JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Gangstalking is a novel persecutory belief system whereby sufferers believe they are being followed, stalked, and harassed by a large number of people, often numbering in the thousands. The harassment is experienced as an accretion of innumerable individually benign acts such as people clearing their throat, muttering under their breath, or giving dirty looks as they pass on the street. Sufferers of this belief system congregate in online fora to seek support, share experiences, and interact with other like-minded individuals. Such people identify themselves as targeted Individuals (TIs).

Objective:

The objective of the study was to characterize the linguistic and rhetorical practices used by contributors to the gangstalking forum to construct, develop and contest the gangstalking belief system.

Methods:

Methods This mixed methods study employed corpus linguistics, which involves using computational techniques to examine recurring linguistic patterns in large, digitised bodies of authentic language data. Discourse analysis is an approach to text analysis which focuses on the ways in which linguistic choices made by text creators contribute to particular functions and representations. We assembled a 225,000-word corpus of postings on a gangstalking support forum. We analysed this data using keyword analysis, collocation analysis and manual examination of concordances to identify discursive and rhetorical practices among self identified targeted individuals.

Results:

The gangstalking forum served as a site of discursive contest between two opposing worldviews. One is that gangstalking is a widespread, insidious, and centrally coordinated system of persecution employing community members, figures of authority and state actors. This was the dominant discourse in the study corpus. The opposing view is a medicalized discourse supporting gangstalking as a form of mental disorder. Contributors used linguistic practices such as presupposition, nominalization, and the use of specialized jargon to construct gangstalking as real and external to the sufferer. Though contributors generally rejected the notion that they were suffering from mental disorder, in some instances, they did label others in the forum as suffering from mental illness if their accounts were deemed to be too extreme or bizarre. Sufferers demonstrated a concern with accumulating evidence to prove their position to incredulous others.

Conclusions:

The study found that contributors to the study corpus accomplished a number of tasks. They used linguistic practices to co-construct an internally coherent and systematized persecutory belief system. They advanced a position that gangstalking is real and contested the medicalizing discourse that gangstalking is a form of mental disorder. They supported one another by sharing similar experiences and providing encouragement and advice. Finally, they commiserated over the challenges of proving the existence of gangstalking.