The present study aimed to expand our understanding of trolling interactions by examining 10,025 community-reported trolling incidents in the online game League of Legends to determine what characterizes messages sent by trolls, their teammates, and their opponents. To do this, we used a novel method blending content analysis and topic modelling. Contrary to extant literature, our study of complete trolling interactions found striking similarities between teammates’ and trolls’ chats, with both displaying the negative traits (e.g., exclusionary language) typically attributed to trolls. Findings also suggest that the transition from victim to perpetrator can occur extremely rapidly. This has important implications for the labelling of actors in trolling interactions, for future studies into the trolling cycle, and for theories of computer-mediated communication.

中文翻译：

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对于谁是游戏巨魔：在线游戏中的巨魔互动研究

本研究旨在通过检查在线游戏《英雄联盟》中的10,025个社区报告的拖钓事件来扩大我们对拖钓互动的理解，以确定代表巨魔，其队友和对手发送的消息的特征。为此，我们使用了一种融合内容分析和主题建模的新颖方法。与现有文献相反，我们对完全拖钓互动的研究发现，队友聊天与拖钓聊天之间具有惊人的相似性，两者均表现出通常归因于拖钓的负面特征（例如，排他性语言）。研究结果还表明，从受害者到犯罪者的过渡可能非常迅速。这对标记互动中的参与者的标签，对标记周期的未来研究具有重要的意义，