Provoking change: Understanding the object of trolling and its treatment by marketing disciplinary experts

Online trolling has become omnipresent on the internet, in the media, and in popular culture. This thesis analyses the history of online trolling to reveal how this object of knowledge is structured through the dominant discourses of antagonism, deception and vigilantism, as well as any reconfiguration of these. In addition, given trolling is increasingly being directed at firms, brands and marketing communications online, this study explores how marketing industry professionals manage the threat of trolling. It reveals how consumers and marketers exercise specific strategies of control to instigate change through subtle, corrective, and pervasive means.