Most people probably haven’t spent a lot of time examining incel conversations. But I have. A thread 🧵 about why that very relevant right now.

As we read about the horrors inflicted upon Rebecca Cheptegui as she was set aflame, Malgorzata whom was kept as a sex slave with /1 Her lips and teeth removed and Gisele Pelicot whose husband recruited men to rape her whilst she was drugged it’s hard to comprehend the cruelty and the violence they each endured.

It’s horrific.

Then we read about the Tate brothers: and their casual references to abusing /2

When a news item breaks, let’s use Mpox (formerly monkeypox) as an example, people decide what they know in one of two ways.

1. They read a range of articles and critically evaluate the credibility of the sources, check the content against other sources.

2. They take on a /1 ‘Ready made’ opinion. One which might be publicised by GB news, maybe a pub landlord, an ex page 3 model, possibly a ‘maverick’ scientist. Now, because lots of people, the usual contrarians, will have the same view and echo each other. This lends weight to their ideas and /2

Just Stop Oil members recently received harshly punitive jail sentences for their part in planning the closure of the M25, the disruption caused was a major part of the prosecution.

Given the disruption of riots, and the fact you don’t have to be there to conspire, what legal /1 recourse is there for those who, could be argued, promulgated at least the idea of the riots?

Certainly those who initially claimed the Southport stabbing was perpetrated by a Muslim man; Katie Hopkins ‘named him’ erroneously and Bernie Spofforth was one of the first large X /2

I have a lecture series entitled ‘is the mob mad?’

The short answer is no.

Typically mobbing crowds, or riots, are not ‘mad’ or ‘mindless’ they are typically very much purposeful and identity based.

Having studied race related riots for years, what might be happening now? A 🧵 Britain is increasingly unequal. The wealth of the rich grows as the poor become more deprived. Our services and our infrastructure are under significant threat from underfunding and many communities feel abandoned. Particularly this impacts young white men from deprived areas /2

My experience of online harassment - a🧵

Last September I began to be pursued by an anti-vegan troll @Bullshi75277085 following publication of our recent article to which they objected.

On advice from my institution @StirUni I adopted a grey rock strategy: ignore & ignore /1 Based on what we know about trolls, they desist without reinforcement. Frankly, they get bored.

This person has not got bored. Instead, they have become increasingly obsessed with me, and my every interaction online. They’ve posted my work website photo, my personal /2

From time to time I engage with conspiracy theorists and anti vaxxers. Why? It's surely a waste of my precious time? Or is it? I refer often to the work of
@Karen_Douglas
in this field because it is so explanatory of the behaviour we witness in 'wild twitter'. If I can /1 borrow from their expertise for a moment, I will demonstrate what I mean following a protracted 'discussion' yesterday with an account purporting to be a psychologist. I was tagged into the thread for that reason and here's what happened. The account argued that covid vaccine /2

Critical thinking (CT) has to be one of the most abused terms in the last few years.

For a swathe of the population it means going against the ‘mainstream’ or ‘not swallowing the narrative’ being ‘awake’ perhaps. The irony is, each and every one demonstrate a complete lack of /1 CT in their debates.

CT means looking seriously at alternative explanations, evaluating those against your preferred position. It means being careful to critique your sources; checking their credibility and validity. It means considering the intended purpose of information /2

As expected, there is a LOT of interest in this paper but I haven't seen much about the methodology used. It's a very unusual method in a medical journal so I thought I'd take a bit of time to explain what narrative analysis (NA) is ideally, and then how it is used here /1 Narrative analysis (NA) is an excellent way to approach an autobiographical account of participant life events. The validity of an NA rests on rich and detailed account it develops of topics but ensures that all findings are presented as possibilities and not factual accounts. /2

Just called the C.O.V.I.D helpline with a genuine query. My husband had a month long headache at the same time as his first Pfizer injection. I asked what would their advice be regarding a subsequent booster.

The operator said, and I quote, you could look online to see what /1 Other people are saying about this?

I replied - seriously?

She said - er no, I’ll get a colleague to call you back within half an hour.

I asked who that would be; she said she didn’t know. She hadn’t worked that out yet.

She did say it was a charity set up to help /2

As you all know, I’m fascinated by conspiracy theories, how they spread, by whom and the social processes by which they gain traction.

As many of us have noticed, one of the latest to be disseminated is the WEF as controlling ‘The Great Reset’ /1

amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/youll-ow… This all stems from an essay written by Ida Auken in 2016 where she made projections for a future in 2030 where we rent not buy and use clean energy but are also subjected to constant surveillance in a divided society. Not so utopian.

The phrase ‘own nothing and be happy’ /2

An interesting take on climate denial and conspiracy theories.

Specifically it highlights naive reasoning where everything is “causally connected” or sophisticated reasoning where “everything is coincidental”.

Furthermore they denote three types of denial which are useful /1 PRODUCE: climate change is real but not anthropogenic and that scientists have somehow produced the change to push an agenda.

TAMPER: that the events may be apparent, insignificant, natural or coincidental but scientists have tampered with the data to implicate anthropogenic /2