The discursive construction of motherhood through digital interaction

This thesis presents a study of digital interactions from an online discussion forum for parents, Mumsnet Talk. It takes two threads from a larger corpus of 50 threads posted to this forum between April and September 2014 and subjects them to close discursive analysis. Taking a qualitative, emergent approach that is grounded in feminist poststructuralist theory, it explores the ways of being – or subject positions – that are made available through social practices – or discourses – to users of this discussion forum, who present themselves, by and large, as mothers. Based on detailed linguistic analysis, the findings of this study suggest that dominant discourses of gendered parenthood permeate the interactions analysed here. These discourses often position Mumsnet users in restricted, gendered subjectivities, for example as the primary caregiver, and exclusively in relation to children, even where they try to resist being positioned in this way. However, it is also found that Mumsnet users are able to draw on a range of resources, some of which are particular to this digital context, to resist such discourses, and negotiate ways of being that are innovative and sometimes subversive. Through the process of this research, a new approach to analysing discourses in digital contexts is developed. This approach may be particularly valuable for sociolinguists who wish to study digital contexts, or for scholars whose work is already focused on such contexts, who wish to take a more discursive and/or linguistic approach to their analysis

Alternative sexualities/intimacies? Yuri fans community in the Chinese context

Yuri is a Japanese manga sub-culture which refers to all kinds of works (manga, animation) that portray attraction between two girls, including spiritual bonding and shared values. Through examining the value and interpretation of this sub-culture by Yuri fans, this paper attempts to explore the construction of alternative sexuality identity among Yuri fans. This Japanese sub-culture has been implanted in Chinese fandom with the popularity of hit Yuri-related animations since 2004. With decades of development, Yuri has extended its application to various mediums including the slash fandom in TV dramas, idol groups, movies and spread its usage on Chinese social network platforms like Weibo. As a result of the popularity of Yuri, there has been a growing fan base in China and Chinese fandom has developed their own culture of Yuri that is characterized by their focus on specificity in their sexuality. They are enthusiastic about the spiritual connection and the sharing of inner life between two girls. Hence, when mentioning relationships, they have a higher emphasis on the deepening of spiritual bonds rather than sexual desire. In this sense, their highlight on the inner bond challenges the extant understanding of homosexuality and sexual intimacy. Besides, there has been a large proportion of female Yuri fans in the community. Although they would identify themselves as “non- heterosexual”, few identify themselves as ‘lesbian’. Yuri community are critical towards mainstream lesbian culture in China, especially butch and femme roleplaying. In this regards, I argue that Yuri could act a pioneer role in challenging the homonormativity in Chinese mainstream lesbian culture. This research adopted an online ethnography approach which is based on the Chinese largest Yuri forum, Yamibo forum. Through examining their culture and attitudes on intimacy, this research studies the construction of their alternative sexuality identity and contributes to the knowledge production of queer theory from their queer standpoint

BRIDGING THE DISTANCE IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING: DEVELOPING STUDENT-STUDENT AND STUDENT-LECTURER COLLABORATIVE FORUM

The internet has been a platform for individuals, groups of people and companies to interact with one another through the social media. The social media has truly aided interaction in academic settings and services through social networks, forums, blogs, among others. Forums are now been used as tools/platforms to create discussions, connect to people (mostly of similar interests) and as sources of relevant information. This work intends to make use of forums as tools in helping NOUN students to simplify their studies considering the peculiarity of the program. Based on an in-depth review of some relevant literatures, some key requirements have been considered in the development of the application. The app has been developed and tested against the objective. The system was implemented using MYSQL database, hypertext pre-processor (PHP), JavaScript and apache server. The methodology employed was Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD). The developed system is user friendly and was designed with student, lecturers, and admin interfaces to assist users interact using friendly interfaces. The implication for students is the provision of a platform for student – student, student – lecturers and student to management interactions. Other implications for the ODL institution, the government are discussed

People on Drugs: Credibility of User Statements in Health Communities

Online health communities are a valuable source of information for patients and physicians. However, such user-generated resources are often plagued by inaccuracies and misinformation. In this work we propose a method for automatically establishing the credibility of user-generated medical statements and the trustworthiness of their authors by exploiting linguistic cues and distant supervision from expert sources. To this end we introduce a probabilistic graphical model that jointly learns user trustworthiness, statement credibility, and language objectivity. We apply this methodology to the task of extracting rare or unknown side-effects of medical drugs --- this being one of the problems where large scale non-expert data has the potential to complement expert medical knowledge. We show that our method can reliably extract side-effects and filter out false statements, while identifying trustworthy users that are likely to contribute valuable medical information

The Role of Symbolic Capital in Digital Inequality: Lessons from The Student Room's Reputation System

This thesis examines the role that digital reputation plays in inequalities on the popular forum: The Student Room. Reputation systems (sometimes described as rating systems) are conventionally theorised as mechanisms for the facilitation of trust and cooperation online. This study illustrates, to the contrary, that digital reputation is implicated in a range of additional social practices and goals, such as the pursuit of status and the exercising of power. The recognition theory of Axel Honneth, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital are used to propose a basis for reconceptualising digital reputation. It is argued that the full impact and significance of digital reputation cannot be understood without the use of qualitative, exploratory methods, without which it is impossible to identify the contextual goals and strategies that shape and stratify digital practice. This context defines the appropriation of digital reputation, and its meaning and impact. It is also argued that digital inequality literature stands to benefit from traditional sociological insights into the nature of inequality. To illustrate this stance, Bourdieu's apparatus is incorporated into the research design, which consists in participant observation of four forums (Chat, Fitness, Universities and Religion) alongside qualitative interviews. Research identifies the interests that drive users in their practice in The Student Room, and different forms of capital that they deploy in order to attain their goals. It also explores their perceptions and experiences of the reputation system, illustrating how reputation serves as a form of symbolic capital in the various struggles and pursuits of users across the site. These findings offer an important contribution both to the fields of digital inequality, and digital reputation by providing a finely grained exposition of the mechanisms of power in online spaces, and its role in conditioning both digital reputation and inequality

Top Comment or Flop Comment? Predicting and Explaining User Engagement in Online News Discussions

Comment sections below online news articles enjoy growing popularity among readers. However, the overwhelming number of comments makes it infeasible for the average news consumer to read all of them and hinders engaging discussions. Most platforms display comments in chronological order, which neglects that some of them are more relevant to users and are better conversation starters. In this paper, we systematically analyze user engagement in the form of the upvotes and replies that a comment receives. Based on comment texts, we train a model to distinguish comments that have either a high or low chance of receiving many upvotes and replies. Our evaluation on user comments from TheGuardian.com compares recurrent and convolutional neural network models, and a traditional feature-based classifier. Further, we investigate what makes some comments more engaging than others. To this end, we identify engagement triggers and arrange them in a taxonomy. Explanation methods for neural networks reveal which input words have the strongest influence on our model's predictions. In addition, we evaluate on a dataset of product reviews, which exhibit similar properties as user comments, such as featuring upvotes for helpfulness.Comment: Accepted at the International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2020); 11 pages; code and data are available at https://hpi.de/naumann/projects/repeatability/text-mining.htm

Detecting Influencers in Social Media Discussions

In the past decade we have been privileged to witness the creation and revolution of social media on the World Wide Web. The abundance of content available on the web allows us to analyze the way people interact and the roles they play in a conversation on a large scale. One such role is influencer in the conversation. Detecting influence can be useful for successful advertisement strategies, detecting terrorist leaders and political campaigning. We explore influence in discussion forums, weblogs, and micro-blogs using several components that have been found to be indicators of influence. Our components are author traits, agreement, claims, argumentation, persuasion, credibility, and certain dialog patterns. In the first portion of this thesis we describe each of our system components. Each of these components is motivated by social science through Robert Cialdini’s “Weapons of Influence” [Cialdini, 2007]. The weapons of influence are Reciprocation, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, and Scarcity. We then show the method and experiments for classifying each component. In the second part of this thesis we classify influencers across five online genres and analyze which features are most indicative of influencers in each genre. The online genres we explore are Wikipedia Talk Pages, LiveJournal weblogs, Political Forum discussions, Create Debate debate discussions, and Twitter microblog conversations. First, we describe a rich suite of features that were generated using each of the system components. Then, we describe our experiments and results including using domain adaptation to exploit the data from multiple online genres. Finally, we also provide a detailed analysis of a single weapon of influence, social proof, and its impact in detecting influence in Wikipedia Talk Pages. This provides a single example of the usefulness of providing comprehensive components in the detection of influence. The contributions of this thesis include a system for predicting who the influencers are in online discussion forums. We provide an evaluation of a rich set of features inspired by social science. In our system, each feature set used to detect influence is complex and computed by a system component. This allows us to provide a detailed analysis as to why the person was chosen as an influencer. We also provide a comparison of differences across several online discussion datasets and exploit the differences across the different genres to provide further improvements in influence detection

Investigating and Supporting Sensemaking within Online Health Communities

This dissertation focuses on understanding and supporting individual and collective sensemaking within online health communities (OHCs). This major goal was achieved in three aims. In Aim 1, this dissertation contributes a rich descriptive account of collective sensemaking in OHCs forums by describing how it occurs and develops, what triggers it, what elements constitute collective construction of meaning, and what conversational moves positively contribute to this process. Further, it describes how collective sensemaking in OHCs is impacted by the interplay between informational and socio-emotional needs of OHCs members. Moreover, it examines how design of different social computing platforms influences OHCs members’ ability to meet their informational and socio-emotional needs and engage in collective sensemaking. In Aim 2, this dissertation explores the design space of tools for supporting individual sensemaking through optimized information access. Through the design and evaluation of a prototype DisVis it examines the impact of such tools on OHCs members’ ability to understand information within discussion threads. In the final Aim 3, this dissertation proposes a novel approach for meeting the three main needs identified in Aims 1 and 2: promoting individual sensemaking, while at the same time encouraging collective sensemaking, and facilitating development of social awareness and ties among community members. The design and evaluation of the novel solution for visualizing discussion threads that synergistically addresses these three needs—dSense—provides insights for future research and design of interactive solutions for supporting individual and collective sensemaking within OHCs

Beyond internet as tool: A mixed-methods study of online drug discussion

This thesis describes how internet use has shaped drug practices among Australians who engage in the recreational use of psychostimulants and hallucinogens (‘party drugs’) and participate in public internet forums. This thesis uniquely contributes to drugs research by applying theoretical frameworks from internet studies, finding that internet forums enable the consumption and production of drug information, facilitate the production of alternative online places, and are increasingly converged with offline social worlds