„Once upon a time…”

Comments and opinions about the book „A Fairytale for Everyone”

Abstract

In September 2020, the book "A Fairytale for Everyone" published by the Labrisz Lesbian Association, more precisely, ruining the book by shredding, created a significant media response. Several public figures, politicians and psychologists gave their opinions on the storybook, which undeniably shaped the public's attitude towards the publication. The book and the media coverage are indirectly related to the political and social discourse that has become increasingly prominent in recent years, which focuses on the protection of youth, especially children, against "LGBT+ propaganda". At the same time, we know less about lay opinions, therefore in our analysis we were interested in what the thoughts and opinions of ordinary internet users are about the storybook and its alleged or real effects. How did they see the book and the scandal? Do they really consider that the storybook is dangerous for young people? In order to find this out, we performed a topic analysis of readers’ comments on news related to the storybook in order to learn about the most significant opinion-patterns.