By Megan Sherry
At the 2025 Women’s Research Poster Competition, Gracey Nana Amoakoa-Amoako, a first year Information Science Ph.D. student, was awarded first place among graduate students in the Technology & Computing division for her poster, “Political Trolling on TikTok Live Debates.” This competition was hosted by the Center of Excellence for Women and Technology on April 11th and involved about 200 undergraduate and graduate students across IU, judged separately. Competitors were judged on significance of their work, research content, poster appearance and clarity, poster organization, and the oral presentation of their projects.
Gracey’s poster examined trolling in live-streamed political debates on TikTok, which, along with other social media platforms, has been increasingly influential on shaping how people interact with political opinions, especially around elections. The data for this study was collected from five Democratic and five Republican TikTok Live Debate Rooms in the months leading up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The purpose was not to compare the two parties, but to have a balanced sample to examine trolling techniques in a live, online context.
Most previous research on online trolling has focused on asynchronous settings, such as comment sections and posts. This expansion into synchronous online contexts not only addressed an important gap in the literature, but it also allowed trolling techniques used in the two formats to be compared. This research will also be published as a chapter in Dr. Pnina Fichman’s upcoming book about online political trolling.
Looking ahead, Gracey is excited to expand her research in social informatics. She is particularly interested in online communities, how information is spread online, and who is impacted by this information. Her next projects may examine other dimensions of trolling on TikTok, but she also hopes to study how verbal and nonverbal cues affect online political communication, particularly among TikTok political influencers.
