Corpus 2

[TokyoBouncyBall]

A summary would be good and I might do one later but Aston, data scraping, astonishing lack of contrition…

Ooh, what does 'rocket' mean & where's 'up here'?

Rocket means ... an unserious person, in Glasgow.

Ah, thank you. I had no idea.

Sorry, I only just noticed your question but see Arabella answered much more politely than I might have.

We have a lot of similar words. Bampot, eejit, dafty, but my own personal favourite is gowk.

I was being on best behaviour Aston. 😁

And you did it so beautifully Arabella. I should take a leaf out of your book.

Thank you Justine.

Thank you for all your hard work and for the update.

Thanks, that's good to hear. Appreciate all the work that's gone into it.

Thank you Justine. I wholeheartedly agree with you re the use of the word "parenting".

I was just wondering about this - thank you for posting the update!

Even if the title is changed, simply googling "Eden Palmer" brings up a MN threads about vipers, gerbils etc with the original title. Whilst this will probably make some of us smile quietly, it does undermine the effort to remove references to MN from the project. I am not suggesting anything should be done about this BTW, or that anyone who wants to make a thread about it shouldn't - and obviously once something is out on the web then it's out on the web etc etc. But I did wonder if it might be possible to eg "un-index" (is that a thing?) the threads so they don't show in google searches if the objective is to try and put some distance between MN and the project and any outputs from it?

Thank you @JustineMumsnet for continuing to try. Legal fees add up quickly! It’s terrible that Aston has forced MN into having do so.

Where we’ve got to is that they’ve given assurances that Mumsnet data won’t be back-traceable to individual users

Researchers always claim this. I’m doubtful but not much can be done.

Eden Palmer won’t be using it beyond their PhD and related publications or presentations and have also committed to ensuring no third parties break the terms of our agreement.

So Eden continues to misrepresent FWR views as ‘anti-trans’ when it’s always been pro-women and quite supportive of those with gender dysphoria esp children seeking to protect them from permanent sterilisation.

We can only imagine what those journal publications will say and how they will continue to perpetuate this GC people are awful terfs.

Moreover, they’ve agreed to a new title for the PhD: "A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of trans-critical language in a parenting forum"

See point above! I’d be absolutely interested in Eden’s example of trans-critical language. The frustration is that Eden doesn’t have the courage of Eden’s convinctions. Otherwise, Eden would be more than happy to share their presentation slides from last years conference.

But still a big thank you for continuing to find out where this has gone to!

Thanks Justine, don’t let the woman-hating arseholes get away with it!

And also a thank you from me.
Apart from anything else, MN is a valuable lifeline for women who are quite vulnerable in many ways, whether as new mums, newly single mums, in unequal or abusive relationships or societally being treated unequally in their work, or public spaces. It shows a disregard for these women, as well as the site, to use what is often personal material or material coming from deeply held beliefs or experiences, without any form of consultation or permission.

@JustineMumsnet i think the question I would ask about the subsequent publications and presentations from the PhD is whether these are going to be solo-authored, and indeed insist on this, if that element is accepted by you. I think this part is here by Aston to protect the student’s interests which they have a duty to do, but i would not want to see the student’s supervisors or anyone else in that place benefit in output and therefore promotion terms from this debacle by using posts made on here in good faith and under a set of terms and conditions which have been disregarded by Aston (some of them have already done this from the main dataset of course).

Thanks for the update Justine.

I'm wondering if we can individually or collectively sue Aston for defamation. I'm not 'trans-critical'. I want to protect particularly children from the harmful abusive ideology that says they need surgery and drugs to 'be who they are' and that anyone querying that is somehow 'hateful'. That's pro-child safeguarding. That's where I'm coming from, and it's in line with Cass.

I suppose the line would be it's an 'anonymous' forum but some people on here AREN'T anonymous so in that case 'trans-critical' is defamatory, surely?

Thank you @JustineMumsnet

Thanks for the update Justine.

While I think that you have got a long way and Aston are being surprisingly unyielding considering how badly they messed up it would be good to know how they are ensuring that data is anonymised.

After all, if you are writing about language, you have to provide evidence. And if she includes any quotes, then it's going to be pretty easy to Google that back to specific posts. And then, potentially, harass people.

So I'd like to be reassured that this is not going to be possible.

@JustineMumsnet if I cut and paste a sentence from your post above, then put it into advanced search, you come up immediately (actually below @DrBlackbird who quotes you). Unless Eden Palmer uses no quotes then it will be possible to trace a user. We now have a user that a British university (presuming they have endorsed the research and definitions) says is guilty of a hate crime. If any person in the future then goes onto mumsnet and advance searches the post and then tells the police it has upset them and the police contact you, do you have to give them the actual name of the poster?

I haven’t the foggiest what constitutes a hate crime in this context. If you tell the truth that can’t be a crime surely? It would be really nice if you could get their definition of what we can and cannot say so we know the gagging conditions.

that Eden Palmer won’t be using it beyond their PhD and related publications or presentations

Academic here: that is no safeguard at all, frankly. This gives Palmer a pretty open hand for as long as she likes.

At my institution, this PhD would be dead in the ground without proper ethical application and approval.

The terms and conditions Mumsnet would have to have been observed and followed.

The data would have to be destroyed after a set period.

ANY participants would need to be informed that their data are being used and have the right to with draw consent.

And that consent must be informed consent.

I can’t see how any of these basic ethical considerations has been satisfied even after legal intervention.

If ever anything has fed my academic snobbery about ex-polys pretending to do research, it’s this ….

Thank you for posting this, even though it reignites my previous concerns.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41701-024-00169-y#Sec4

'As data, we use the sample of anonymous online interaction used in Newsome-Chandler and Grant (2024). Specifically, the corpus used is a sample from 3 multi-million words corpora of online fora of different genresFootnote 1. The first forum is a well-established clear web parenting discussion forum (henceforth: PD)Footnote 2. The platform is perfectly legal and a well known community used to discuss issues and advice regarding but not limited to parenthood. The second forum focuses on white nationalist and racist ideologies (henceforth: WN). The site attracts users who are interested in topics such as white supremacy, conspiracy theories, mysogyny and homophobia. Although the website is on the open web, it is centred around ideologies and themes generally rejected by society and public opinion, and includes discussions of criminal activities. The third and last forum is a child sexual abuse forum from the dark web (henceforth: DW). Users on this forum discuss highly illegal topics related to paedophilia, and are hence very careful of their online anonymity.'

Is that 'parenting discussion forum' Mumsnet?

That paper was published in 2024, btw.

@ArabellaScott Searching on "mumsnet We adopted a mixed race (white and Asian) baby in <country>. Feel free to PM me if you’d like more info." returned a MN post from 2018; clicking on that got me to the thread it's in & it's the second of five replies. Those seach words (apart from mumsnet) are quoted in the article you linked to.

Actual post: 'I’m Anglo-Pakistani and my OH is white British. We adopted a mixed race (white and Asian) baby in the UK. Feel free to PM me if you’d like more info.'

I've just tried it again without 'mumsnet' in the search terms & it returns the same post near the top of the list. Perhaps someone else could try it in case my first go (with 'mumsnet') influenced the subsequent search in any way.

Is MNHQ aware of this?

Searching on terms from this bit didn't give me matching MN posts:

'2) They may have overestimated the child and their resilience. <personalexperience> (…)I was eager to have family meet my baby but struggled sometimes to assert myself (…)! I still remember crying in my kitchen after a well-intended cousin kept getting in her space (…). It took months to feel like I could just say no. </segment> <communityexpertise> It’s similar to the threads you see on the board where new mothers struggle to tell no to relatives wanting hugs and kisses etc. </segment>'

I searched via MN & google, using various phrases & combinations of individual words.

Just searched "We adopted a mixed race (white and Asian) baby in" "Feel free to PM me if you’d like more info."

On Google the Mumsnet thread is the first result.

Interestingly it didn't come up on DuckDuckGo, only the journal article does.