‘Troll alert!’: Provocation and harassment in tourism and hospitality social media

With the advent of Web 2.0, social media have emerged as new spaces of hybrid interaction, comprising customer-to-customer, as well as customer-to-business/service-provider communicative exchanges. In the best case scenario, social media sites are communities where members find and share information, experience a sense of belonging, and provide mutual support. However, in many instances, the relatively anonymous nature of social media relieves some of the inhibitions of social interaction, resulting in negative behaviours such as harassment (for instance, in the form of trolling), flaming, and hate speech. This paper examines the phenomenon of trolling as a form of online provocation and harassment which targets users (including customers and businesses) in tourism social media spaces. Trolling remains largely unaddressed in the context of tourism (and hospitality) social media. Specifically, drawing data from TripAdvisor and other online media, the paper examines the incidences of (perceived) trolling and considers TripAdvisor's responses to trolling behaviours.