Political and Ideological Trolling
Kirsten Ashby
Undergraduate Researcher
Media Major (The Media School)
Aachel Patel
Undergraduate Researcher
Finance Major (Kelley School of Business)
Pnina Fichman
Faculty Mentor
Pnina Fichman (Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering)
Project Description
While research on online trolling has focused mostly on vandalism, political and ideological trolls are as popular. Unlike malevolent trolls that provoke their target maliciously, political trolls are motivated by their ideology, may use satire to provoke. This project will focus on trolling motivated by political ideology, using comparative data from two election cycles. Students will collaborate in collecting data from social media platforms, analyze the data using qualitative methods, focusing on comparing troll behaviors over time.
Technology or Computational Component
Students will be scraping data from social media platforms, cleaning the data, and analyzing the data. In addition, training in Nvivo, software for qualitative data analysis, will be provided.