2019-2020: The Research Phase

In February 2020 I started to look at the use of the terms “troll” and “trolling” in contemporary culture. So I read through sixty-thousand media articles with those terms in the Dow Jones Factiva database of thirty-three-thousand sources going back to the early 1970s.

Source: Disinfolklore (5)

The Factiva research, the word-origins research through Indo-European languages, and the contemporary culture route through Silicon Valley all converged on the definition: “Emotion-moving activity of body, speech, and mind.” The Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff emerged as the ur-troll tale.

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