Mumsnet Corpus

[TokyoBouncyBall]

Not a TAAT, but a bit of googling as a result of a now deleted thread has led me to this:

https://fold.aston.ac.uk/handle/123456789/18

I note it says that the License is uncertain. Can you confirm that you have given permission for posts to be used in this way, or is there something that Aston might like to look into?

I note it says Users who wish to access this dataset must make a detailed application to FoLD and the researcher, as well as potentially gain additional agreement from an external organisation before they can be approved for access.

Given one of the uses it is being put to, I think it is a bit dubious to say the least.

Mackenzie, J. (2019). Language, Gender and Parenthood Online : Negotiating Motherhood in Mumsnet Talk, Routledge Focus on Language and Social Media. Abingdon: Routledge.

Pedersen, S. (2022). “It’s what the suffragettes would have wanted”: the construction of the suffragists and suffragettes on Mumsnet’, Feminist Media Studies, DOI:

So this has happened before?
I haven't read these but I'm assuming to be actual research it has to have evidence and sources?

Or no?

The first paper there is open access.

In the foreword it thanks Mumsnet for granting permissions and users, two by username, for their engagement and help.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327311266_Language_Gender_and_Parenthood_Online_Negotiating_Motherhood_in_Mumsnet_Talk

Prof Sarah Pedersen isn't hostile to Mumsnet and she has done a Mumsnet webinar with Justine before.

Yes, sorry I went to have a look at Pederson's paper listed and ended up reading it, it's interesting.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2022.2032788

Crucially, it reads like research that has attempted to approach the subject with an open mind, rather than the McCarthyite approach taken by Aston uni.

Sarah Pedersen's work is fantastic.

There is a book!

The Politicization of Mumsnet (SocietyNow)
https://amzn.eu/d/fr9G2T1

I'd say engaging with your research subjects respectfully is probably the ethical thing to do.

I think Pedersen used the MN archived threads and search function, whereas Aston seem to have compiled their own database from MN content - or have I misunderstood? Pedersen also seems to approach the research with open questions and an understanding of the site and its users, whereas the Aston PhD starts from a negative premise about it.
I presume, but I do not know, that Pedersen has also made MN familiar with her work, by the evidence of the linked videos above.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the unis response to mnhqs legal team says!

very interested in the reply from Aston

There’s some interesting stuff on the other thread which suggests that this data was potentially collected to test out whether they can identify individual posters…

In the context of accusing them of 'hate crime'.

Hi @JustineMumsnet
When Aston respond, please could you also ask for clarification on
a) whether this piece is about MN?
b) what is meant by author attribution? Within the site or external to the site?

https://research.aston.ac.uk/en/publications/large-scale-authorship-attribution-with-sociolinguistically-dynam

Thanks

Just placemarking!

I’d like to see the ethics form completed by the researchers and submitted to their ethics committee.

🧐

Surely that's Doxxing which is, if I'm not mistaken, a criminal offence?

References to Mumsnet data in papers about debt and social media. MNHQ, did you and MSE (Money Saving Expert) give permission for these researchers and topi, please?

Concerning these informal services, several studies have used qualitative investigations to uncover the discourses that form the basis of debt forums. For example, Stanley et al. (2015) draw on qualitative thematic analyses to examine discussions on three online forums, revealing that people turn to anecdotal information to understand debt-related issues (see also Montgomerie et al., 2015, who explore how groups use digital platforms to educate people about debt and coordinate action related to indebtedness). Focusing on selections of data from MSE, Consumer Action Group, and Mumsnet forums, they identify two main themes, including the idea of troubleshooting (or debtors’ responses to debt and money management queries) and journeying (or how posters navigate the challenge of living with indebtedness and their pursuit of a ‘debt free’ reality).

I'm posting accessible pdfs of the papers rather than links to the journals.

Stanley, L.M. orcid.org/0000-0003-3882-8682, Deville, J. and Montgomerie, J. (2016) Digital Debt Management The Everyday Life of Austerity. New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory, Politics, 87. pp. 64-82. ISSN 0950-2378

Rather than analyse a subforum of Mumsnet, we instead sampled a single, long thread. ‘The Debt Thread’ is a place ‘for those who feel they are drowning and want a way out’, to quote the thread title. It is used by many posters in a way not dissimilar from a (debt) diary, with posters regularly sharing news of the latest methods they have found for ‘cutting back’ – for example, by collecting and using coupons in a newspaper, or forgoing an activity now considered too luxurious.

https://doi.org/10.3898/NEWF.87.4.2016https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/99917/4/DigitalDebtManagement_2016.pdf

Montgomerie, J., Deville, J., Packman, C. et al. (1 more author) (2015) Digital Technologies of Debt Resilience: Final Report (2014b). Working Papers of the Communities & Culture Network+, 5. ISSN 2052-7268 )

Mumsnet: This debt forum lies at the other end of the spectrum. The value-added for users is not necessarily tacit and technical knowledge of the finance industry, but centred more upon strategies for thrift and emotional support. A particular characteristic of the forum is that a small amount of users provide a large amount of the content.
…
For Mumsnet, in lieu of different sub-forums we sampled the latest Debt thread that contained 850 individual posts, and a total of around 65,000 words. The resulting data was coded in line with the research questions and aims of the project using NVivo ‒ a qualitative analysis research tool. We took a grounded theory approach to data analysis. We started by capturing the sample as PDFs via NCapture for NVivo ensuring that emoticons were retained this is important as members use these as an important way of expressing relief, frustration, anger, fear and sarcasm. Once the data corpus had been constructed, the entirety was read through in order to build some provisional themes.

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/114790/1/Digital-Technologies-of-Debt-Resilience_Final-Report.pdf

When the vast majority of violent/ sexual crime and terrorism globally is carried out by men, the priority is of course to catch out women for wrong think.

Here's the ICO joint statement on Data scraping (the full thing is linked to this summary) - tl:dr the ICO is definitely not keen on this and it's probably illegal. Thanks to PP on the other thread who alerted me to this.

Pretty clear the ICO, not just MN T&Cs, are lined up against this methodology. You'd have thought paid academics might have considered the ICO position as relevant when doing research themselves and not needed those women on MN they like to defame as 'phobic' to point it out, wouldn't you?

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs/2023/08/joint-statement-on-data-scraping-and-data-protection/#:~:text=Data%20scraping%20is%20an%20automated,or%20used%20for%20identity%20fraud.

https://www.aston.ac.uk/latest-news/aston-university-forensic-linguistics-experts-partner-113-million-funding-authorship

The more I read the more I think Prof Grant is so high on his own success he’s forgotten that most people aren’t actually criminals…

https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/research-impact-at-the-uk-parliament/why-engage-with-parliament/researchers-stories/professor-tim-grant/

This is from 2015 and mentions a ‘Forensics Regulator’ off to see who that is exactly…

(will copy my last two posts over to the main discussion thread in FWR)

Interesting. Forensic Regulator works with the Home Office.

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/forensic-science-regulator

'Although sponsored by the Home Office, the regulator is a public appointee and operates independently of the Home Office, on behalf of the criminal justice system as a whole. This independence allows us to make unbiased recommendations and decisions.
We collaborate with the authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland who have expressed their willingness to be partners in the setting of quality standards which will be adopted within their justice systems.
The regulator is supported by a team of civil servants (5 scientists) with additional support provided by shared services from the Home Office and Home Office Science Secretariat. As part of this support, the Home Office occasionally procures small pieces of research on the regulator’s behalf. For more information on this process, find out about procurement at the Home Office or check the Contracts Finder.'

Ah, here's the chap:

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/gary-pugh

Responsibilities include:

'deal with complaints from stakeholders and members of the public in relation to quality standards in the provision of forensic science services'

Who is funding the AUTHOR project which is referenced in this post? The one which Aston has 11.3 as part of? It looks to me like part of the US government is providing the funding.
I was wondering this morning who provided the funding for FoLD.

https://www.dni.gov/