ASIS&T Annual Meeting 2018 478 Papers Chinese Collective Trolling Honglei Sun School of Information Management, Nanjing University, China Pnina Fichman Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University . ABSTRACT The vast majority of research on online trolling focused on Western cultures. Given the role context plays in shaping online interactions, it is important to take into account its socio-cultural context and investigate the role of national culture, by conducting research into trolling in Eastern cultures. In this paper, we attempt to begin addressing this gap by focusing on Chinese collective trolling, looking at Sina Weibo’s PG One case. Specifically, we aim to identify who are the major players, what are the metaphors they use, and what are the major trolling tactics employed in Chinese collective trolling event. Using a mixed-method approach, we analyzed 2,004 posts and 9,967 comments on Sina Weibo’s PG One case, of which 480 were sampled for thematic content analysis. Major contributions of this study include an account of collective trolling in Chinese cultural context that is characterized by role switching between trolls, bystanders, and victims during the various stages of the event. We conclude with suggestion for future research directions. KEYWORDS Online trolling, reverse trolling, collective trolling, China, collective action, Sina Weibo, Chinese online subculture INTRODUCTION Trolling can be defined as set of diverse context-dependent online behaviors that are pseudo-sincere, intentional, provocative and repetitive. Online trolling has become an increasingly pervasive and dynamic phenomenon in online communities (Fich- man & Sanfilippo, 2016). Scholars described it as a context-dependent (e.g., Fichman & Sanfilippo, 2015; Herring, Job-Sluder, Scheckler, & Barab, 2002; Sanfilippo, Yang & Fichman, 2017), intentional (Hardaker, 2010; Shachaf & Hara, 2008), provoc- ative (Hardaker, 2010), and repetitive (Fichman & Sanfilippo, 2016; Suler, 2004) behavior by an individual toward other indi- viduals or groups (Fichman & Sanfilippo, 2016). Phillips (2015) noticed cross-national diversity of online trolling and men- tioned various motivations of trolling behaviors in Australia, Britain and the US respectively. Fichman and Sanfilippo (2016) call for more research on the complex socio-cultural relationships between culture and trolling. Yet, most of the literature refer to online trolling cases in the context of Western cultures. While online trolling in Eastern cultural context, such as China, began attracting scholarly attention (e.g., de Seta’s, 2013; Yang, et al., 2017; Yang & Fichman, 2017), it is still unclear whether trolling behaviors exist in Chinese online communities, and how Chinese collectivistic culture might play into online trolling. Further, since Chinese Internet context is unique and characterized by the Great Firewall, it is possible that trolling in this context have distinct characteristics compared to online trolling in Western context. Given the role context plays in shaping socio-technical interactions (Kling, 2007), it is important to consider the contextual impact when studying online trolling (Sanfilippo, Fichman, & Yang, 2017). Thus, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of online trolling in various socio-cultural contexts and not to overlook trolling manifestation in Eastern cultures. In this paper, we con- duct a study of collective trolling in China, focusing on Sina Weibo’s PG One case study. We aim to identify 1) who are the major players; 2) what are the metaphors they use; and 3) what are the major trolling tactics they employ in this collective trolling event. The paper structure is as follows: First, we provide a brief background and related work on online trolling, and then we describe our method, along with a description of our data. Next, we discuss our case analysis, answering the three research questions, and we conclude with discussion and suggestion for future research. BACKGROUND Internet and Sina Weibo use in China Based on the latest report from the China Internet Network Information Center (2018), there are 751 million users in China (as of June, 2017), accounting for one fifth of the total number of Internet users in the world. The Internet penetration rate in China reached 55%, exceeding the global average by 4.6% (CNNIC, 2018). Furthermore, due to Internet censorship in China, known as “Great Firewall”, many Western popular social network platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are blocked in mainland China (Ensafi, et al., 2015). Instead, Chinese users use the Sina Weibo platform—a Twitter-like website— to chat and share information with other users. One of the obvious difference between social network sites in China compared with the West is the lack of anonymity on Chinese platforms, while on some Western platforms, users are anonymous. On these western plat- forms, users can interact online without revealing who they are, where they come from, how old are they, and so on. However, on all Chinese social media platforms, all users online accounts are connected to their real-life ID. Even when users use various