The motives attributed to trollers in metapragmatic comments on alleged Chinese yinzhan (conflict-provoking trolling) posts

Abstract

This study adopts a metapragmatic perspective to investigate the linguistically-marked motives that participants attribute to those they perceive as trollers in online interactions. Focusing on the practice of yinzhan (引战, conflict-provoking trolling) on the Chinese Weibo platform, we analyse 296 metapragmatic comments on alleged yinzhan posts. Four primary motives behind yinzhan are identified: promotion, affiliation, profit-making, and emotional reasons. In contrast to prior studies that emphasise emotional or personality-related motives behind trolling behaviour, the findings indicate that yinzhan on Weibo is primarily framed as a commercial activity. Further analysis reveals significant variations in motive attribution patterns across different platform-verified identity categories (e.g., content creators vs. ordinary users), suggesting how Weibo’s commercalised architecture may shape interpretations of trolling. These results reflect the market-driven logic underlying trolling discourse within platform capitalism, offering new insights into the context-dependent nature of trolling. Additionally, the study would enrich the existing literature by introducing a metapragmatic framework to investigate folk theories of online behaviours as contested and constructed through users’ actual interactional practices.