Menschen werden Trolle auf Social Media, weil sie dadurch Status gewinnen und sich weniger einsam fühlen

Ed told us he engages in extreme behavior on social media because it is cathartic and helps him cope with social isolation.

But it was also clear from speaking with him that such behavior gives him a powerful sense of status.

During our interview he repeatedly mentioned that he had "a couple thousand" followers, and he was particularly proud to count several prominent conservative leaders among them.

When I analyzed Ed's social media account several months later, however, I discovered that he only had about two hundred followers.

What is more, the high-profile conservatives he thought were following him were actually people with copycat accounts.

For Ed and many of the other political extremists we interviewed, social media enables a kind of microcelebrity—even if his influence was exaggerated, or even if many of his followers did not seem like real people who were genuinely interested in his views.

Another extremist we interviewed likened the effect of such status to substance abuse: it makes you feel better about yourself, even if you know it might be bad for you.

Besides earning status from people on their own side, many of the extremists we interviewed simply delighted in getting other people worked up.

Our ability to influence others, however artificially or temporarily, is valuable to people who feel that they have very little control over their own lives.

A team of political scientists in the United States and Denmark conducted a series of studies in both countries to determine who spreads political rumors or fake news online.

What they found was somewhat surprising: the people who spread such falsehoods were not simply motivated to see their own side win; rather, the researchers found they have a need for chaos—a desire to see the entire system suffer.

This need, the scholars speculated, emerges from the experience of marginalization itself—something I saw very clearly in the case of Ed, Jamie, and most of the other political extremists we interviewed.

Und:

Partisan warfare, it seemed, is often more about status signaling and bonding than persuading others.

Aus dem Buch “Breaking the Social Media Prism” von Chris Bail.