This appendix provides some further details on the research project that informed this book. I first provide a brief description of the sites in which I undertook the ethnography, before outlining my approach to data collection and analysis.

A sketch of the field

I conducted fieldwork in a variety of online spaces, across a range of platforms: from static websites and documentation, to traditional web forums, to social media platforms Facebook and Twitter. This wide scope was intended to reflect the range of trans spaces available online, as well as the permeable boundaries of the medium itself (Postill and Pink, 2012), although of course the fieldwork sites comprised just a small part of a far wider ecology of trans content on the internet. Many of the spaces visited did not exist simply to host a discussion of trans health: however, for the purposes of this project, I sought to specifically examine how the topic of trans health was discussed within them. For a mostly complete list of sites visited during the project, see Pearce (2016: 229–236).

Information from these sites was ‘captured’ using the browser plugin NCapture, which allowed me to process it within qualitative data analysis programme NVivo. I also noted my thoughts, ideas and observations in a fieldwork diary. I then undertook a thematic analysis of this data (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Activist sphere

For this project, I understood the activist sphere as comprising discussion groups within social media spaces, and opinion pieces written for blogs and news media platforms. I primarily observed eight Facebook groups, a Twitter hashtag and approximately 100 individual articles written for blogs and media organisations. A wide range of political tactics were discussed and/or implemented by trans individuals organising within or through these spaces, including protests/pickets, letter-writing campaigns, petitions, information/awareness drives, academic analysis, event disruption and political lobbying.

Facebook

I visited eight trans activist Facebook groups. These were accessible only to existing Facebook users. Most were either ‘closed’ or ‘secret’ groups, meaning that new members must be added or vetted by existing members: this means that they effectively operate as private spaces.