Online trolling is a new phenomenon that is increasingly coming to public attention. Recent events in the United Kingdom (UK) have raised concerns about this behaviour. Trolling is particularly targeted at public figures, and Members of Parliament (MPs) are a prime target. In this study we surveyed UK MPs about their experiences and the impact of being trolled by completing a short online questionnaire. One-hundred and eighty-one MPs responded to our survey. Chi-square tests for independence and one-way ANOVA was employed to analyse the data. All MPs had experienced trolling and many were trolled multiple times a day, and the principle platforms for this abuse were Twitter and Facebook. The pattern of trolling varied between male and female targets, with males reporting more concern about reputational damage, and females more concern about their personal safety. The impact of being trolled varied between males and females, with a much greater impact on female MPs. We discuss the effects of online trolling on the victims of this behaviour.

Introduction

Online abuse – commonly known as “trolling” – is an interpersonal, antisocial behaviour prominent within Internet culture across the world, a form of online bullying and harassment (Pew Research Centre, 2014). Common online abusive behaviour includes starting aggressive arguments on Internet sites (Klempka & Stamson, 2013) and posting inflammatory, malicious messages in online comment sections deliberately to provoke, disrupt, and upset others (Gammon, 2014). Online social media abuse (OSMA) is a relatively new phenomenon, concerning as it does recent developments in online technologies, and it is not surprising that there is a relatively limited pool of published academic research into the phenomenon. However, there is an assumption that online abuse via social media is widespread and growing, in line with the expansion of social media. Traditional research on online bullying/cyberbullying has been carried out in adolescents and college students (e.g. Mason, 2008 Shariff, 2008, 2009;). This type of bullying is mainly in the form of text messages, chatrooms and e-mails. These studies conclude that the victims are often females (e.g. Noret and Rivers, 2006) or from minority racial groups e.g. (Li, 2006) or minority groups such as LGBT (e.g. Blumenfeld & Cooper, 2010).