Sexualization and Dehumanization of Women by Social Media Users in Namibia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article addressed a crucial social and linguistic issue by analyzing sexualization and aggression towards women and LGBT+ people in social media in Namibia. The topic is indeed at the very center of many linguistic and sociological discussions about social media use (and abuse), the language of violence and the gender-based violence more generally. The authors also cast an important light on these phenomena in Namibia, which represents an important contribution for a more global understanding of the language of violence in the social media.

The article is well-structured, and the qualitative approach chosen does not diminished the importance of the findings, albeit the vast majority of research on this topic has been done from a quantitative (in most cases, corpus-based) perspective (see, for instance, Sanguinetti, M., Poletto, F., Bosco, C., Patti, V., & Stranisci, M. (2018, May). An italian twitter corpus of hate speech against immigrants. In Proceedings of the eleventh international conference on language resources and evaluation (LREC 2018); or the multilingual study Pamungkas, E. W., Basile, V., & Patti, V. (2020). Misogyny detection in twitter: a multilingual and cross-domain study. Information Processing & Management, 57(6), 102360).

However, there are some issues that the authors should take into account before the final publication of this paper. I’ll sum up the main issues here, but I leave other minor comments to the pdf of the paper. Finally, please consider to do a careful language check because there are some typos and syntactic problems in some occasions.

As a general comment, the title and the introduction are more oriented towards “women” as the topic of aggression and language of violence on the media. However, there are also many occurrences and an analysis of denigratory and violent language against members of the LGBT+ community. However, there is sometimes the feeling of a mixing of these two social categories (e.g. page 9 line 367), which in some cases could correspond (a female leader could obviously be lesbian, transexual or bisexual etc.), but from a theoretical and methodological perspective they should be considered as separated. I suggest to make this difference clear starting from the title; this will also have a positive impact on the visibility of the paper and on its importance for LGBT+ studies.

The methodological section should be empowered by specifying at least two key points:

1) how many data have been collected from the Facebook and Twitter accounts in general, and from each of the 6 mentioned profile. Although the analysis is qualitative, this is a crucial methodological information to be provided.

2) p. 7 line 293: on what basis have the different interpretative categories been identified? Only on a lexical basis? Or also on a pragmatic one (e.g. the type of speech act performed, like menace, insult etc.)? Please, specify. Furthermore, an example will be useful.

In section 4.2 (page 9 line 369 and following) it is stated that different words are used to dehumanized and criticize women. However, there is no comprehensive list of such words. Before providing the example in context, I was expecting to have an indications of these words, and maybe also a frequency of each one of them or, at least, the main ones.

Furthermore, I fear a bit of circularity here: the theme has been identified basing mainly on lexical items (by see my comment on section 3), and now the same items are used to exemplify this category.

The authors should better rephrased this part to avoid tautological explanations of the same phenomenon.

The example at p. 9 lines 407-408 is very interesting, but it is difficult to completely understand for me because it lacks the translation of the last part. Furthermore, I personally believe that this code-switching is rather interesting in performing a pragmatic act of menace. Is it the only instance or are there other cases? If yes, it'd be worthy to point them out.

In conclusion, I believe that the paper should be accepted with revisions, and that these revisions will involve mainly an expansion of the section of the analysis to further empower the following discussion.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for this article. It is an important contribution to the field. However, it needs considerable changes.

I would like to suggest that this is, in fact, two papers. One paper on women and another on LGBTQ+ people. You could make a much stronger and more in-depth analysis if you separated this paper in such a way. As it stands, you have tried to cram too much into the paper, and therefore you do not have enough detail. It is hard to follow, and your argument is not clear.

Further, your finding section is only 2 pages long. In qualitative papers you do not have to separate into “findings” and “discussion”. I would suggest that you instead have just one section on “findings” and you include your discussion throughout. Then, offer much more detail from the three themes you have highlighted. Also, this is where you can bring in an intersectional analysis. For example, there are comments that are racist, but you haven’t addressed this racialized and gendered hate. Also, there was surely examples where there are homophobic and/or transphobic comments which is an opportunity to discuss this further as well. All in all, you are not making enough of your rich data. Draw out how gendered hate speech is also often racist, homophobic, ableist and so on. 

Your section on the history of feminism needs attention. You do not need such a long history of US/European feminism. You do not have enough detail and rely too heavily on a few sources. Trust the reader understands there are four feminist waves. Also, it is curious that you rely so heavily on US/European histories of feminism. This section would be better served outlining the feminist history that is lesser known, including in Namibia. Yes US/European feminist history has some important points but it has also often been too white, heterosexual and failed to consider countries that are not US/European. This could be an opportunity to engage with feminists outside the US/Europe and to incorporate their analysis. This would make more sense than tracing the history of feminism in the US/Europe. Also, as scholars outside the US/Europe, we should endeavour to reference marginalised scholars! 

Methodology: in general you need more detail about the methodology. What is an analytical examination? We need to know every step you took. How did you run the search? How did you download the data? There is too much I do not know.

Further, I need more detail as a reader about the context in Namibia and the people you chose to look at. Who are they? How do they fit in the broader context in Namibia?

Overall, this is a good first draft but with these suggestions you could make a vastly improved paper.

Author Response

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for taking on my feedback. This paper is much stronger though still needs work. I have attached the PDF. It looks like a lot of comments but many are copy edits rather than content. 

The main issue is still your first half of the paper. Your findings are now much stronger and clearer. 

As you will see I have a lot of feedback again on the feminism section. Really your main issue is structure. It is hard to follow as a reader. 

I am excited about your findings. I think this is a good paper. With another re-work it will be ready to go. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you again for the comments provided.

As indicated by the reviewer most of the paper’s problems were in the first part of the document; in order to address them we have:

• Restructured section 2, eliminating the part on the feminism's waves and focusing on African feminism and the history of feminism in Namibia. We have also moved up in this section 2 the part on the state of GBV in Namibia;
• Revisited section 3, eliminating the part that were referring to feminism theory and rather looking at women and the use of internet and social media. 
• The conclusive section has been renamed Conclusion and Recommendation 
• The Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis framework has been explained
•  We have also tried to address at the best of our knowledge all others specific comments indicated in the reviewer's pdf document attached to the reviewer’s comments
•  

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for considering my comments. This paper is so much stronger. I still think your feminism section could have some editing, just around structure. I have suggested the editors give this an edit. 

Also, put in some more references in the white feminism section. 

A couple of small edits in text which I have attached.  

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for the invaluable comments which have helped us to strengthen the paper.

We have adjusted the arrticle accordingly and provided some additional references.

With regard to the comment on "feminism and climate change" (Biwa, line 245), unfortunately climate change is not yet perceived as real threat. Although it affects, and will affect women more than men, considering their role in the predominant subsistence agriculture sector, there is  very little attention to the subject, and this is an area which would be interesting to further investigate.