Paper short abstract:

We aim to unpack the concept of collective online trolling in the “Diba Expedition” and its potential impact on the existing conflicts in ideology and national identity between mainland China and Taiwan, focusing on the boundaries of the digital territory made by Great Firewall.

Paper long abstract:

On January 20, 2016, thousands of Chinese netizens scaled the country's "Great Firewall" and flooded the Facebook page of Taiwan's new leader, by posting anti-Taiwan independence messages. As the first large-scale effort of bypassing the digital territory, created by the Great Firewall, this campaign, known as "Diba Expedition" (DE), attracted much media attention; it was perceived as collective online trolling (COT). The DE is a compelling event to showcase behavioral pattern of Chinese netizens, who are growing in numbers as a unique online sub-culture. The DE raised attention to the everlasting disputes of ideology, territory and national identities between Mainland China and Taiwan. The Great Firewall in this socio-technical context becomes a metaphor for the ideological and physical boundaries between these two sides. With this paper we aim to gain better understanding of the collective behaviors of crossing over this digital territory and its potential impact on this conflict. Furthermore, we aim to unpack and clarify the concept of COT as it shares similar attributes with online collective actions (Agarwal, Lim, & Wigand, 2014) and resembles actions of ideologically motivated online trolls (Fichman & Sanfiliippo, 2016). Yet, it breaks away and expands the boundaries of existing conceptions of online trolling, which typically refer to individual level behaviors within the context of Anglo Saxon cultures and languages.