Russian diplomats have no qualms about using official Twitter accounts to troll the West. In a recent tweet, the UK's embassy used the country’s sinister public image as fodder for a light-hearted Star Wars joke, showing a willingness to merge the political sphere with the entertainment world.

Trolls are near-omnipresent across social media platforms and forums, purposefully seeking to derail how people and brands communicate online. Yet while these interactions are usually seen as malicious, how can brands use trolling tactics to create a unique voice and win over the public?

Sweden’s deputy prime minister is trolling Donald Trump through Twitter to make a point about women’s rights. With young people notoriously politically disengaged, politicians are using comedic techniques to enable serious issues to gain a wider audience.

A common technique used by trolls is to bombard a message board with irrelevant posts to derail the dialogue. And the Chinese government has been using an eerily similar tack – putting out thousands of unrelated messages on social media to distract citizens from unsavoury news stories.