[ecrea] Special Issue on Trolling – International Journal of E-Politics

Special Issue on Trolling – International Journal of E-Politics



Guest Editorial Preface

Jonathan Bishop (The Crocels Trolling Academy, Swansea, Wales, UK)

To obtain a copy of the Guest Editorial Preface, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/pdf.aspx?tid=120194&ptid=91457&ctid=15&t=Guest 
Editorial Preface

ARTICLE 1

Dealing with Internet Trolling in Political Online Communities: Towards 
the This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Scale

Jonathan Bishop (Centre for Research into Online Communities and 
E-Learning Systems, Swansea, Wales, UK)

Internet trolling has become a popularly used term to describe the 
posting of any content on the Internet which is provocative or 
offensive. This is different from the original meaning online in the 
1990s, which referred to the posting of provocative messages for 
humourous effect. Those systems operators (sysops) who run online 
communities are finding they are being targeted because of abuse posted 
on their platforms. Political discussion groups are some of the most 
prone to trolling, whether consensual or unwanted. Many such websites 
ara open for anyone to join, meaning when some members post messages 
they know are offensive but legal, others might find grossly offensive, 
meaning these messages could be illegal. This paper develops a 
questionnaire called the This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Scale 
(TIWWCHNT-20), which aims to help sysops better plan the development of 
online communities to take account of different users' capacity to be 
offended, and for users to self-assess whether they will be suited to an 
online community. The scale is discussed in relation to different 
Internet posting techniques where different users will act differently.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/article/dealing-with-internet-trolling-in-political-online-communities/120196

To read a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=120196

ARTICLE 2

Trolls Just Want To Have Fun: Electronic Aggression within the Context 
of e-Participation and Other Online Political Behaviour in the United 
Kingdom

Shefali Virkar (Department of Politics and International Relations, 
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK)

Over the last two decades, public confidence and trust in Government has 
declined visibly in several Western liberal democracies owing to a 
distinct lack of opportunities for citizen participation in political 
processes; and has instead given way instead to disillusionment with 
current political institutions, actors, and practices. The rise of the 
Internet as a global communications medium and the advent of digital 
platforms has opened up huge opportunities and raised new challenges for 
public institutions and agencies, with digital technology creating new 
forms of community; empowering citizens and reforming existing power 
structures in a way that has rendered obsolete or inappropriate many of 
the tools and processes of traditional democratic politics. Through an 
analysis of the No. 10 Downing Street ePetitions Initiative based in the 
United Kingdom, this article seeks to engage with issues related to the 
innovative use of network technology by Government to involve citizens 
in policy processes within existing democratic frameworks in order to 
improve administration, to reform democratic processes, and to renew 
citizen trust in institutions of governance. In particular, the work 
seeks to examine whether the application of the new Information and 
Communication Technologies to participatory democracy in the Government 
2.0 era would eventually lead to radical transformations in government 
functioning, policymaking, and the body politic, or merely to modest, 
unspectacular political reform and to the emergence of technology-based, 
obsessive-compulsive pathologies and Internet-based trolling behaviours 
amongst individuals in society.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/article/trolls-just-want-to-have-fun/120197

To read a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=120197

ARTICLE 3

Freedom of Expression On-Line: Rights and Responsibilities of Internet 
Service Providers

Joanna Kulesza (Department of International Law, University of Lodz, 
Lodz, Poland)

This article analyses the contents of the universal right to free 
expression in the context of its applicability on-line. It starts off 
with a brief recapitulation of the origin, definition and interpretation 
of the right to free expression, derived from article 19 UDHR. It then 
goes on to name the three composite rights (the right to hold, impart 
and receive information and ideas) and details the limitations that may 
be put by states upon the individual exercise of those freedoms. States' 
duty to protect free expression is than identified as their negative 
obligation to refrain from infringement as well as a positive one, to 
guarantee that human rights are “protected, respected and remedied” 
within national legal systems. Then the role of Internet Service 
Providers is introduced as the gate keepers of free expression in the 
information society. Different schemes for national ISP liability 
mechanisms are presented: the notice-and-take down procedure as well as 
Internet content filtering (preventive censorship). The paper goes on to 
criticize both mechanisms as enabling ISPs too much freedom in deciding 
upon the shape and scope of individuals' right to impart and receive 
information.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/article/freedom-of-expression-on-line/120198

To read a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=120198

ARTICLE 4

Internet Regulation and Online Censorship

Nikolaos Koumartzis (Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, 
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece), Andreas 
Veglis (Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Aristotle 
University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece)

This paper explores the development of Internet regulation policies 
worldwide since the birth of the World Wide Web, describes the 
advantages and disadvantages of the main filtering methods in use today, 
and presents two of the most important Internet Regulation Systems (IRS) 
implemented in authoritarian regimes and Western democracies around the 
globe. Moreover, the authors propose the conduction of well-designed 
surveys worldwide in order to measure Internet User's opinion and use 
such results as a starting point for developing a fair “Internet 
Regulation System” (fair IRS) in the future. Last, the authors introduce 
a new online tool for conducting related surveys, www.WebObserver.net 
project.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/article/internet-regulation-and-online-censorship/120199

To read a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=120199



Editor(s)-in-Chief: Celia Romm Livermore (Wayne State University, USA), 
Yasmin Ibrahim (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)



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