"WTF is antinormative discourse"?! PhD chick Jack chose to work on "conversational health" tweets a LOT of BS

Jack has chosen a few so-called academics to try and find a way for people to have ‘conversational health’ on Twitter … whatever the heck that means.

Anyone else find this a tad bit unnerving? You know, what Jack really should do is accept people are people, and they will tweet and talk about the things they want to tweet about talk about and Twitter’s best course of action is just to get out of the way and let people decide what they do and don’t want to see.

But being that Jack is a liberal, he likely believes he needs to save us from ourselves because we’re all too dumb to know what we should and shouldn’t talk about.

Twitter turns to academics to improve conversational health on the platform https://t.co/4njv6KdSXv by @jordanrcrook pic.twitter.com/FHNCsay5ri

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) July 30, 2018

Oh boy.

Patrícia Rossini, PhD is one of the academics Jack selected to work on incivility:

My primary focus will be the development of incivility and intolerance metrics, building on my prior work on antinormative discourse in online political talk. We want to better understand the conditions in which these behaviors harm Twitter conversations.

— Patrícia Rossini, PhD (@patyrossini) July 30, 2018

Anyone who has to use so many BIG words to make their point has no idea how to help people communicate better.

Antinormative discourse? Wha?

And, to borrow from Jenny's words of wisdom — "Research with friends is funner with funds!". Stoked to have this opportunity to work closely with @RebekahKTromble & @profjsg, two of my favorite people in the world! pic.twitter.com/vkic07zZGM

— Patrícia Rossini, PhD (@patyrossini) July 30, 2018

Oh good, a bunch of women will be sitting around figuring out how to make us all get along better.

Holy crap.

Postdoctoral researcher Patricia Rossini and professor Jennifer Stromer-Galley are part of an interdisciplinary team selected by Twitter to examine discussion quality on the social network. https://t.co/UieBq7psuQ

— Syracuse iSchool (@iSchoolSU) July 30, 2018

From ischool.syr.edu:

“Political discussion online is often dismissed due to uncivil discourse, and because of that we are sometimes unable to understand its true value. Rather than lumping all problematic discourse into a single category, we distinguish between uncivil and intolerant statements. Incivility online might serve an important and valid purpose in discourse, while intolerance is, by its nature, threatening to democracy”, explains Patricia Rossini, CCDS postdoctoral researcher at the iSchool, whose work focuses on understanding such discourse online.

The team brings together scholars with different backgrounds and expertise, bridging political science, communication, and computer science to develop metrics and conduct experiments aimed at identifying potentially problematic behaviors on Twitter. Dirk Hovy, Associate Professor at Italy’s Bocconi University, an expert in computational sociolinguistics, notes the extraordinary opportunity afforded by this project: “I am extremely excited to be part of a such a unique collaboration between social and technical sciences on a project of this importance to society. Working across disciplines will enable unparalleled insights into healthy online conversations, and collaborating with Twitter means we can analyze authentic source data at an unprecedented scale.”

Different backgrounds? LOL. Right.

I can already tell you that this will end up being pure garbage. Just read her bio. https://t.co/x0EjuNB5Mz

— Ordy's Amish School of Coding (@OrdyPackard) July 31, 2018

Peace and love, man.

What does “anti-normative” mean in your discipline?

— Prof Dr Grendel the Dog (@Grendel_the_Dog) July 31, 2018

*shrug*

Sounds like something that could be used to silence a lot of people she disagrees with, but we’re just spitballin’ here.

How about if we leave incivility and intolerance metrics to the individual, so you don't have to guess what I don't want to see or read? Or what I'm allowed to say.

— Daniel Lee (@RealDanLee) July 31, 2018

You know what "behaviors harm Twitter conversations?" Using phrases like "incivility and intolerance metrics" and "antinormative discourse."

— Violated Norm (@BillySullivan7) July 31, 2018