PGR Student Spotlight - Jo Ashcroft

Our Student Spotlight for January is Jo Ashcroft, who is undertaking a full time PhD in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

About

I am a first year full-time PhD Student and started in October this year. I decided to seize the opportunity to undertake a PhD at Portsmouth having completed a part-time MSc in Cybercrime at the university earlier in 2023, and fortunately, other life changes combined to enable that decision.

My masters dissertation looked at the state of online abuse and harassment towards the LGBTQ+ community in the UK and used 'big data' sourced from Twitter (now 'X') and machine learning Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to surface themes and topics which could then be tracked over time. The research and its findings subsequently provided inspiration for my PhD research.

During my (pretty lengthy) career, I amassed considerable experience working on big IT projects in both lead business and systems analysis roles and in project / programme management. In 2015/16, I took a sabbatical during which I obtained an MSc in Behavioural Science, then returning to work, my focus was on 'big data', speech and text analytics - accumulating skills I intend to exploit in my PhD research.

My research

My PhD research will further examine and expand upon some of the underlying themes surfaced during my MSc dissertation by analysing the use of YouTube to spread hate and disinformation targeting the transgender community.

Hate toward the transgender community has out-paced that towards that of the rest of the LBGTQ+ community, and includes threats of violence, outing, doxing, photo leaks and accusations of rape and paedophilia. This already vulnerable group are for more likely to experience depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, psychosis and PTSD, and have a disproportionately high rate of suicide in comparison to the population as a whole.

This research will use YouTube comments, transcripts, hashtags and channel data to analyse the type of language and rhetoric used - particularly that which is used to circumvent YouTube's moderation processes. Further research will be undertaken to identify the types of groups involved, their methods and reach, how transgender hate has migrated geographically and over time, and how it is influenced by external events (specifically the UK General Election and the US Presidential Election in 2024). In order to undertake the analysis and produce robust results, sizable datasets are required, and I was recently accepted onto the YouTube Researcher Program which provides resources and access to their data.

CyberASAP

The CyberASAP Pathfinder programme is a 'bootcamp' designed for academics, providing  guidance and support for researchers to commercialise their ideas. Despite being in the early stages of my PhD, I have been fortunate enough to have been accepted onto this programme which kicks-off in January 2024.

PGR Society

Early in October I joined the PGR Society and with its support, set-up a series of Online Study Groups which take place 2 or 3 times a week - available for any PGRs to attend, these provide a structured few hours for focussed study. More recently, a PGR Neurodiversity Group (see details under the PGR Society dropdown) has also been created - providing a safe, peer-supported space, for any neurodiverse PGRs to share their experiences, issues, resources and to celebrate success.