The Language of Japanese Spam Mails

2014 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 25770162
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: BACKHAUS Peter 早稲田大学, 教育・総合科学学術院, 准教授 (40582888)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: language / spam / sexuality / Japanese

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

After working out the main quantitative characteristics of the spam messages in the corpus, in this second year I focused on the perception of these messages by ordinary readers. I conducted a study with 59 undergraduate students, who were presented four of the messages from the corpus and asked to evaluate these in terms of (1) overall credibility, (2) naturalness of the language, (3) likeliness of recipient's reaction.
The results showed that there are indeed some significant differences with regard to readers' perceptions of spam. Most noteworthy, female participants tended to evaluate "likeliness of recipient's reaction" as significantly higher than their male peers. This outcome was rather unexpected, which suggests that our overall understanding of the language of dating spam is still insufficient. In addition, the participants were asked to freely comment on each of the messages. A quantitative analysis of these comments, which may help to explain the gender differences just described, is planned for the coming year.

Current Status of Research Progress

2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.

Reason

Research proceeded as planned

Strategy for Future Research Activity

- analysis of students' comments on 4 spam messages
- presentation of results at international conference
- publication