtually ignored by the news, academia, and even to an extent, the
online platforms that were home to those behaviors themselves. Even at the time
of writing, there is still surprisingly little linguistic research on NMOB, and what

DOI 10.1515/9783110431070-018
In: C. R. Hoffmann and W. Bublitz (eds.). (2017). Pragmatics of Social Media, 493–522. Berlin/Boston:
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494  Claire Hardaker

interest we can find tends to be distributed unevenly. We can readily find interest
in topics such as spam (e.g. Barron 2006; Stivale 1997), cyberbullying (e.g. Strom
and Strom 2005; Topçu, Erdur-Baker and Çapa-Aydin 2008), cyberstalking (e.g.
Bocij 2004; Whitty 2004), aggressive video games (e.g. Dill and Dill 1998; Scott
1995; van Schie and Wiegman 1997) and computer-related depression (e.g. Kraut
et al. 1998). Likewise, flaming had arguably arrived by the turn of the millennium,
with interest from fields as diverse as psychology (Collins 1992; Lea et al. 1992),
linguistics (Arendholz 2013; Herring 1994; Jucker and Taavitsainen 2000), media
and cultural studies (Millard 1997; O’Sullivan and Flanagin 2003), sociology (Lee
2005) and information science (Kayany 1998).
Trolling, however, has struggled to gain validity as field of interest until as late
as 2010. For instance, by the end of the 1990s, there had been a handful of articles
on the politics (Tepper 1997) and deceit (Donath 1999) found in online practices.
By 2005 new research was being published about online deception (Placks 2003;
Utz 2005; Zhou et al. 2004), but very little directly about trolling (see, however
Herring et al. 2002). Finally, by 2010, research dealing specifically with troll-
ing (e.g. Hardaker 2010; Shachaf and Hara 2010; Shin 2008) started to appear
in greater numbers. And by 2015, the growth had become exponential, spanning
fields as diverse as Artificial Intelligence (Dlala et al. 2014), computing (Cheng,
Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil and Leskovec 2015; Fichman and Sanfilippo 2015),
communication studies (Brabazon 2012), cultural studies (Phillips 2015), media
(Binns 2011; McCosker 2014), politics (Virkar 2014), psychology (Buckels, Trap-
nell and Paulhus 2014; Maltby et al. 2015), public relations (Weckerle 2013) and
of course, linguistics (Hardaker 2013, 2015; Hardaker and McGlashan 2016; Hop-
kinson 2013).
Why such reluctance to confront what might be viewed as an online epidemic?
One problem may be a lingering sense that computer-mediated communication
(CMC) is somehow not as worthy a subject of investigation as offline interaction,
and some research has compounded this devaluation by dichotomising virtual and
real-life activity (e.g. Baym 1996: 342; Chiou 2006: 547; Strom and Strom 2005:
41). A secondary problem from the academic perspective may be with

[…] the variability in the perceptions of norms and expectations underlying evaluations
of behaviour as polite, impolite, over-polite and so on, and thus inevitably discursive
dispute or argumentativity in relation to evaluations of im/politeness in interaction. Yet
with the exception of work by Locher (2006) and Graham (2007, 2008), there has been
little research on im/politeness in various forms of computer-mediated communication
from this perspective. (Haugh 2010: 8)

These problems are not limited to the analyst. CMC, by its very nature, is both rel-
atively new and changing extremely quickly. Analysts and users alike may strug-
gle to evaluate the appropriacy of online utterances in light of their own norms and
expectations. With this in mind, this chapter moves next into a brief overview of

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 Flaming and trolling  495

CMC and the peculiarities that this context affords. The current state of the art of
academic research on flaming and trolling in CMC in general and social media in
particular is discussed in Sections 3 and 4 respectively. Finally, Section 5 looks
towards promising future directions.

2. Computer-mediated communication

The overarching term computer-mediated communication is not necessarily clear-

cut, so it is worth briefly defining. Firstly, computer may intuitively seem to index
the prototypical desktop machine, but it can also refer to smartphones, smart-
watches, tablets, games consoles, and more besides. Our interest is also in com-
munication via computers, rather than with or from the computer, as covered by
fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and artificial intelligence (AI).
In other words, for the purposes of this chapter, we will define CMC as commu-
nication occurring via any mediating, networked technology (December 1997: 5;
Ferris 1997; Herring 1996, 2003: 612) regardless of where that communication
falls on the scale from almost instantaneous (synchronous CMC) to delayed (asyn-
chronous CMC).
In early research, CMC was generally viewed from a technologically deter-
ministic (Bolter and Grusin 1998) perspective. Strong technological determinism
positions technology as in control, particularly of its place and development in
culture and society. As a very small example of this, the following headline, How
Facebook ruined my holiday: The Internet and mobile technology make it increas-
ingly difficult to switch off (Kirsh 2012) casts Facebook, the internet, and mobile
technology in the role of autonomously self-aware, and even malignant actor,
whilst the user is merely the passive victim.
Researchers such as Kraut et al. (1992: 375) argued that CMC not only
impeded the formation of new offline social ties, but even damaged those already
in existence. In later research, they suggested that, “greater use of the internet
is associated with declines in participants’ communication with family members
in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their
depression and loneliness” (Kraut et al. 1998: 1017). Turkle (1990) describes the
phenomenon of the subjective computer in which we project onto a new tech-
nology our own fears and desires. Tyrannical dictatorships are more likely to see
the threat of revolution and insurgency in CMC, whereas a democratic and open
leadership will find in it an opportunity for more voices to be heard, and for the
free communication of ideas and knowledge. Latterly, CMC research shifted its
attention from the technology itself to the user in context (Androutsopoulos 2006:
420). This notion of self-determinism posits that we use, or allow ourselves to be
affected by technology. For example, the sentence, I ruined my life (via CMC)
casts the user as primary actor responsible for her own actions (Chandler 1995).

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496  Claire Hardaker

In short, as we will see in the coming sections, the current focus of CMC
research is on exploring the diversity, creativity, and meaning of linguistic choices,
the construction of online identities, and the interplay between these two.
Not all the diversity, creativity, and constructions are positive, however. In
fact, almost from its first days, CMC became a fertile ground for misbehavior and
crime, whether in the form of sharing illegal images, finding potential victims, or
just being extremely unpleasant to others from the safety of a distant keyboard. As
both Donath (1999) and Sternberg (2000) observed, as a direct result of this, many
CMC platforms are built and managed with conflict at the forefront of almost
every aspect. The evidence for this can be found in the technology, in the form of
block, ban, or ignore options features. They are usually also documented in the
site’s own literature: “An extensive description of killfile techniques in a group’s
FAQ is a kind of virtual scar-tissue, an indication that they have had previous trou-
ble with trolls or flame-wars” (Donath 1999: 48).
In the space of a short chapter, it is impossible to do justice to all the factors
that play into abusive online behavior, so only three major aspects – anonymity,
meaning, and format – are covered below.

2.1. Anonymity, pseudonymity, and disclosure

Probably the earliest avenue of investigation into online abuse involved analyzing
the way in which anonymity affected behavioral outcomes. In simplistic terms,
depending on the platform in question, CMC can offer users a choice between
complete anonymity (one changes one’s username very frequently or interacts
without signing in) through to pseudonymity (one maintains a long-term username
that does not identify that person offline, but that accrues its own history) through
to full disclosure (one uses an identifier that would allow another to find them
offline) (Bernstein et al. 2011).
Research into online identity has revealed that almost regardless of a site’s
imposed level of disclosure, users will themselves choose just how much per-
sonal information they wish to convey (Chester and Bretherton 2007). Anonymity
and pseudonymity both facilitate the exploration of other identities that may be
deemed inconsistent with their offline selves (Bucholtz 1999; Bucholtz and Hall
2005), and as a consequence, Vinagre (2008: 321) observed that this can encour-
age users to feel that they are beyond the reach of consequences:
Sometimes people share very personal things about themselves. They reveal secret
emotions, fears, wishes. They show unusual acts of kindness and generosity, sometimes
going out of their way to help others. We may call this benign disinhibition. However,
the disinhibition is not always so salutary. We witness rude language, harsh criticisms,
anger, hatred, even threats. Or people visit the dark underworld of the Internet—places
of pornography, crime, and violence—territory they would never explore in the real
world. We may call this toxic disinhibition. (Vinagre 2008: 321)

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 Flaming and trolling  497

As long ago as 380BC, Plato (2007: 2.359c-2.360d) used the story of the Ring of
Gyges as an insight into the ways in which visibility, invisibility, and anonymity
could encourage a shepherd to murder a king. More recently, Lea and Spears (1991)
observed how anonymity could influence group decision-making processes, whilst
Reicher, Levine and Gordijn (1998) considered the ways that it affected power
relations within groups.
Particularly on very large social networks, little prevents users from carry-
ing out online abuse with fabricated, cloned, or even their own accounts if social
stigma does not concern them (Chester and O’Hara 2009; Phillips 2002; Zarsky
2004). Siegel et al. (1986) elaborate on the ways that anonymity can foster a sense
of impunity, a loss of self-awareness, and a likelihood of acting upon normally
inhibited impulses – an effect known as deindividuation (1986: 161). Psycholog-
ically, interactants may give less consideration to the recipient’s feelings. This,
according to Douglas and McGarty, is manifested in NMOB like flaming and troll-
ing (2001: 399). When we add to this, “the potential for reaching a diverse global
audience, consisting of hundreds of cultures, it is unsurprising that conflict is a
common phenomenon in Usenet” (Baker 2001).
This disjuncture between offline and online communication, however, is not
the only anvil on which conflict is wrought. Even the communication of straight-
forward meanings can be more complex than first appears.

2.2. Richness, assumptions, and meanings

Herring (2003) describes text-based CMC as “free from competing influences from
other channels of communication and from physical context” (2003: 612). Whilst
this claim is perhaps a little strong, it does highlight a supposed advantage of
CMC – that others cannot leap to conclusions about us before they have read what
we have to say. However, this apparent advantage can become a serious drawback.
Zdenek (1999) suggests that CMC is “clearly at a disadvantage, because [users] do
not have access to the wide array of social cues that FTF [face-to-face] speakers
do” (1999: 390). In different words, users who are heavily accustomed to face-to-
face interaction may find themselves communicating in an environment that does
not readily convey all the supporting metadata about the words, such as the tone of
voice, gestures, or facial expressions. It is easy to forget this, or to make assump-
tions that one’s intention will be far more obvious than it really is, and the result is
a greatly increased potential for incorrect inferences.
In this precise vein, much early research into CMC implicitly held face-to-
face interaction as the gold-standard from which all other communicative forms,
including CMC, deviated. For instance, Kraut et al. (1992) argued that face-to-face
was expressively and interactively ‘richer’ than CMC. Baker develops this further
when he argues:

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498  Claire Hardaker

To a “newbie,” posting to Usenet can be a daunting experience. It is impossible to know

who will read the message, or to determine how they will react. Also, unlike face-to-
face interaction, gestural, facial or prosodic cues are absent, and so many posters rely
on smilies (Elmer-Dewitt 1994, Sanderson 1993) to function as indicators of emotion.
(Baker 2001)

As above, a typical focus in CMC research is on what CMC lacks in comparison

to face-to-face interaction (e.g. instant audiovisual feedback). Little, if anything,
is said about the online features that are impossible offline, such as the ability to
share multimedia, to overtly and anonymously rate user interaction, and to fully
filter out undesired content.
Perhaps because of our heavy reliance on the face-to-face schema, however,
current research highlights that even experienced users can over-estimate their
online communicative abilities, and this over-estimation increases the potential for
miscommunication (Herring 2003: 612; Kruger et al. 2005; Zdenek 1999: 390).
A complicating factor, already alluded to above, is that CMC is dynamic, and is
continually developing new genres and styles (Abbasi and Chen 2008: 812), some
of which cannot exist offline (e.g. vlogs; fan pages; synchronous, worldwide social
networks).
CMC has also developed a rich body of cues, including symbols, imagery, style,
formatting, greetings, signatures, memes, and animations (also known as GIFs, i.e.
Graphics Interchange Formats). As a result, we can find research into the ways
that these and many besides can express complex and subtle relational, social, and
pragmatic information, such as affect (Subasic and Huettner 2001), rank (Hara,
Bonk and Angeli 2000), opinion (Nigam and Hurst 2004), genre knowledge (Yates
and Orlikowski 2002), ingroup norms, power relations and positioning (Henri
1992; Panteli 2002).
One glaring gap in the literature relates to innovation and memes. In their
efforts to enrich the communicative experience and convey precise meanings,
users will often circumvent interactional limitations by creating their own lin-
guistic and multimodal varieties (cf. the lolcat, doge, and leetspeak varieties, as
well as emoticons known as emoji), or imbuing existing features with new mean-
ings (Vaughan and Gawne 2011; Wilson and Peterson 2002). These can become
standardised, valued markers which form powerful micro-cultures. Knowledge of
how to appropriately use features can be a key index of ingroup membership, and
successful innovations can even become mainstream commercial ventures. For
instance, emojis can now be bought as a range of merchandise. Despite this, it may
be that the very informality, popularity and transience of these features militates
against them being perceived as ‘serious’ topics of study.

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 Flaming and trolling  499

2.3. Interactivity, format, and transience

A significant proportion of our time online is dedicated not simply to consuming

static content, but to interacting with others, including via video chats, private
messages, emails, public posts, blog comments and far more besides. Inevitably,
all such communication entails a potential for miscommunication. From this, con-
flict and disharmony can escalate into offline consequences, such as legal action,
violence, and even murder. It might then seem easier to simply abolish online inter-
action altogether, but there are several potential benefits to offering interactivity.
Sites with busy communities can generate enormous revenue from advertising,
commission, and merchandise. Cothrel (2000) investigates how users can be an
excellent source of free content for media outlets, determine the development of a
brand (e.g. Walkers’ ‘Do us a flavour!’ campaign) and give invaluable feedback.
Users may also provide free trouble-shooting and technical support to other users,
thereby reducing the load (and expense) on the retailer.
However, there is relatively little research, certainly within linguistics, that
investigates the ways that the transience of some content (e.g. platforms where
interactions are automatically deleted after a short period of time) can shape anti-
social online behavior. Similarly, there is little to be found on the ways that the
format can impact the spread of online conflict. For instance, by its very nature,
the prototypical bulletin-board format (e.g. the comments sections of many news
outlets, blogs and sites such as 4chan, Yahoo! Answers, Mumsnet, YouTube and
Github) promotes a form on interaction in which one user posts an item to many
people (one-to-many), and many are invited to respond to that one (many-to-one).
By contrast, threaded or nested environments (e.g. Slashdot, Reddit and Usenet)
promote interactions where many people post messages for the many to read
(many-to-many). In short, on a threaded forum, each comment may have a greater
number of readers, meaning that NMOBs may gain a wider audience and therefore,
greater uptake. Empirical research into such matters, though, is in short supply.

3. Flaming

Before reviewing the literature, it is interesting to look back into the history of the
word flaming, because, though it may sound or feel new, this concept has been
with us for some time.

3.1. Etymology
A quick glance at any reasonably thorough dictionary shows that flame (v.) was
used as early as the 1500s to describe a violent, passionate outburst. As might
be expected of an ancient word that describes one of the earliest elemental con-

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500  Claire Hardaker

cepts, the metaphorical extension of the word flame sits within a constellation of
other metaphorical extensions, all dedicated to conveying the nuances of anger and
provocation. For instance, a fiery, hot-tempered, explosive person might fan the
flames by making heated, inflammatory or incendiary comments, and we might
simmer over an insult, burn with indignation, boil with rage, or even blow our top
like an erupting volcano. In short, high temper has long been associated with high
temperature, and when we turn to the modern era, CMC simply appears to have
co-opted this ancient fire-as-rage metaphor and applied it to the new phenomenon
of hasty, vitriolic and excessive online outbursts.
When we turn back the pages of academic research, however, we find a differ-
ent story. As already mentioned above, unlike trolling, flaming has received more
academic attention (see, for instance, Avgerinakou 2008; Chester 1996; Herring
1994; Kayany 1998; Lea et al. 1992; Millard 1997), and greater interest typically
results in a proliferation of definitions, rather than a coalescing agreement on one
accepted understanding. Despite this greater interest and the long history that this
metaphor has beyond the realms of CMC, though, as recently as fifteen years ago,
the concept was still regarded in a somewhat fuzzy manner. For instance, under the
heading, 20th century adolescents: Sounding and flaming, Jucker and Taavistainen
(2000) describe flaming thus:
The other institutionalized form of insults is the practice of flaming on the internet. It
appears to be particularly common in news groups, where a large number of partici-
pants can submit email postings under the cover of anonymity. In this context, flaming
is considered to be bad style and is rejected by the code of behavior on the internet, the
so-called netiquette.1 (Jucker and Taavitsainen 2000: 90)
This description really doesn’t tell us what flaming is at all, beyond the fact that
it is considered “bad style”, and the example that Jucker and Taavistainen (2000)
subsequently provide comes from alt.flame, a newsgroup dedicated specifically
to flaming. Jucker and Taavistainen (2000) acknowledge that by the very nature
of such a group, the flamewars carried out there are probably “of an entirely ludic
nature” (Jucker and Taavitsainen 2000: 91). In short, this tells us very little about
what we might think of as genuine flaming. Only a year later, however, Baker
(2001) gives us a more thorough definition:
Antagonistic postings are known as flames (Siegel et al. 1986) and prolonged, escalat-
ing conflicts are often referred to as flame wars. In flame wars flames can give rise to
other flames, involving more and more posters, some who may be angry that the flame
war is taking over the newsgroup. The tone of flames is intentionally aggressive and
numerous methods of attack are used, ranging from intellectualized debate, through
biting sarcasm to scatological abuse. (Baker 2001)

1
This also rather worryingly seems to suggest the existence of only one universal neti-
quette!

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 Flaming and trolling  501

And only a few years later, Johnson, Cooper and Chin (2008) describe flaming as
“the antinormative hostile communication of emotions […] that includes the use
of profanity, insults, and other offensive or hurtful statements” (Johnson, Cooper
and Chin 2008: 419).

3.2. Case studies: Chaplin and Chambers

Beyond definitions, it is illuminating to look at two brief examples of flaming,
both from the UK, to see how the literature applies to this behavior in practice.
Our first case involves Gary Chaplin, an executive for recruitment business Stark
Brooks. In November 2011, Chaplin, along with approximately 4,000 other peo-
ple, received the following email from a client named Emmanouil Katsampoukas:

(1)  Email from Katsampoukas to Chaplin

Dear Sirs,
My name is Manos Katsampoukas and I am interested in finding a job in the banking/
marketing sector in the UK. Please find attached my CV. Further information available
upon request. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards
Manos Katsampoukas.
For Chaplin, Katsampoukas’ email appears to have been provocation enough, and
using the pseudonym Richard Vickers, he reacted as follows:

(2)  Email from Chaplin to Katsampoukas

Emmanouil – I think I speak for all 4000 people you have emailed when I say, ‘Thanks
for your CV’ – it’s nice to know you are taking this seriously and taking the time to
make us all feel special and unique.
If you are not bright enough to learn how to ‘bcc’ and thus encourage cock-jockey
retards to then spam everyone on the list (yes Dan McCarthy from One Search I’m
talking about you – you opportunistic thundercunt) then please fuck off …you are too
stupid to get a job, even in banking.
I get enough retarded spam from idiots – I don’t need the Dan ‘fucktard’ McCunthy’s
of the world thinking they are being smart and original by spamming back to your 4000
best friends. (PS – is ‘One Search’ what you’ve successfully completed on this year?).
Yours hitting the delete button. Have a nice day!

Intentionally or otherwise, Chaplin appears to have clicked “Reply All” and sent
this response not only to Katsampoukas, but to all the other 4,000 recipients of the
original email as well. Chaplin’s identity was eventually traced through his ISP,
and as a consequence, Stark Brooks asked him to resign (Atkinson 2011).

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502  Claire Hardaker

Whilst this is only one example, we find, as the literature suggests, language in
Chaplin’s email that could be characterized as “intentionally aggressive” (Baker
2001) due to the “profanity, insults, and other offensive or hurtful statements”
(Johnson, Cooper and Chin 2008: 419).
In another case, an irritated reaction that found its outlet in sarcastic humor
resulted not only in the producer of the content being fired, but also in an extended
legal battle and the involvement of multiple celebrities.
In January 2010, as snow and bad weather closed in around Doncaster, Robin
Hood Airport began to issue alerts about possible delays and closures. One
would-be passenger was trainee accountant Paul Chambers (then 26), who was
planning to fly to Belfast to finally meet face-to-face with Sarah Tonner (@crazy-
colours). As the weather worsened, Chambers tweeted several times:
(3) Paul Chambers @pauljchambers 06 Jan 2010
@Crazycolours: I was thinking that if it does then I had decided to resort to terrorism
(4) Paul Chambers @pauljchambers 06 Jan 2010
@Crazycolours: That’s the plan! I am sure the pilots will be expecting me to demand a
more exotic location than NI

We no longer have Sarah’s tweets, but we might infer that she had advocated
taking control of the aircraft. Having already mentioned a penchant for terrorism,
Chambers then tweeted his six hundred or so followers with the following:
(5) Paul Chambers @pauljchambers 06 Jan 2010
Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together
otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!

Despite the airport manager who found it, the senior airport official who was told
about it, and even a police officer investigating it all considering the tweet a joke
rather than a credible threat, a week later, four South Yorkshire police officers
arrested Chambers at his workplace on suspicion of making a hoax bomb threat.
As a result, Chambers lost his job, and though he defended the tweet as a sarcastic
joke borne of frustration, he was ultimately convicted of “sending a public elec-
tronic message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing
character contrary to the Communications Act 2003”, leaving him with a fine and
a lifelong criminal record.
Over the next two and a half years Chambers lodged multiple appeals that
were increasingly vocally backed by celebrities including Stephen Fry. Finally, in
the high court, before the country’s most senior judge, Chambers’ conviction was
overturned – a very late acknowledgement, perhaps, that his ‘threat’ to bomb an
airport was really nothing more than a careless moment of irritated online venting.
If we are to draw out a common theme from both the available data and litera-
ture, then it is that flaming is an over-reaction to some sort of provocation, whether
that is an expletive-laden rant in reply to an unsolicited email or a sarcastic bomb-

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 Flaming and trolling  503

threat in response to a delayed flight. More simplistically, unlike trolling, which

we turn to shortly, flaming is reactive, rather than proactive.

3.3. Current challenges

As noted throughout this chapter, the research into flaming is further ahead than that
on trolling, though this does not necessarily mean that such research is without its
problems or challenges, and the most prominent issue, which recurs with trolling,
is that of disambiguating a behavior from other possible behaviors in the first place.
Within the remit of NMOB, we can include flaming, trolling, cyberbullying,
cyberstalking, and more besides, and it is no mean feat to consistently distinguish
them from each other. To exemplify this, for a moment we will step outside of
flaming and consider Bocij’s (2004) definition of cyberstalking:
[Cyberstalking is] a group of behaviors in which an individual, group of individuals
or organization, uses information and communication technologies to harass another
individual, group of individuals, or organization. Such behaviors may include, but are
not limited to, the transmission of threats and false accusations, identity theft, damage
to data or equipment, computer monitoring, solicitation of minors for sexual purposes,
and any form of aggression. Harassment is defined as a course of action that a reasona-
ble person, in possession of the same information, would think causes another reasona-
ble person to suffer emotional distress. (Bocij 2004: 14, emphasis mine)

It is difficult to see how this definition could be used in such a way that it would not
also capture flaming, trolling, cyberbullying, cyberharassment, and sex offenders
grooming children online, as well as any CMC contribution perceived to be objec-
tionable or distressing for other reasons (e.g. posting a video of animal abuse). The
problem is little better when we consider legislation and policy guidance. From
the UK, for instance, the House of Lords’ Communications Committee published
its first report on social media and criminal offences. In this, trolling is described
as the “intentional disruption of an online forum, by causing offence or starting an
argument” (2014: ch2 § 9c). However, this extremely simplistic definition doesn’t
differentiate between someone disrupting a forum because they have (or think they
have) a genuine grievance and someone doing so simply for the sake of amusement.
Similarly, in guidelines on prosecuting cases involving communications sent
via social media, the Crown Prosecution Service alludes to flaming thus:
Examples of cyberstalking may include:
–  Threatening or obscene emails or text messages.
–  Spamming (where the offender sends the victim multiple junk emails).
–  Live chat harassment or ‘flaming’ (a form of online verbal abuse).
–  Leaving improper messages on online forums or message boards.
–  Sending electronic viruses.
–  Sending unsolicited email.
–  Cyber identity theft. (CPS 2016, emphasis mine)

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504  Claire Hardaker

To describe flaming as a form of online verbal abuse confuses the boundaries

between this and most other kinds of NMOB. How is flaming different, then, from
trolling, cyberbullying, and so forth? We find similar issues in other jurisdictions.
In the US, states that do have statutes for NMOB differ widely in how clearly that
behavior is captured. For example, § 2 of North Carolina’s (2000) cyberstalking
provision states that it is unlawful to:
(2) Electronically mail or electronically communicate to another repeatedly, whether or
not conversation ensues, for the purpose of abusing, annoying, threatening, terrifying,
harassing, or embarrassing any person.
(3) Electronically mail or electronically communicate to another and to knowingly make
any false statement concerning death, injury, illness, disfigurement, indecent conduct,
or criminal conduct of the person electronically mailed or of any member of the per-
son’s family or household with the intent to abuse, annoy, threaten, terrify, harass, or
embarrass. (2000)
This legislation could be used to cover NMOB from repeatedly annoying a recip-
ient (i.e. this could capture spamming, flaming, or trolling) through to terrifying
them by lying about their loved ones (i.e. cyberbullying or cyberstalking).
To summarize, throughout academia, policy, legislation, and the media, there
is little consensus about these terms and their scope. This point is regrettably made
far more clearly in the following section.

4. Trolling

Just as we began the section on flaming with a brief glance into the history of
the word, so it is insightful to do the same with trolling. We find, however, a less
clear-cut answer.

4.1. Etymology
The current definition of trolling may have derived from one of two distinct routes.
The first captures troll as a noun, and finds its roots in the late fourteenth century.
In Old Norse and Scandinavian mythology, a tröll was a large, strong, nasty crea-
ture that possessed supernatural powers, but that would also turn to stone in the
sunlight (Jakobsson 2006: 1; MacCulloch 1930: 285–286). These ancient myths
persist in folklore tales such as the Norwegian fairytale The Three Billy Goats
Gruff. The second possibility captures troll as a verb, and dates back at least as far
as the 1600s. In this respect, trolling derives from fishing, and involves drawing
baited fishing lines through the water.2 This variant also has longstanding meta-

2
This is not to be confused with trawl-fishing, which involves dragging nets.

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 Flaming and trolling  505

phorical extensions that include luring others along with some form of bait, and as
exhaustively searching for something.
Currently, users are as happy to invoke terms relating to mythology for the
person (e.g. get back under your bridge, don’t feed the troll) as to fishing for
the act (e.g. biting, baiting, netting, and hooking) and the reality is that we will
probably never know which history was being drawn on when the first person
uttered troll in some semblance of its modern, online sense. Certainly, there is
little enough evidence to give us much hope of deducing it from the earliest online
postings. One matter that is clear, however, is that this term has been far more
heavily influenced by the media than flaming. This is important to note, since
scholars are not impervious to being influenced by widespread, mainstream narra-
tives.
When we look to the media, we find that interest was initially slow, and prior
to 2010, there are only scattered reports on trolling (e.g. Black 2006; Cox 2006;
Moulitsas 2008; Thompson 2009). Where it was discussed, typical definitions
described trolling as the posting of incendiary comments designed to provoke con-
flict: “Hiding behind the pseudonymity of a Web alias, trolls disrupt useful dis-
cussions with ludicrous rants, inane threadjackings, personal insults, and abusive
language” (Naraine 2007: 146). Brandel (2007) adds that “[a] troll is a person who
posts with the intent to insult and provoke others. […] The goal is to disrupt the
normal traffic of a discussion group beyond repair” (Brandel 2007: 32).
Heffernan (2008) highlights the unprovoked nature of trolling, along with
another goal – amusement at another’s expense:

Consider this question from David Hume: “Would any man, who is walking alone, tread
as willingly on another’s gouty toes, whom he has no quarrel with, as on the hard flint
and pavement?” […] Internet trolls regularly tread on gouty toes. They trick vulnerable
people with whom they have no quarrel; they upset those people; they humiliate them;
they break their hearts; they mess with them. They do it for something Hume didn’t
perfectly name: the lulz—the spiteful high. (Heffernan 2008)

The earliest academic attention to the subject matter also largely created defi-
nitions from intuition, the media, and online ephemera like The Troller’s FAQ
(1996). The result is that the term has been, and continues to be used as an all-en-
capsulating term. For example, Herring et al. (2002: 372) and Turner et al. (2005)
describe trolling as luring others into frustratingly useless, circular discussion that
is not necessarily overtly argumentative. Donath (1999: 45) and Utz (2005: 50)
suggest that trollers can intentionally disseminate poor advice, thereby provok-
ing corrections from others. Tepper (1997: 41) explains how trolling can define
ingroup/outgroup membership: those who ‘bite’ signal novice, outgroup status,
whilst ingroup members will identify the troller, will not be baited, and may even
mock those who are. Donath (1999) and Dahlberg (2001) suggest that trolling is
a one-sided game of deception played on unwitting others: “The troll attempts to

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506  Claire Hardaker

pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group’s common interests and con-
cerns” (Donath 1999: 45). Then, once the troll has developed its false identity and
been accepted into the group, they will set about disrupting the forum whilst trying
to conceal their true intent (Dahlberg 2001).
The main point here is that whilst some of these definitions overlap to an
extent, all seem to be describing a collection of symptoms, rather than one coher-
ent behavior or motive that is responsible for those choices of actions. In an effort
to create an empirically informed definition, I analysed 3,727 user discussions of
trolling drawn from an eighty-six million word Usenet corpus and concluded that
trolling is “the deliberate (perceived) use of impoliteness/aggression, deception,
and/or manipulation in CMC to create a context conducive to triggering or antago-
nizing conflict, typically for amusement’s sake” (Hardaker 2013: 79).
In short, one distinction to be drawn between flaming and trolling, as hinted at
in the previous section, is that whilst flaming may be an over-reaction to a provo-
cation, trolling proactively strives to be a provocation in its own right.

4.2. Case studies: Brenda Leyland

Since 2010, there have been a string of prosecutions related to cases that the media
has typically described as trolling. For instance, on 29th October 2010, 36-year-old
Colm Coss pleaded guilty at Manchester City Magistrates’ Court after leaving
offensive messages and jokes on memorial pages set up to commemorate deceased
loved ones, including children. He was sentenced to eighteen weeks in prison.
Similarly, in September 2011, Sean Duffy, then aged 26, also pleaded guilty to the
same charge of improper use of a public electronic communications network at
Reading Magistrates’ Court after posting an offensive image to the tribute page of
a teenager who had been accidentally shot.
Deliberately targeting memorial and tribute sites with mockery is not the only
type of behavior that is picked up by the media as trolling, however. Other, more
sinister behavior also earns this name. In June 2013, 60-year-old Frank Zimmer-
man was given a suspended 26-week sentence after emailing abuse to a string of
celebrities, including Lord Alan Sugar, Louise Mensch MP, and journalist Terence
Blacker. In January 2014, John Nimmo and Isabelle Sorley were jailed for eight
and twelve weeks respectively for sending journalist and feminist activist Caroline
Criado-Perez Twitter abuse after she successfully petitioned the Bank of England
to ensure that a notable historic female figure would be represented on British
banknotes. And in September 2014, Peter Nunn was given an eighteen week custo-
dial sentence for sending abuse to Stella Creasy MP after she had supported Cria-
do-Perez’s campaign. Some of the abuse in this latter case involved rape, death,
and bomb-threats.
It is crucial to note, however, as has been alluded to above, that not all cases
of so-called trolling are this clear cut, but to understand the complexity we need

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 Flaming and trolling  507

a far greater amount of context and background. For this, we turn to the case of
Brenda Leyland.
In 2007, three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from the holiday resort
of Praia da Luz. Her parents, medical doctors Gerry and Kate McCann were dining
at a nearby restaurant at the time, whilst Madeleine and her younger siblings slept
in their hotel bedroom. At around 10pm, Kate McCann went to check on her chil-
dren and discovered that Madeleine was gone. Despite extensive searches, she has
never been found. During the early parts of the inquiry, the McCanns were ques-
tioned by police about her disappearance, and media outlets were quick to voice
their suspicions and theories about how the McCanns might have been involved.
Meanwhile, though the platform was only a year old at the time, users of the new
social media site, Twitter, also took an interest in the story. Whilst some invested
hours trading guesses about the truth behind Madeleine’s disappearance, others
spent their time sending threats of violence, murder and abduction of their other
children at the McCanns.
Responding to the media was relatively straightforward: the McCanns took
legal action and were ultimately awarded substantial damages, along with front-
page apologies. However, social media is a different and much more difficult plat-
form to regulate, and almost a decade later, havens of like-minded people still
interested in the Madeleine McCann case thrive. This brings us to 2014, and the
sleepy civil parish of Burton Overy in Leicestershire.
Brenda Leyland was educated at a convent school, went to church, enjoyed gar-
dening and photography, and was involved in the annual village scarecrow compe-
tition. Not all was perfect, however. A sixty-three year old mother to two sons, she
appears to have been estranged from the eldest, and her marriage had ended in 2001.
According to expert evidence at the inquest, Leyland had a history of attempted
suicide and was receiving both therapy and medication to help her deal with bouts
of severe depression and anxiety. A consultant psychiatrist who had treated Leyland
in the past also stated that she had lifelong unstable emotional personality traits.
On Twitter, Leyland had another identity: @sweepyface. The bio for sweepy-
face’s Twitter account simply read “Researcher”, and after a few dormant years, it
suddenly became active in November 2013. From that point to September 2014,
sweepyface sent roughly 4,600 tweets, and throughout 2014 alone, the number of
people following the account doubled from 93 to 183. The content of sweepyface’s
tweets skewed in a very particular direction: 87 % of them contained the word or
hashtag McCann. Meanwhile, references to the parents by their first names or ini-
tials occurred an average of once every ten tweets.
Within the online community of those campaigning about the McCanns,
sweepyface fell into a group that might be crudely titled the anti-McCanns – that
is, users who believe the McCanns to be responsible, to whatever degree, for their
daughter’s disappearance. By contrast, the pro-McCanns, as might be expected,
believe the parents innocent of most or all wrongdoing. Both groups employ the

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508  Claire Hardaker

#McCann hashtag as a method of following discussion on this topic, and through

it, sweepyface and others could instantly jump to the latest tweets worldwide on
the subject.
How did sweepyface behave online? She was certainly not complimentary
towards the McCanns and on multiple occasions, she cast highly critical, personal
aspersions about them (see example 10, for instance). However, these tweets talk
about the McCanns, rather than at them, and there is also a lot of evidence to sup-
port the argument that sweepyface genuinely believed that she was pursuing justice:
(6) Sweepyface, 11:05:45, Fri 29 Nov 2013
#crimewatch  I think you and the Met know as millions of us do that the McCanns may
be complicit in Madeleines fate, don’t let us down !!
(7) Sweepyface, 18:13:19, Mon 23 Dec 2013
I have never heard a pro say ” poor child, left alone, scared, not feeling well that day”
all I hear is poor #mccann s how they r suffering
(8) Sweepyface, 18:30:45, Mon 23 Dec 2013
#mccann  So many people think the children were sedated, because the twins never
stirred for almost 12 hours, lights on, shouting crying?
(9) Sweepyface, 09:47:14, Tue 24 Dec 2013
#mccann  It is and has always been, about Madeleine . A victim on so many levels, we
will help fight for as long as it takes 4 her
(10) Sweepyface, 15:21:34, Mon 08 Sep 2014
I think Kate #mccann  sees herself as a modern day Eva Peron beautiful, suffering,
instead of a booze filled nymphomaniac
To briefly summarise some 4,600 tweets, sweepyface frequently described the
McCanns as neglectful parents, strongly objected to their ongoing media appear-
ances, and complained that they were profiting from their daughter’s disappear-
ance. She also tweeted police forces, crime investigation programmes, and media
outlets, campaigning for them to reopen the investigation. When pro-McCann
users and others challenged her, she called them unpleasant names, disputed their
evidence, and occasionally blocked them. In short, sweepyface appears to have
fixated on both the topic and on some controversial theories surrounding it, and
her conduct was annoying to some and offensive to others. However, as best as
can be inferred from the data, the intention to cause conflict for the sake of amuse-
ment – as we find in many definitions of trolling – appears to be missing.
Finally, in September 2014, sweepyface’s online world collided with Brenda
Leyland’s offline world. It began when sweepyface noticed that Sky reporter Mar-
tin Brunt had started to follow her. Sweepyface even tweeted him directly:
(11) Sweepyface, 21:02:14, Mon 29 Sep 2014
#mccann Just noticed @skymartinbrunt is following me, why Martin won’t you
investigate some of these facts and show neutrality ?
(12) Sweepyface, 21:08:22, Mon 29 Sep 2014
#mccann  @skymartinbrunt  Martin, any thoughts on the connection between Amy
Tierney, the witness and Basil ? how does that work ?

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 Flaming and trolling  509

Rather than responding publically, Brunt contacted Leyland in private. Three days
later, on Thursday 02nd October, Sky News launched an exposé on “the McCann
trolls”. As well as radio reports and online articles, the investigation consisted of
an eleven-minute video report posted on YouTube.3 A shortened version of this
report was repeated on the main Sky News channel cycle throughout the day. In
that excerpt, Brenda Leyland is doorstepped by a camera crew led by Martin Brunt:
(13) Sky News, 18:12, Thu 02nd Oct 2014: ‘Evil’ Trolls In Hate Campaign Against McCanns:
video (04m 23s)4. Excerpt: 00s 00m to 01m 11s.
Brunt, voiceover: [Shaky footage as the camera person heads towards a car that Ley-
land is exiting.] This woman uses Twitter to attack the parents of
Madeleine McCann. On the internet, she’s anonymous. Not any-
more. [Leyland has been walking their way. As they meet, she looks
somewhat bewildered.]
Brunt: [Some speech obscured by voiceover.] …I’m Martin Brunt from
Sky News.
Leyland: Well I’m just about to go out.
Brunt: Well we’ve caught you. Can we talk to you about your Twitter?
Leyland: No.
Brunt: And your attacks on the McCanns.
Leyland: No.
Brunt: Erm. Why are you attacking them so regularly?
Leyland: Look I’m just going out with a friend. Okay?
Brunt: But why are you using your Twitter account …
Leyland: Excuse me. [Turns and walks back towards her car.]
Brunt: … to attack the McCanns?
Leyland: [Stops and turns back.] I’m entitled to do that Martin.
Brunt: You know you’ve been reported to the police, to Scotland Yard.
[Camera gets in front of Leyland.] They’re considering, er, a whole
file of Twitter accounts [camera gets closer to Leyland] and that …
Leyland: That’s fair enough.
Brunt: … what supporters say is a campaign of abuse against the McCanns.
Leyland: Okay well I’m going out. [Leyland turns and walks back towards
her car. She looks back briefly as if responding to something fur-
ther but the audio has cut to the voiceover at this point.]
Brunt, voiceover: On Twitter, she uses the name sweepyface with a profile picture of
a pet. She tweets many times a day, and mostly about the McCanns.
In one message she spread rumours about the couple’s marriage.
In another, she hoped Madeleine’s parents would suffer forever.
But sweepyface is not the worst. Almost from the day Madeleine
vanished seven years ago, her family have been targeted with vile
messages on the internet.

3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkAzz8Pwdvc
4
http://news.sky.com/story/1345871/evil-trolls-in-hate-campaign-against-mccanns

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510  Claire Hardaker

In the report below this video, Brunt writes:

The Metropolitan Police is investigating a catalogue of vile internet abuse targeting the
family of Madeleine McCann including death threats, Sky News can reveal. Officers
are in talks with the Crown Prosecution Service after being handed a dossier of more
than 80 pages of Tweets, Facebook posts and messages on online forums aimed at Kate
and Gerry McCann. […] One troll – who uses the Twitter identity “Sweepyface” and
has posted dozens of anti-McCann messages using the #mccann hashtag – was con-
fronted by Sky News. When asked about her use of social media to attack the couple,
she replied: “I’m entitled to.”
Though Sky New does not give her offline name, Leyland’s face and voice is given
the prime slot at the start of the video, and she features heavily in Sky’s reports on
“the McCann trolls” throughout the day. The following tweet from her sweepyface
account is also used and widely requoted:
(14) Sweepyface, 12:30:20, Fri 29 Nov 2013
#mccann  Q ” how long must the Mccanns suffer” answer ” for the rest of their miser-
able lives”

This tweet appears in amongst a wide range of other content from various sources,
some containing threats and incitement to violence towards the McCanns. The
identities of those other users are kept anonymous, however, leaving Leyland as
the sole face and identity of “the McCann trolls”. Within hours, other media out-
lets make the connection between sweepyface and Brenda Leyland. Her identity,
age and village are all published, and by the next day, across most of the media,
she is being vilified as a troll.
On Saturday 04th October, two days after the exposé, Leyland is found dead in
a room at the Marriott Hotel, Leicester. An inquest immediately opens, and some
five months later, on 20th March 2015, Coroner Catherine Mason records a verdict
of suicide. As part of the inquest, Detective Sergeant Steven Hutchings of Leices-
tershire Police verifies that none of Leyland’s tweets had amounted to a criminal
offence.
This case exemplifies, to an extreme degree, the problem raised repeatedly
throughout the chapter: namely, that the definitions of terms relating to negatively
marked online behaviors are unclear, inconsistent, and because of this, they can be
badly misapplied. To take the term troll specifically, the societal stigma that goes
with being branded such is serious enough to make an otherwise unknown individ-
ual front page news. However, this very term is also being semantically stretched,
particularly by the media, to such an extent that it is catching cases in which the
accused individual is arguably not a troll at all. In short, there are serious, real-
world consequences to the ways in which we define and apply terms like troll and
these need much more investigation.

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 Flaming and trolling  511

4.3. Current challenges

The issue of terminology is not the only challenge faced by those researching
trolling. Given that trolling, as a field of enquiry, is virtually brand new, it would
be possible to list almost any aspect as a future challenge. However, there is one
defining element of trolling, when contrasted with flaming, that we find across the
literature: deception.
Literature in the field of im/politeness is currently grappling hard with the
place and scope of intentions, in our understandings and productions of socially
(un)acceptable behavior (see, for instance, Arundale 2008; Haugh 2008; Spencer-
Oatey and Xing 2006). But how does this relate to trolling or deception? Brown and
Levinson (1987) noted very early on that someone might express themselves such
that “there is more than one unambiguously attributable intention so that the actor
cannot be held to have committed [them]self to one particular intent” (Brown and
Levinson 1987: 69).
Whilst Brown and Levinson are talking about politeness, this can equally apply
to any form of interaction, from courtroom examination to political interviews to
online trolling. As in the definitions proposed in § 4.1 above, a troll may “attempt
to pass as a legitimate participant” (Donath 1999: 45) and then, “after developing
their false identity and becoming accepted within a group, the troll sets about dis-
rupting proceedings while trying to maintain his or her cover” (Dahlberg 2001).
If indeed a troll chooses a covert strategy, should they be challenged, they may
excuse their behavior as accidental, unwitting, incidental, and so on, whilst deny-
ing any intention to offend. Similarly, just as a troll might disguise their intentions
to deliberately offend, a target might be disingenuous about their interpretations of
that behavior, and pretend to be amused rather than offended as a way to save face.
In summary, the debate involving the role of intentions has received some con-
siderable attention both within and even outside of pragmatics5 but virtually none
considers deception as part of that process.
Nefarious deception (that is, deception motivated by personal gain or harming
others, as opposed to that motivated by kindness or politeness) reaches beyond
intentions, however. It can also encapsulate the formation of an identity that is
inconsistent with one’s offline self, if done with malicious purposes in mind – an
aspect that is heavily facilitated by the anonymity that CMC can offer. This may
even stretch as far as creating multiple accounts deliberately made to look like
separate people, so that the user can cause greater disruption by the appearance of

5
See, for instance, Bach (1987), Davis (1998, 2007, 2008), Gibbs (1999, 2001), Green
(2007, 2008), Jaszczolt (2005, 2006), Keysar (2007), Recanati (1986), Saul (2001),
Searle (1983, 1990), Thompson (2008).

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512  Claire Hardaker

strength in numbers (Chester and O’Hara 2009; Phillips 2002; Zarsky 2004). Little
has been done in this area from linguistics.
Finally, deception also captures straightforward lies, such as giving advice that
the troll knows to be dangerous or incorrect in the hopes of causing hurt or harm,
or promoting themselves as trustworthy, to gain greater traction within the group.
Whilst there is very little work within linguistics on what we might crudely call
‘narrative deception’ (as opposed to intention deception, or identity deception)
fortunately there is a wealth of excellent work to be found in psychology6 which
may help move this area forward.

5. Future directions

From almost every angle, research into flaming and trolling is very new. At the
time of writing, the field that these topics sit within – CMC – has been established
for barely thirty-five years (see, for instance, Kaye 1985; Kerr and Hiltz 1982;
Kiesler, Siegel and McGuire 1984). Flaming made its debut some ten years after
that (Lea et al. 1992), whilst trolling took another decade to arrive (Herring et al.
2002). The result, then, is that almost every possible avenue qualifies as a future
direction, but there are some that are worth repeating, or raising afresh.
Perhaps the most pressing issue, as discussed throughout this chapter, is clarity
on what terms like flaming and trolling mean. It is unsurprising for new fields to
go through a period of turmoil as concepts become established and certain con-
sensuses are reached. However, in this particular area of research, a lack of clarity
can have extremely serious, real-world impacts, as in the case of Brenda Leyland.
Clear definitions also become paramount when issuing legal guidance and even
legislation itself, however. Determining that a behavior is illegal relies heavily
on being able to identify that behavior in the first place, and here, linguists have
much to offer, particularly from the fields of forensic linguistics, corpus linguistics
(e.g. through observation of largescale patterns), and pragmatics.
Further, despite the now firmly-established field of impoliteness, which includes
seminal work by the likes of Culpeper (1996), Spencer-Oatey (2005), and Bousfield
(2008), there is surprisingly little research into either flaming or trolling that seems
to draw upon this (see however, Graham 2007, 2008; Herring 1994; Locher 2006).
In short, aligning impoliteness research and research into negatively marked
online behaviors – particularly flaming – could benefit both since they have marked
similarities, such as the variability in perceptions of what constitutes impoliteness,
trolling, or flaming in the first place, and the evaluations of degrees of hostility

6
See, for instance, Akehurst et al. (1996), Ekman (1996), Memon, Vrij and Bull (2003),
Rubin (2010), Vrij (2000), Vrij et al. (2000).

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 Flaming and trolling  513

made by the participants (Graham 2007: 743). Similarly, research into flaming
and trolling may be substantially supported by work in psychology, criminology,
sociology, and computing.
In short, for those interested in researching negatively marked online behavior,
a wide vista of possibilities is open for exploration. If there remains any lingering
sense that CMC is somehow not as worthy a subject of investigation as offline
interaction, hopefully this chapter has shown that it is not only a serious area, but
also one that should be ventured into carefully, and with a great deal of sensitivity.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council through
two grants: the Twitter Rape Threats and the Discourse of Online Misogyny pro-
ject (grant reference ES/L008874/1) and the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches
to Social Science (grant reference ES/K002155/1).

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