Thread 2: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet

[VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia]

At fewer than 20 posts left, time for part two.

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5057460-a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet

Site Stuff thread that tipped off MNHQ: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5057903-mumsnet-corpus

True but I have no doubt it's considered in the best legal interests of the university that the event doesn't happen.

I hope the student is OK.

Imagine feeling held accountable for a shit show like this.

What the hell was the university thinking establishing this field and technique of study?

Hey Aston, this one’s for you 👉👌

This.

I wonder what the collective noun for a group of Nick Cave usernames would be?

A caven of Caves seems too simple!

Would the collective noun for lots of Nic Cage usernames be a prison of Cages?

Yes, but in a wider sense, genderism has created the mad idea that women who discuss their rights are somehow criminalised and guilty of 'hate crime'.

Some social justice movements appear to have created a fiction that they are uniquely capable of discerning the Right Side of History, and are entitled to sit in judgement on everyone else.

It's going to create many scenarios like this, where bullshit is built upon bullshit, self justification fallacy piled on top of confirmation bias, and create a series of unholy messes when the bullshit gets punctured, as it has been here.

"Livingston, 2018" was not an academic paper but a stupid sexist article along the lines of "why are these mums not talking about prams and cake recipes and interfering in "trans rights?" in the now defunct Vice online clickbait media channel. It's about as credible as citing Pink News, and she does that too.

I don't think that Eden should be the one answering our questions. I think that Nicci should be answering them.

Given that Nicci's non-verbal communication to us was to change her TwiX banner from a vintage "votes for women" photo to a massive trans flag with "trans rights are human rights" on it, it's clear to me who's the puppet master in this.

Sadly, I have very few spoons and little time available so I won't be writing to Aston right now to express this. Having said that, if their legal and marketing teams have any sense, they will be monitoring these threads.

I just came on to try out my new username and find that the seminar has been cancelled.

Still big questions to be answered, though.

This is a very interesting conversation. I understand why everyone is upset and I think the PhD project in question shows an obvious strong viewpoint that will have to be defended by the student - not least of which he/she/they will have to define ´transphobic’ and ´transphobic language’ clearly and stick to that definition in their analysis. It’s not what I’d call bias because there is no attempt whatsoever to give a balanced or neutral overview.
But I’m surprised people are surprised that linguists take published commentary online to make a corpus (big collection of real language use) without needing to ask for permission. I know there are ongoing conversations about the legality of using computer software to quickly extract large quantities of data from websites. But this student wouldn’t even need to do that to make a collect sized corpus in this case because of the limits they have set themselves. They could do it manually (copy and paste). Which isn’t all that different to collecting newspaper articles or recording and transcribing radio reports like research would have done 30 years ago. When you write comments on websites they are published and in the public domain. Anyone can read them. Anyone can quote them and copy them and analyze them. The permission part has already happened when you press ´post’.
Mumsnet, however, might have a legal argument that they own the copyright to everything published on here. I’m not sure that will stop the research from happening but it might prevent the university from making the corpus publicly available and it might influence how references and citations are made within the thesis.
And I agree with pp that someone could definitely write a paper about what happens when users publishing comments on an internet forum realize those comments have become the subject of research.
I think it comes back to the weirdness of posting. It feels like a spoken conversation because of the back and forth thing. And everyone uses anonymous usernames so it feels private. But it’s not private and it’s not ephemeral like speech.

Here it is in all its glory

www.vice.com/en/article/a3mn9k/mumsnet-uk-mom-forum-terf-transphobia-feminism

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3444548-Vice-how-an-online-forum-for-moms-became-a-toxic-hotbed-of-transphobia

I hope the student is well supported, and the university is getting its arse kicked.

We've moved on from that though. The concern is what the data is being used for - in the case of Aston it's to identify users across multiple platforms.

See also: MPs listening to Stonewall, who've listened to ill informed and zealous activists and their support dogs, instead of listening to Dr Cass, a highly qualified paediatrician. Making bullshit assertions in public. And then being compelled to apologise for misleading parliament.

See Jo Phoenix.

See Maya Forstater.

There's a huge corpus of bullshit that consists of faith-based 'lived experience' that's been put through the 'queer theory' algorithm, amplified and inflated by self interested, target-driven lobby groups like Stonewall, (and arguably built on top of post modernism's dubious foundations) that is currently looking very, very shoogly.

The issue is something called "Data Protection Act 2018". It's a long read, but basically social media postings are personal data and Aston, by hoovering them up, became a data controller of our personal data without us consenting.

We consented to Mumsnet having our personal data. We didn't consent to Aston having it.

Here's the ICO relevant statement:

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs/2023/08/joint-statement-on-data-scraping-and-data-protection/

'Data scraping is an automated way to pull large amounts of information from the web. Scraping from social media creates privacy risks and potential harms, such as the information people post online being used for reasons they don’t expect, exploited in cyberattacks or used for identity fraud.'

Corpus of Bullshit sounds like a Death Metal band.

And also like a good future username.

Arggghh was going to write a series of posts all with different combinations of children and other people’s children I had helped as a teacher. Just as an example of how we all tweak stuff. But the delivery man arrived and it now it won’t make sense as this thread is moving so fast.

It does show how annoyed we all are - whilst still showing empathy to the student! Typical mums huh?

Ah. That explains the forensic linguistics correction. Yeah that needs careful handling ethically and quite possibly legally as well.

That’s a new piece of legislation since the last time I looked at this issue ten years ago (for a tiny student research project based on twitter posts. Good to know that legislation is starting to catch up to technology.

It was changed to incorporate GDPR which gives a greater degree of protection. There are research exemptions but ethics is a consideration.

Ok, so we want to know exactly what the scraped data is being used for.
How do we achieve this, accurately and can the data be retrieved?

I would still like a clarification of whether Mumsnet has the copyright of what is posted here, if anyone knows. Thanks.

I disagree that permission doesn’t need to be sought. It is literally the first paragraph of the Mumsnet terms that data scraping isn’t allowed without express permission.

It definitely strikes me as very unethical to be publicly linking usernames of individual posters across multiple sites based on forensic linguistic techniques. It sounds like one step off doxing, which has obvious potential for harm when there are high profile cases of women being threatened for expressing similar views (like JKR).
You’d expect the supervisor to be encouraging increased anonymity -by doing things like removing usernames from quotes and choosing to track the use of different terms or linguistic constructions over time or across platforms rather than focusing on individual posters.