This is a presentation of the research project [insert period joke here] Researching Menstruation Online, conducted during the Digital Methods Summer School 2013 in Amsterdam. The project aimed to unravel and understand how menstruation is described and discussed across different languages, platforms and cultures online. In many respects, menstruation is still a taboo in Western societies. Women are encouraged to hide their menstruation and not talk about it in public. In the public sphere there seem to be two dominant approaches and discourses surrounding menstruation. One is a pathological perspective, which frames menstruation as something that needs medication; either in order for women to cope with their menstruation, or for women to get rid of their menstruation all together. The other sees menstruation as a hygiene problem that needs to be fixed. We aimed to reveal the extent to which these constructed discourses are replicated and/or challenged across different cultures, languages and platforms online.

1. Astrid Bigoni
Loes Bogers
Zuzana Karascakova
Emily Stacey
Sarah McMonagle
with a big thanks to:
Federica Bardelli
Giulia de Amicis
Han-Teng Liao
[insert
period joke
here]

2. Researching Menstruation
across languages, platforms and cultures online
Aim:
To reveal the extent to
which these constructed
discourses are replicated
and/or challenged
A taboo
A pathological issue
A hygiene problem
● Wikipedia
● Twitter
● Health forums
● Urban Dictionary
● Google

3. Wikipedia Urban Dictionary
"Menstruation"
On Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary

4. Wikipedia Urban Dictionary
"Menstrual Cycle"
on Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary

5. Twitter:
"Menstruation" OR "menstrual"

6. Discourse Analysis:
Twitter
● Twitter text analysis also included advertiser mentions
such as Huffington Post (97 mentions) and Gariner
Fructis (13 mentions).
● "Walt" (317 mentions) and "Disney" (1506 mentions) led
us to discover a banned Disney short film from 1946,
"The Story of Menstruation."
● "Menophobia" - a fear of menstruation is mentioned 206
times in the corpus of tweets.

7. Urban Dictionary Tag Clouds
Period
On the Rag
Aunt Flo

11. Online Health Forums
Help,
please!
Please!
Two thin tubes
called fallopian
tubes connect
the ovaries to
the womb.
2 month long
period and
heavy.

12. womens-health.com
forum: menstrual cycle

13. nhs.uk
health a-z: periods

14. insert datavis content-specific
images

16. Conclusions
The colloquial as vulgar
In some cases vulgar (Urban Dictionary & Twitter), but also personal,
pragmatic and empathic (Google Autocomplete, Women's health).
Culturally specific
Top 10 Google queries seems to indicate it. Even if Wikipedia strives to
be neutral and universal, there are differences in image usages across
languages.
The private sphere as problem solving
NHS and Women's Health spaces for asking and answering problem-
related issues
The public sphere as clinical
A somewhat clinical space on Wikipedia