"Trolling" in Different Countries

The growth of the internet at a means of communication has sparked the interest of researchers to investigate the issues surrounding the expression of different social behaviors and of special interest them is the increased importance of anonymity. Phenomenon derived therefrom, such as trolling, appears to be part of an international phenomenon that includes cyber bullying.

China

In China, trolling is referred to "white eye", which can be straightforwardly explained as "eyes without pupils", in the sense that whilst the pupil of the eye is used for vision, the white section of the eye cannot see, and trolling involves blindly talking nonsense over the internet, having total disregard to sensitivities or being oblivious to the situation at hand, akin to having eyes without pupils. It's not very often to hear news or read reports about trolling in China, probably because people cannot use twitter or Facebook arbitrary. Currently in mainland China, citizens cannot directly log in Twitter, etc. It can only be connected through a VPN service to access Twitter's official website. In addition, China is not a country of free speech, citizens cannot make remarks with insults, provocations or threats, for many, the ferocity and personal nature of the abuse verges on hate speech. So it is clear from this research that trolling isn’t an issue in China due to their minimum use of social networking sites.

Australia

In February 2010, the Australian government became involved after users defaced the Facebook tribute pages of murdered children Trinity Bates and Elliott Fletcher. Facebook responded by strongly urging administrators to be aware of ways to ban users and remove inappropriate content from Facebook pages. In 2012, the Daily Telegraph started a campaign to take action against "Twitter trolls", who abuse and threaten users. It can be imagine how bad online abuse is in Australia.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, contributions made to the Internet are covered by the Communications Act 2003 .Sending messages which are "grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character" is an offense whether they are received by the intended recipient or not. Several people have been imprisoned in the UK for trolling. These facts show that this phenomenon is still very serious in the United Kingdom; the country needs to pass legislation to restrict such behavior. Except for the means of legislative which is tough, publicity like "Don't Feed The Trolls" is also essential.  

United States

On March 31, 2010, the Today Show ran a segment detailing the deaths of three separate adolescent girls and trolls' subsequent reactions to their deaths. Shortly after the suicide of high school student Alexis Pilkington, anonymous posters began performing organized psychological harassment across various message boards, referring to Pilkington as a "suicidal slut", and posting graphic images on her Facebook memorial page. In 2012, the subject of trolling was featured on the HBO series The Newsroom. Unlike China, the United States is a typical free country, freedom of speech has made the United States become one of the most severely countries in "trolling".