Phillips, Whitney. 2015. This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press.
In her ethnography focused on Internet trolling, Whitney Phillips seeks to understand motivations and tools within this group she often refers to as a subculture. Through her research journey, she comes to see the group not as a group so much as a continuum of people of all sorts with varying and changing perspectives. Working through a form of history, Phillips shows how the term ‘troll’ has evolved to mean different things to different people. Early examples included an ethic of exposing what trolls deemed as hypocrisy in any dominant culture. Some trolls’ antics gained notoriety in society outside their fellow trolls. This became a form of currency, called lulz, and was a prime motivation for many.
Over time, trolling behavior became personified in the form of a movement referred to as Anonymous. Factions within the trolling community and within Anonymous splintered, attacking each other at times. For example, Phillips describes two Anonymous groups. She calls the politically motivated faction as “Big-A Anonymous” who are also sometimes called ‘hacktivists’. The other portion of Anonymous she refers to as “little-a anonymous” who are primarily those still interested in lulz, or ‘lulz-ists’.
In terms of her ethnographic approach, Whitney Phillips lines out her process primarily in chapter 3. She defines her work as “a qualitative, mixed methods study” (Phillips 2015, 37). She describes conducting “dozens of online interviews with twenty-five trolls” and exchanging large numbers of emails and private messages with her “trolling collaborators” using the snowball approach to adding “research recruits” (Ibid.). Phillips acknowledges how during her research the platforms used by trolling communities and the community itself (its ranks and ideological stance) shifted and splintered. Perhaps her largest challenge was the insistence of anonymity by all the self-identified trolls willing to work with her. Over her time of participant observation, she could begin to identify individuals, even when their online names changed, through their messaging, language, and when conducting audio-only interviews, by their voices.
She breaks up the chapter on methodology into each of the difficult research functions using section headings, including: Establishing Borders, Navigating Platforms, The Problem of Anonymity, Moving Targets, and Putting the “I” in Troll. In each of these sections Phillips discusses the barriers to research and how she approached overcoming them. For example, the last section is about how she needed to ‘out’ herself to a group of so-called ‘RIP trolls’. This sort of troll would seek out public online memorials for people who had recently died. They would then provoke family members and others through uploaded images or jokes about the person who died, or their family. Phillips had been invited to speak on a TV talk show about the issue. Feeling she had gained their trust, yet wondering if her public appearance would make her a troll target, she reached out to some of her collaborators. After several conversations she notes how one of them replied to her saying, “It’s not your job to defend us” (Phillips 2015, 46).
In her ethnography focused on Internet trolling, Whitney Phillips seeks to understand motivations and tools within this group she often refers to as a subculture. Through her research journey, she comes to see the group not as a group so much as a continuum of people of all sorts with varying and changing perspectives. Working through a form of history, Phillips shows how the term ‘troll’ has evolved to mean different things to different people. Early examples included an ethic of exposing what trolls deemed as hypocrisy in any dominant culture. Some trolls’ antics gained notoriety in society outside their fellow trolls. This became a form of currency, called lulz, and was a prime motivation for many.
Over time, trolling behavior became personified in the form of a movement referred to as Anonymous. Factions within the trolling community and within Anonymous splintered, attacking each other at times. For example, Phillips describes two Anonymous groups. She calls the politically motivated faction as “Big-A Anonymous” who are also sometimes called ‘hacktivists’. The other portion of Anonymous she refers to as “little-a anonymous” who are primarily those still interested in lulz, or ‘lulz-ists’.
In terms of her ethnographic approach, Whitney Phillips lines out her process primarily in chapter 3. She defines her work as “a qualitative, mixed methods study” (Phillips 2015, 37). She describes conducting “dozens of online interviews with twenty-five trolls” and exchanging large numbers of emails and private messages with her “trolling collaborators” using the snowball approach to adding “research recruits” (Ibid.). Phillips acknowledges how during her research the platforms used by trolling communities and the community itself (its ranks and ideological stance) shifted and splintered. Perhaps her largest challenge was the insistence of anonymity by all the self-identified trolls willing to work with her. Over her time of participant observation, she could begin to identify individuals, even when their online names changed, through their messaging, language, and when conducting audio-only interviews, by their voices.
She breaks up the chapter on methodology into each of the difficult research functions using section headings, including: Establishing Borders, Navigating Platforms, The Problem of Anonymity, Moving Targets, and Putting the “I” in Troll. In each of these sections Phillips discusses the barriers to research and how she approached overcoming them. For example, the last section is about how she needed to ‘out’ herself to a group of so-called ‘RIP trolls’. This sort of troll would seek out public online memorials for people who had recently died. They would then provoke family members and others through uploaded images or jokes about the person who died, or their family. Phillips had been invited to speak on a TV talk show about the issue. Feeling she had gained their trust, yet wondering if her public appearance would make her a troll target, she reached out to some of her collaborators. After several conversations she notes how one of them replied to her saying, “It’s not your job to defend us” (Phillips 2015, 46).
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