Abstract
On a rainy November morning in 2021, I had just finished an online call with a colleague. After a very intense meeting, I decided to treat myself to a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake. Coming downstairs from my office, I noticed that the post had arrived, and it included a large, but slim, brown envelope. This was strange because I was not expecting any mail. Looking at the postage stamp on the envelope, this had come from my University’s post room—clearly, something which I was not expecting had arrived at the post room of my work, and they had kindly redirected it to my house.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Although Sorrenti has expressed views that I disagree with, her case is one which clearly highlights the extent to which members of the alt-right will go to doxx someone. The doxxing Sorrenti was subjected to was abhorrent.
References
Barber, K. (2021). Report on 8th BAAL SIG seminar: “Focus on the researcher: Dealing with distressing data”. BAAL Language and New Media SIG. Last accessed July, 2023, from https://langnewmedia.weebly.com/baal-sig-annual-seminar-on-distressing-data-14th-may-2021.html
Baxter, J. (2003). Positioning gender in discourse: A feminist methodology. Palgrave.
Baxter, J. (2008). Feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis: A new theoretical and methodological approach? In K. Harrington, L. Litosseliti, H. Sauntson, & J. Sunderland (Eds.), Gender and language research methodologies (pp. 243–255). Palgrave Macmillan.
Baxter, J. (2018). Women leaders and gender stereotyping in the UK press. Palgrave Macmillan.
Bell, A. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society, 13(2), 145–204.
Bell, A. (2001). Back in style: Reworking audience design. In P. Eckert & J. Rickford (Eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation (pp. 139–169). Cambridge University Press.
Berez-Kroeker, A., McDonnell, B., Collister, L., & Koller, E. (2022). Data, data management, and reproducible research in linguistics: On the need for the open handbook of linguistic data management. In A. L. Berez-Kroeker, B. McDonnell, E. Koller, & L. B. Collister (Eds.), The open handbook of linguistic data management (pp. 3–8). MIT Press.
Bone, J., Emele, C. D., Abdul, A., Coghill, G., & Pang, W. (2016). The social sciences and the web: From ‘Lurking’ to interdisciplinary ‘Big Data’ research. Methodological Innovations, 9(1), 1–14.
British Association for Applied Linguistics. (2021). Recommendations on good practice in applied linguistics 2021 (4th ed.) British Association for Applied Linguistics.
Catalano, T., & Waugh, L. R. (2020). Critical discourse analysis, critical discourse studies and beyond. Springer.
Coesemans, R., & De Cock, B. (2017). Self-reference by politicians on Twitter: Strategies to adapt to 140 characters. Journal of Pragmatics, 116(1), 37–50.
Collins, L. C. (2019). Corpus linguistics for online communication: A guide for research. Routledge.
Conway, M. (2021). Online extremism and terrorism research ethics: Researcher safety, informed consent, and the need for tailored guidelines. Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(2), 367–380.
Daly, S. E., & Laskovtsov, A. (2021). “Goodbye, My Friendcels”: An analysis of incel suicide posts. Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology, 11(1), 1–33.
De Costa, P. I., Sterling, S., Lee, J., Li, W., & Rawal, H. (2021). Research tasks on ethics in applied linguistics. Language Teaching, 54(1), 58–70.
Dynel, M. (2010). Not hearing things—Hearer/listener categories in polylogues. mediAzioni, 9(1), 177–206.
Faden, R., & Beauchamp, T. (1986). A history and theory of informed consent. Oxford University Press.
Ferreira, C. M., & Serpa, S. (2018). Informed consent in social sciences research: Ethical challenges. International Journal of Social Science Studies, 6(5), 13–23.
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Grant, T., Atkins, S., Busso, L., & Petyko, M. (2021). Dealing with distressing data as a research Institute: A perspective from the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics [Paper presentation]. BAAL New Media SIG: Focus on the Researcher: Dealing with Distressing Data. Cardiff, Cardiff University.
Halliday, M. A. K. (2006). On language and linguistics: Volume 3 (J. Webster, Ed.). Bloomsbury.
Hardaker, C., & McGlashan, M. (2016). “Real men don’t hate women”: Twitter rape threats and group identity. Journal of Pragmatics, 91, 80–93.
Heritage, F. (2022). Name that community? Critical reflections on the ethics about disseminating research into online fetish communities. Journal of Positive Sexuality, 8(2), 23–30.
Hoffman, B., Ware, J., & Shapiro, E. (2020). Assessing the threat of incel violence. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 43(7), 565–587.
Holland, K. (2007). The epistemological bias of ethics review: Constraining mental health research. Qualitative Inquiry, 13(6), 895–913.
Jaech, A., & Ostendorf, M. (2015). What your username says about you. In L. Màrquez, C. Callison-Burch, & J. Su (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2015 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing (pp. 2032–2037). Association for Computational Linguistics.
Keogh, B., & Daly, L. (2009). The ethics of conducting research with mental health service users. British Journal of Nursing, 18(5), 277–281.
Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2021). ‘It’s the subtle language that gets to you’: Understanding and managing researcher exposure to online child sexual grooming content [Paper presentation]. BAAL New Media SIG: Focus on the Researcher: Dealing with Distressing Data, Cardiff University.
Lucy, J. (2012). Dyke/Girl: Language and Identities in a Lesbian Group. Palgrave Macmillan.
Mackenzie, J. (2017). Identifying informational norms in Mumsnet talk: A reflexive-linguistic approach to internet research ethics. Applied Linguistics Review, 8(2–3), 293–314.
Mattern, E. (2022). The linguistic data life cycle, sustainability of data, and principles of solid data management. In A. L. Berez-Kroeker, B. McDonnell, E. Koller, & L. B. Collister (Eds.), The open handbook of linguistic data management (pp. 61–71). MIT Press.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). Measuring the 21st century science and engineering workforce population: Evolving needs. National Academies Press.
O’Sullivan, D., & Naik, R. (2022). Trans activist celebrates rare victory against online trolls after Kiwi Farms deplatforming. CNN. Last accessed April, 2023, from https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/06/tech/kiwi-farms-clara-sorrenti-keffals/index.html
Page, R., Barton, D., Unger, J., & Zappavigna, M. (2022). Researching language and social media: A student guide (2nd ed.). Routledge.
REF2021. (2020). Index of revisions to the ‘Guidance on submissions’ (2019/01).
Richardson, H. (2021). Plymouth shootings: What is an incel? An expert explains. The Independent. Last accessed April, 2023, from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/incel-meaning-movement-plymouth-shooting-b1903897.html
Ross-Hellauer, T., Tennant, J. P., Banelytė, V., Gorogh, E., Luzi, D., Kraker, P., et al. (2020). Ten simple rules for innovative dissemination of research. PLoS Computational Biology, 16(4), e1007704.
Rüdiger, S., & Dayter, D. (2017). The ethics of researching unlikeable subjects. Applied Linguistics Review, 8(2–3), 251–269.
Rüdiger, S., & Dayter, D. (2021). Atrocious quotes—Researching pick-up artists and the seduction industry [Paper presentation]. BAAL New Media SIG: Focus on the Researcher: Dealing with Distressing Data, Cardiff University.
Sun, Y., Wang, G., & Feng, H. (2021). Linguistic studies on social media: A bibliometric analysis. SAGE Open, 11(3), 215824402110475.
Tronto, J. (2009). Consent as a grant of authority—A care ethics reading of informed consent. In H. Lindemann, M. Verkerk, & M. Urban Walker (Eds.), Naturalized bioethics—Toward responsible knowing and practice (pp. 182–198). Cambridge University Press.
van Dijk, T. A. (1995). Aims of critical discourse analysis. Japanese Discourse, 1(1), 17–27.
Williams, M. L., Burnap, P., & Sloan, L. (2017). Towards an ethical framework for publishing Twitter data in social research: Taking into account users’ views, online context and algorithmic estimation. Sociology, 51(6), 1149–1168.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Heritage, F. (2023). Reflexivity and the ethics of investigating incels. In: Incels and Ideologies. Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40184-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40184-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-40183-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-40184-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)