Corpus 2

[TokyoBouncyBall]

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

What happened?!

Wanders in...

What did I miss?? That's a hell of a lot of posts and deletions

Troll. Started ranting about TWAW.

Well, mostly about scraping. Made an AIBU thread and ranted about TWAW on there. Didn't seem terribly coherent.

Thanks Arabella x

I thought they were lovely. Called me 'darling' and said that they scraped oldReddit in seconds. 😘I think it was my 'cute' pic on page 1 that did it. 😍

To be fair you did look rather gorgeous in that photo!

Thank you. 😎

From now on, all chat up lines will pale in comparison to the scraping oldReddit in seconds one. Sigh... I feel like my soul mate has been ripped away.

They were a TWAW fanatic (but scrape so well), I'm dead (but gorgeous). Match made in heaven.

There has been a response from Aston Uni to a FOI request regarding the PhD thesis.

Of particular note, Eden groups those with gender critical beliefs with "other online extremist groups" such as incels and Islamist extremists.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ethics_consideration?nocache=incoming-2660986#incoming-2660986

'other radical online communities'.

Mumsnet, 'radical'. Who knew?

So many bits to comment on!!! But for now I'll comment on this one:

"A key will also be created of Mumsnet usernames to quantify the number of posters in each thread, which will give me a number of participants overall. This will be done by copying and pasting each username on each thread into a spreadsheet for each corpus, and cross-referencing how many threads feature posters with the same name. This will also allow me to assign pseudonyms to participants if needed, and to track which pseudonym belongs to each user. This key will be deleted after the redaction has taken place"

🤔🤔🤔

She would have no clue as to the actual number of posters on each thread as we've shown in the multiple threads about this we can change username multiple times on just one thread.

Well, yes. Ofc we are merely six anyway, with all our sockies.

.

Exactly. And as you're my sock can you go and wash the dishes and make me a cup of tea when you are done.

Thanks. You are amazing. Even if I say so myself!

So, this is Edens aims and expected outcomes response in the application:

"Aims and Expected Outcomes

It has been suggested that Mumsnet, a British parenting forum website, is a place in which ‘gender critical’ feminism is practised and discussed (Livingstone, 2018). ‘Gender critical’ feminism is an umbrella term that covers those who object to a range of changes for transgender people from legal rights to social acceptance. Therefore, my thesis is a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on
Mumsnet.

The study will examine whether linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet has increased and changed over the past fifteen years, whether linguistic transphobia is directed particularly towards people with one transgender identity (e.g., transgender women, when compared to transgender men or non-binary people), and to explore the connection between transphobia and ‘gender-critical’ rhetoric.

Therefore, the research questions are as follows:

1. Because of the rise in so-called ‘gender critical’ feminism in the UK in the past decade, will there be linguistic changes in how transphobic discourses present themselves on Mumsnet now, versus five or ten years ago (Thurlow, 2022)? This will be known as the ‘time’ analysis, and will be addressed in Study 1.

1. Because of recurring patterns in much ‘gender-critical’ rhetoric regarding transgender women, will the occurrence of linguistic transphobia be different for different transgender identies (Thurlow, 2022)? This will be known as the ‘identity’ analysis, and will be addressed in Study 2.

1. Because of the particularities of ‘gender-critical’ feminist’s beliefs surrounding transgender people, will linguistic transphobia differ on feminism-focused boards, compared to those without a feminist focus (e.g., the ‘Feminism: Sex and Gender Discussions’ versus another forum on Mumsnet)? Both studies will aim to explore this question.

Though non-linguistic studies relating to a potentially transphobic culture on Mumsnet (e.g., Pedersen, 2022; Thurlow, 2022), and discourse analyses of other radical online communities such as incels or Islamist extremists (e.g., Koller, 2021; Krendel, 2020) have been undertaken, the language of transphobia on Mumsnet has not been specifically examined. This study aims to address this gap.

The project will aim to investigate whether linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet may be intensifying, which has potential implications to further marginalise and persecute transgender people beyond the site (Pedersen, 2022; Powys Maurice, 2021). It will also aim to analyse language or sentiment that is considered indirect or not immediately identifiable as transphobic, to examine the normalisation of such rhetoric on a website not designed to incite hatred (Derecka, 2019).

Linguistic transphobia can occur with a variety of linguistic features, allowing for several corpus analyses and subsequent close readings through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework, and can be seen both over time and in terms of trans identity. It will not be the aim of the project to suggest every Mumsnet poster is transphobic. However, the wealth of evidence supporting the idea that linguistic
transphobia being prevalent on Mumsnet means it is vital to examine. "

How will data or records be obtained?

"Waffle waffle waffle...

Therefore, because the analysis was identified as ‘passive’ (Eysenbach and Till, 2001:1103) and because all three of Eysenbach and Till’s (2001) criteria identified the data as public, informed consent will not be gathered from the Mumsnet posters nor Mumsnet for the purpose of the research."

Is there an actual, verifiable definition of linguistic transphobia anywhere in Eden's proposal?

Or is linguistic transphobia like pornography - you know it when you see it?

Not that I've spotted, but only speed read it.

'We have redacted third party personal data in accordance with our
on Mumsnet, 2008-2023.”
obligations under the Data Protection Act 2018.

We have considered the public interest test in deciding whether to disclose
the personal data contained within the disclosed documents. While we
acknowledge that there is a public interest in transparency, we have also
considered the fact that staff and students have a high expectation of
confidentiality with regard to personal data and special category data which
they provide to the University in the course of their employment and study.
In this case we consider that the balance of the public interest lies in treating
staff and students’ personal data with a high degree of confidentiality and it
has therefore been redacted. '

Oh, so Aston ARE aware of the DPA, after all? Interesting.

'risk of emotional distress
Yes'

'Social media data and/or data from internet sources that could be regarded as private
Yes '

Given that the requisite box further down for more information was filled in and redacted the redaction of the YES seemed particularly pointless!

'The data will be selected from publicly available Mumsnet threads in three specific discussion boards:

1. The ‘Feminism: Sex and Gender Discussions’ board. This is because it is expected that ‘gender- critical’ users are more likely to frequent feminist spaces (Livingston 2018).
2. The ‘Relationships’ board, which does not explicitly focus on feminist discourse and thus will serve as a comparison against the ‘Feminism: Sex and Gender Discussions’ board to answer Research Question 3.
3. The ‘LGBT Children’ board, which centres on LGBT (including transgender) issues, but not necessarily feminism. This was selected to explore Research Question 3.

Study 1: ‘Time’

Feminism: Sex and
Corpus 1: 2008-2013
Corpus 4: 2013-2018
Corpus 7: 2018-2023
Gender Discussions
LGBT Children
Corpus 2: 2008-2013
Corpus 5: 2013-2018
Corpus 8: 2018-2023
Relationships
Corpus 3: 2008-2013
Corpus 6: 2013-2018
Corpus 9: 2018-2023

The ‘time’ analysis will be comprised of 9 corpora of approximately 150,000 words each taken from the
three boards. 3 corpora will be comprised of threads from the earliest timeframe: 2008-2013; 3 corpora
will be comprised of threads from the middle timeframe: 2013-2018; and the remaining 3 corpora will be
comprised of threads from the most recent timeframe: 2018-2023. '

I noticed that. There's concern for the student but absolutely none for the posters on Mumsnet.

I'm waiting for a reply as yet. Will update when I receive one.

But of course we all know this, as we are one and the same