Tag Archives: DOOM

FireAnt Launch Event

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We will be running a launch event and workshop for a new software tool that we have created called FireAnt. The event and workshop will be held from 13:00 to 17:00 on Monday 22nd February 2016 here at Lancaster University.

FireAnt was created by Laurence Anthony as part of the 2015 ESRC-funded CASS-affiliated DOOM project on social media analysis. FireAnt is a free and easy-to-use tool designed to help corpus linguists and social scientists analyze Twitter and other social network data without the need for programming or database management skills. The following features of the tool will be explored in this workshop:

  • import different formats of data (e.g. Twitter data in JSON format, Reddit data in CSV format, etc.)
  • search that data and its associated metadata in a variety of ways (e.g., retrieve all tweets containing #blacklivesmatter sent in December 2015)
  • export the results to other formats including a plain text file for “standard” corpus analysis, an Excel/CSV file for statistical analysis, a timeline chart, and a network graph

We will be providing lunch at the start of the event and all materials for the workshop (including the software and help guide) on a USB drive. The schedule for the day can be found below.

SCHEDULE

Time Agenda
1315-1415 PDR Room: Lunch
1415-1430 Introduction, log on, etc.
1430-1530 FireAnt basics
1530-1545 Refuel: Coffee break
1545-1645 FireAnt advanced
1645-1700 Q&As, requests, bouquets, encores

Please note that places are extremely limited and must be booked in advance. If you would like to attend, please email Claire Hardaker (c.hardaker@lancaster.ac.uk) in the first instance.

Twitter host CASS event: Twitter rape threats and the Discourse of Online Misogyny

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Twitter’s public policy team will tomorrow host an event organised by the Discourse of Online Misogyny (DOOM) project team at CASS. The team consists of Dr. Claire Hardaker, Lecturer in Corpus Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and English Language, and Mark McGlashan, Senior Research Associate on the DOOM project.

The event assembles a number of key stakeholders drawn from Twitter’s global public policy team, law enforcement, the prosecution service, NGOs, and academia (law, psychology, computing, linguistics) to discuss public concerns about online abuse. At the event, the DOOM project team will talk about their work on rape threats made using Twitter and how their unique methods enabled analysis of how people made rape threats using language as well as how abusive social networks are formed online.

The DOOM team will stress the need for corpus-based approaches in the research and development of tools and methods for investigating and tackling online abuse.

For more information, contact the Lancaster University Press Office:

Email: pressoffice@lancaster.ac.uk

Call: +44 (0)1524 594120

Tweet: @LancasterPress

[more to follow]

Claire Hardaker to appear in “Blurred Lines” documentary on BBC2

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“Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes” looks at contemporary attitudes to women and whether expressions of sexism and misogyny are on the rise. Dr Claire Hardaker appears roughly halfway through, and discusses whether misogyny becomes increasingly extreme online. During the segment, Hardaker considers the case of Caroline Criado-Perez, and two of her trolls Isabella Sorley, and John Nimmo, as well as some early findings that have come out of the ESRC/CASS project on Twitter rape threats.

The documentary, which stars Kirsty Wark, will be broadcast on BBC2 on the 8th of May at 9:30pm.