Queer flourishing online: studying well-being in social media posts
Method Stream: Text Mining
ECs: Both 14 and 23 EC thesis possible
Description:
Acceptance of homosexuality among Dutch youth is falling fast. For young people of diverse sexual and gender minorities (SGM), growing up in a less accepting climate is a clear risk to well-being. But research on well-being of SGM has mostly studied minority stress, depression and suicidality rather than how SGM might flourish. So, what does well-being look like for SGM, beyond the absence of distress?
Communities such as r/lgbt, r/transgender, r/NonBinary, r/actuallesbians and r/bisexual host posts about joy, pride, belonging and affirmation, alongside distress and exclusion. In this assignment you will use text mining to examine how queer well-being and flourishing are expressed online. Possible questions include: How do online posts reflect the emotional, psychological and social dimensions of flourishing? How do concepts such as gender euphoria and queer joy fit conceptualizations of flourishing? And how do positive and negative experiences differ across communities, or over time and in response to events such as legislation or Pride?
The assignment could take the form of sentiment analysis or topic modeling. You will be expected to scrape textual data yourself from media such as Reddit or specific discussion forums. Careful handling of sensitive data from vulnerable communities is an essential part of the project.