Incels and the manosphere

This project is funded by Forte from 2023-2025.

The overarching research question in this project is to explore what drives men to misogynist radicalization in Sweden. Misogynist extremism was recently classified as a serious terror threat by SÄPO among others, and several acts of violence and murders have been connected to the so-called manosphere – online milieus fostering a toxic masculinity and opposition to feminism. According to the Swedish Defense Research Authority, Swedish men are overrepresented in these online forums. Still, very little research exists in this area. The project has two specific aims: 1) Explore the psychological and contextual correlates of misogynist attitudes, action intentions, and appeal to misogynist radical groups, and 2) Establish the role of social exclusion, alienation and identity threats in the misogynist radicalization process.

The project builds on several different kinds of data where we combine aggregated data collected at the local level with a large-scale survey among young Swedish men, and social psychological experiments. The goal is to draw generalizable conclusions about features related to misogyny, which is currently missing the existing literature.

The first study entails collecting aggregated data on local level such as political set-up, gender balance and unemployment, and connect to use on the manosphere with the help of the tool SimilarWeb. This is done the first year. The second year, we will perform a large survey with assessing individual factors and connect to measures of misogyny, as well as three social psychological experiments with a representative sample of young men in Sweden. Both the survey and experiments are collected via online panels. We vary for instance social exclusion and assess how that affects misogyny. The research group has extensive experience of using these methods.

The project has very high societal relevance as it tackles a relatively new terror threat specifically directed against women. It is especially relevant for Sweden since Swedish men seems to be overrepresented on misogynist forums online. The project will provide understanding of what can lead men to adopt misogynist attitudes and therefore also how this could be counteracted. No similar studies have been done before, and hence the project is of highest relevance.

Who is working on this project?