Kevin, Susan Herring has done a lot of research on listservs and how people behave on them. That would be a good place to start. She also has an article on trolls. Lori Kendall Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

However, I am having some difficulty locating additional and more recent relevant research as much of what I am finding is research performed *using* listservs but not *about* listservs.