News Story

Tracie Farrell is a WebSci2020 winner!

Kiran Parmar, Thursday 23 Jul 2020

Tracie Farrell, one of KMi’s Research Associates, won second place for her presentation on exploring emergent language in the manosphere at WebSci2020 this month. This work was based on a large-scale study using word embeddings to help extract and define new words from online communities focusing on men’s issues. The paper is available here: http://oro.open.ac.uk/70529/. Collaborating alongside Miriam Fernandez, a Senior Research Associate at KMi, PHD student Oscar Araque and Harith Alani our Professor of Web Science, this is a continuation of previous work available here http://oro.open.ac.uk/61128/

The 12th International ACM Conference on Web Science in 2020 took place online 6-10 July to aim to understand the Web, its impacts and reflecting on the most pressing questions at the moment, making the topic, Jargon and Word Embeddings to Explore Subculture within the Reddit’s Manosphere, incredibly relevant

The objective was to acknowledge identities, needs, and realities of men that participate in these groups, as a target of sociology and cultural studies. Examining the use of language, in particular, the existence and use of neologisms, slang and jargon capture concepts and expressions that are not in common use and represent the experiences, norms and values of subcommunities.