A Quantitative Exploration: Weibo Users Perception of Trolling

Online trolling has caused multiple concerning social issues within the past decade, thus receiving significantly rising attention from both academia and the public. Nevertheless, not only are there differences when researchers define trolling, but also there is a gap between academic definitions of online trolling and users interpretations of online trolling. To this end, this research conducted an online survey and recruited 193 Weibo users to explore how they define online trolling quantitatively, how they perceive trolling behavior, and how online trolling influences them. After analyzing, mainly cross-filtering, the collected data, this research found that Weibo users definition of online trolling is considerably broad. Even though most participants had negative emotional responses to being trolled, few experienced behavioral changes. Moreover, senior Weibo users trolling intentions are more defensive than those who have been Weibo users for a shorter time.