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ABSTRACT
Comedy news show Last Week Tonight, hosted by John Oliver, expands the genre of satirical news by incorporating the rhetorical style of trolling. The show’s host coordinates raids, propagates memes, engages in overtly agonistic behavior, and uses irreverence to reveal flaws in systems of power. These trolling techniques provoke responses from both the target of the trolling and from the audience that wants to participate in the trolling. The responses generate news cycles for topics that may be receiving very little media coverage. As a result, Last Week Tonight’s trolling techniques function rhetorically to amplify attention and engage the audience in social activism.