Christine Cook

I am currently a communications researcher at the PhD level affiliated with TiCC. Both of my past degrees, however, have been in Psychology, the first specializing in psychometrics and individual differences (Université de Moncton), and the second focusing on personality and social psychology, with a particular emphasis on machine learning and big data prediction techniques (University of Cambridge). My present research focuses on asocial online behaviour, more commonly known in cyberspace as "trolling". At the outset, I intend to simply better understand the phenomenon as a whole, as trolling is heavily under-researched in academia. However, once a theory has been solidified, I aim to address in particular the socio-cultural elements of trolling. For example, do South Koreans act asocially in a different way than Americans? Does regular exposure to trolling create trolls - essentially spreading the behaviour like a disease? Questions like these will be tackled using a multi-methods approach, including but not limited to: qualitative interviews, experiments, social network analysis, and self-report surveys.

Trolling, Computer-Mediated Communication, Online Behaviour, Online Gaming, New Media