Trolling and Online Reputation

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In the wake of the 2016 UK Brexit referendum and Trump election campaign, I began to sense a shift in how online reputation worked. Some writers on online reputation in the early 2010s suggested that reputations could be accurately measured by platform metrics, and that this could empower users. I sensed that, given the rise of trolling, this wasn’t the case anymore for many – if indeed it ever was. I started to see a lot of authors addressing the significance of online trolling (on platforms such as 4chan and reddit, for example), especially since trolls on these platforms played a significant role in the Trump presidential campaign. But I didn’t see much that explored the link between the more mundane uses of reputational measures online (such as checking Amazon or eBay seller ratings) and the more violent and/or politically charged ones (such as shaming someone on Twitter, or sharing anti-Hillary Clinton memes on 4chan). This article is an attempt to show that these phenomena – while they may not seem directly linked – share a similar logic. It suggests that the constant measurement of online reputation is a significant background condition, which enables trolling to take shape.

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