The initial phase of trolling is hard to be spotted both by society and the organisation. Whether the deviation of the public opinion is a consequence of the anticipated development, or other factors are responsible for it, is a hard problem to solve. That is why the intense communication in the web space faces organisations with the ever more pressing need for monitoring and precise reaction to every spotted attempt for unreasonable alteration of the public perception in an unwanted direction. Today this activity has turned into an
uniform part of the crisis management.
There is one additional peculiarity: the counteractions to attempts for deviation of the public opinion are mainly pointed towards socially proving how unreasonable the replacement doctrine is. The identification of the trolling group, the endorser, or stopping the rolling activity does not provide a solution to the conflict and crisis situation. Due to the comfort conformism provides, once initiated the failure grows autonomously. However, does not continue forever. The intended idea, with which trolls aim to change the original one, is also in need of social approval. Sooner or later society realises the mistake and is dissatisfied- naturally, converts that energy into powerful displeasure and easy- to- trigger aggression. The endorser and the trolls are not indifferent to such development of the situation. They steer away from the unpleasant result via the appalling of fear and mystics- a step that buys them time. Then, they introduce the new doctrine and guide the public activity in another direction. The mass behaviour is altered. The action is a derivative of the described by Chavdar Hristov “Simplified model of the mass behaviour” (Христов, Чавдар (Hristov, Chavdar). 2008, 59), but in a shape where a subject of realisation is a mechanism for periodic recurrence and gradual increase of the induced failure. For purposes of depicting, the following model is proposed:
Figure 1. General model of the troll-induced mass behaviour and possibility into escalating into aggression.
PLACE AND ROLE OF HACKERS AND TROLLS IN THE INDUCTION OF CRISES IN THE WEB
meaningful exhortations from the disinformation, the insinuations and the slander is anything but easy;
- Hacking to promote democratic moral values and against destructive terrorist groupings: such example is the group New World Hacking which on 31 December 2015 hacked BBC`s site so as to showcase their skills (Хакери борещи се срещу ИДИЛ в мрежата, атакували сайта на Би Би Си. (Hackers fighting against ISIS in the web attacked BBC`s site) 2016 ); another example is the Anonymous group which took offline more than 5000 Twitter accounts which were popularising radical Islam (Хакери свалиха 5000 акаунта с радикален. ислям в Туитър. (Hackers took offline more than 5000 Twitter accounts popularising radical Islam) 2015), etc. so long as the matter concerns blocking communication channels, i.e. disruption of e technological level of the net, and not the doctrinal, the actions are considered hackers`.
The list is open, as the anticipated dynamic development of Internet allows for new displays of hacker intervention. In all of the discussed examples, such actions induce conflicts, endanger the reputation and the management of the organisation and have a great potential to turn into a crisis. Specific for the hackers` intervention is that the subject to attacks are usually big companies and institutions. Institutions are meant to execute socially useful tasks (Джери, Д., Д. Джери (Jary, D., J. Jary). 1999). Blocking their corporate sites or the web-portals discontinues the services for citizens and enterprises. Sometimes, it even ceases totally the activity of the companies dependent on the functioning of the institutions: obtaining information, registering deals, regular submission of declarations within the set deadlines, etc. Hacking the institutional portal- for example via distributed denial of service (DDoS)- facilitates the transition from conflict to crisis. Sometimes endangered of discontinuing functionality are whole sectors of the business.
3. Specifics of the trolls` actions
The initial phase of trolling is hard to be spotted both by society and the organisation. Whether the deviation of the public opinion is a consequence of the anticipated development, or other factors are responsible for it, is a hard problem to solve. That is why the intense communication in the web space faces organisations with the ever more pressing need for monitoring and precise reaction to every spotted attempt for unreasonable alteration of the public perception in an unwanted direction. Today this activity has turned into an
uniform part of the crisis management.
There is one additional peculiarity: the counteractions to attempts for deviation of the public opinion are mainly pointed towards socially proving how unreasonable the replacement doctrine is. The identification of the trolling group, the endorser, or stopping the rolling activity does not provide a solution to the conflict and crisis situation. Due to the comfort conformism provides, once initiated the failure grows autonomously. However, does not continue forever. The intended idea, with which trolls aim to change the original one, is also in need of social approval. Sooner or later society realises the mistake and is dissatisfied- naturally, converts that energy into powerful displeasure and easy- to- trigger aggression. The endorser and the trolls are not indifferent to such development of the situation. They steer away from the unpleasant result via the appalling of fear and mystics- a step that buys them time. Then, they introduce the new doctrine and guide the public activity in another direction. The mass behaviour is altered. The action is a derivative of the described by Chavdar Hristov “Simplified model of the mass behaviour” (Христов, Чавдар (Hristov, Chavdar). 2008, 59), but in a shape where a subject of realisation is a mechanism for periodic recurrence and gradual increase of the induced failure. For purposes of depicting, the following model is proposed:
Figure 1. General model of the troll-induced mass behaviour and possibility into escalating into aggression.
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Trolls` actions concern the reputation and in the event of success they lead even to alteration of the organisation`s management. When trolling takes place without complications, the crisis in the particular organisation is often unspotted, as the alteration in the social perception is mostly finished by the time of changing the image. Such “temporal misfit” is easily achieved in the web space- there time has a new, wider dimension and the addresses, defined by the identification protocol (IP) contain a lot of data, none of which gives information about the ideological proximity between an organisation and the surrounding environment.
In the modern communication environment trolling becomes more popular and obtains an increasingly velocity of action:
On 14 June 2014 the Austrian newspaper “Der Standard” published an article “Paid Pro-Russian trolls try to manipulate the social networks and forums” (“Bezahlte prorussishe Trollen versuchen soziale Netzwerke und Foren manipulieren.”.2014). The article discusses the presence of an “Agency for analyses in Internet” in which work 600 cooperatives. They publish opinions and commentaries that “saturate” the news platforms.
On the subject of Pro-Russian trolls are devoted a number of articles in the Swiss “Neue Züricher Zeitung” in which a Russian media team is described as a master of automatically generated Twitter accounts and uses all available ways to sneak “around” the rules (Fichter, Adrienne, 2015). One of the latest publications on the subject is the work of the expert in the field of politics and social media Martin Fuchs from September 2016 (Fuchs Martin, 2016
)
. It features the results from a research that shows that behind 15 – 40% of the posts on the social platforms concerning political parties in Switzerland are actually non-existent virtual users. Evidently, trolling is even more active and more obviously applied to the political debate. Nowadays the term “digital diplomacy” is used for guiding the public opinion.Conclusion
The advanced processes of globalisation, development of the communication in Internet and mediatisation of an increasing number of social aspects define hackers and trolls as a new and developing crisis threat. In the coming years Internet is anticipated to become the epicentre for crises even greater in number and magnitude. While hackers bring down the infrastructure of the network and do not propose solutions for its rebuilt, trolls alter the ideology which is a challenge for both modern crisis management and modern companies,
institutions and citizen organisations.
REFERENCES:
1. Arquilla, John and David Ronfeldt.1996. The Advent Of Netwar. Santa