Speech act of flaming: A pragmatic analysis of Twitter trolling in Pakistan

Abstract

This study analyzed twitter trolling as a speech act of flaming. Trolling are deliberate disruptive practices of individuals or of particular group to sensationalize, commoditize, or intensify the reaction in online communication. Twitter API account was used to collect the tweets generated in Pakistan in English. The tweets were manually annotated with the help of a framework proposed by the Nitin, et al., 2011. and Lingam in UAM corpus tool. The finding revealed that tweets are trolled to flame by criticizing, name-calling, speculating, defaming, and degrading. The direct or intentional flaming showed derogatory behavior based on assumptions and aimed at inciting degenerative polarized responses. Moreover, this study also implies that there are serious moral and social implications of Twitter trolling.