Corpus 2

It's probably too late but maybe Dr B could give an alternative talk - I do like something along the lines of 'how labelling vulnerable women as committing hate crimes may prevent them from accessing anonymous online support to escape abusive relationships' or summat.

It's beyond irony. Replicates the loss of consent that harmed the subjects in the first place. Gross. Wicked. Crass.

The issue of consent for that subject should have been treated with utmost seriousness, fir obvious reasons. It was barely glanced at. Treating subjects with such callous disregard is grossly unethical.

'A risk benefit analysis of pseudonymised accounts.'

'Why and how treating women with contempt leads to reputational harm'

I've thought that about reporting rape as well. N's thesis is still on my tbr list but from the little I skim read, it made me very worried about the ethics.

'Why rape survivors don't want to share services with men and how that's transphobic and probably illegal'

Consider why women need anonymous fora to discuss our rights and how Astons research impacts on that.

'Should women be allowed to so speak unsupervised or do they need right thinking people to monitor them?'

Room for a far more interesting PhD on the ethics of data scraping and harvesting, researcher bias, how research affects subjects and inadvertent harms of research.

How does Aston feel about this PhD inhibiting survivors of domestic violence from asking for help? After reading Nikki's other paper I'm damn sure I wouldn't ever report a rape to the police.

@Astontacious that’s a good point about a lawyer. Maybe we need to see if one of the lawyers who have taken lots of these sex/gender cases can go along and ask questions too!

What’s interesting is the presentation from another Aston researcher talks about what linguistics can do for tackling offensive and hateful language online.

Well this has all been online. And it is clear that the language used in this research has offended people. But have the researchers used hateful language? Well the superviser changing her Twitter banner and the researcher convicting mumsnet of ‘hate crimes’, and the fact they ignored mumsnet T&C and ethics, suggests that they at least really, really don’t like mumsnet.

It would be nice to be able to go to the conference and do a presentation about why discussion is so important, but I still don’t know what language they are speaking ie what exactly do they think is transphobic language? And what is hateful? That’s why it is essential that someone needs to go can see what the accusations are in the mumsnet research. Surely this talk is like the argument for the prosecution (but without a jury or trial)?

A mumsnet lawyer should be there too.

Depends on the data scrape!

There have been multiple past talks on the ‘sandbox’ data scrape, those academics were still talking about that project up until recently, not sure if the talks will continue now that MN has had a word and the actual scrape that was used for the project has supposedly been deleted.

There have been two talks advertised re: the ‘linguistic transphobia’ PhD, the first was cancelled due to ‘illness’ and the second is a tiny part of this upcoming conference with the high price ticket.

The sold out talk was by staff in the FL department, including the Sandbox Data Scrape Chap and the Head of Department, it wasn’t, as far as we know, actually about MN
but it might’ve given us the chance to participate in a Q&A, which was why we were sad it was sold out.

Likewise I’m very willing to contribute to a ticket fund for Dr B (and anyone else, if there’s someone else who wants to go?) 😊

I’m also willing to chip in for a ticket for Dr B to attend the conference - I’m sure we’d all love to hear about what is in EP’s talk and it’s obvs best if the MN delegate has the preexisting specialist knowledge to put the talk contents into proper context!

I love MN. Really I do. If someone told me 10
years ago I would one day be a massive MN fan I wouldn’t have believed them. Turns out MN has the most varied, interesting and wisest posters on the Internet, as well as being one of the few places that has overwhelmingly female posters.

I wonder if EP will one day, many years from know, come to realise the same thing I did?

How many talks are being given based on the scraped data?

I'd be up for this. I'm also happy to donate to @DrBlackbird going to any academic talks and ask difficult questions about ethics. Between us I'm sure we can get up to £450 quickly, plus extra for tunnocks to share around.

Having a bit of difficulty keeping up with this thread now I've stopped posting quite so much (trying to kick the MN habit since the scraping, unsuccessfully obviously).

Generally speaking I will support any crowdfunder for 'class action' style legal representation of users on here and/or funding for the academics among us to go and poke holes in the research at conferences and/or turning up at Aston (possibly with small children if I can't get childcare) to show just what the impact of their defaming us could be and to explicitly state I don't consent to my data being scraped.

Different event.

The one that sold out had fewer speakers and was more affordable!

https://www.aston.ac.uk/open-days

I think we should keep an eye on the PostGrad Open Day schedule.

The next one is too soon but if they do another in Autumn, around the time of the October undergrad event, it gives MNHQ plenty of time to lawyer wrangle first.

Nicci is the course leader for the MA programme, I imagine she’ll be compelled to attend a postgrad open day?

To make this extremely clear for anyone wishing to misinterpret this post:

My intent is not to intimidate staff or students, quite the opposite really, my intent is to humanise Aston’s lab rats by showing us as real, ordinary, living, breathing people who have come to this topic out of concern for vulnerable women, children and adolescents.
We are not faceless Hate Crimers, we’re just mums (mostly).

I might even get a ‘My Mumsnet Name is ….’ t shirt made (if shirts come big enough to get all my usernames on!) and take selfies in the AIFL department.

We can go to the pub after.

No, it's for excellence in HR practices to support early career researchers.

'“This award highlights our commitment to fostering the career development of our early research staff, implementing strategic policies and providing an empowering environment for impactful research.
“Our early career research staff are crucial to the University's success and this award recognises our achievements and propels us forward in advancing a dynamic research environment, ensuring excellent employment conditions and promoting professional development. '

Are they, aye?

Aston's just got an award for excellence in research.

https://www.aston.ac.uk/latest-news/aston-university-retains-vitae-hr-excellence-research-award-12th-year

@JustineMumsnet given that the advertised event, where Eden will be presenting her prejudices paper is only 8 days away, and is still being advertised as part of the conference, hopefully your legal team have had answer from Aston's lawyers?

I thought that event was sold out?

If your field is, or is adjacent to, linguistics, I'm more than happy to chuck a tenner or two towards the cost of you going to this conference to listen to and challenge Eden's talk.

Still all transphobes according to that robust linguistic analysis I see. Apart from being based on an unethical methodology, it’d get a F from me for poor reading comprehension. And/or confirmation bias. Colour me shocked not

Mmmm desiccated coconut! Mmmmmm