The project intends to look into the way transgender and nonbinary people use social media throughout their social and medical transitions. This will include what platforms they use, how they use these platforms, what causes them to use a particular platform more or less, and so on. It will look at both benefits- such as identity exploration or gender affirmation - and drawbacks- such as hate speech or invalidating platform design - of social media for transgender and nonbinary people, in order to create the fullest picture possible. This information will then be utilized to create a set of guidelines for social media platform developers on how to make their platforms as safe for transgender and nonbinary people as possible, using a co-creation process with members of the trans community.
The project intends to focus on both the behavior of individual social media users, as well as the ways that platforms are created in ways that benefit or disadvantage trans people. This will allow for a clearer idea of the actual effect that social media has on trans people, as it will take into account all of the factors that they encounter and how they each influence them.
This author is supported by the Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Nottingham (UKRI Grant No. EP/S023305/1).