GD901 Research Dissertation

"Using Photo-Elicitation To Make Visible Women’s Everyday, Embodied Experiences Of The Manosphere"

Dissertation context

Motivated in response to firsthand experiences, my dissertation focused on the emerging phenomenon of the ‘Manosphere,’ a diverse collection of online communities who share misogynistic, anti-feminist and male supremacist sentiments. These communities emerged in niche corners of the internet as spaces for men to discuss male issue but have since grown increasingly radical as they have expanded into mainstream social media platforms. There is also mounting evidence of the offline consequences of the spread of manosphere ideologies such as an increase in misogyny in schools which has been partially attributed to the influence of manosphere ‘celebrities’ such as Andrew Tate (see Fazackerley, 2023).

Dissertation supervisor

Dr Edward Loveman.

Goals/aims

Despite this evidence of the Manosphere’s harmful offline consequences, existing literature exclusively considers the Manosphere to be an exclusively online phenomenon and overwhelmingly focuses on the men and boys who perpetuate the Manosphere’s ideologies. This constituted a significant gap in the literature which I hoped to address by undertaking research into women’s lived and embodied experiences of the Manosphere.

The research question I developed was ‘to what extent is the manosphere embodied in the everyday lives of women?.’ In answering this question my objectives are to understand the extent to which the discourses of the manosphere exist offline, what women’s everyday interactions with the manosphere look like, and how these interactions are embodied by the women in this study.

I conducted a short-term visual ethnography combining participant-produced photography with photo-elicitation. Firstly, participants were asked to capture photographs of any moment, object, or place which they felt represented their everyday embodied experience of the manosphere. Then participants were invited to attend a focus group where their photographs were used as prompts to guide the discussion about their lived experiences. I then conducted reflexive thematic analysis of the photographs and the focus group transcript.

Outcomes/conclusions

The findings can best be summarised by the following quotation from my dissertation: ‘to be a woman existing within and surrounded by the manosphere is to simultaneously bear the emotional weight of anger, sadness, and fatigue, and to negotiate strategies of conformity and resistance.

Other key findings were:

-Participants understood the manosphere to operate at the level of the everyday, through mundane interactions.

-Examples of the manosphere’s intrusions into participants’ lives include enforcement of traditional standards of masculinity and femininity, and men’s subtle comments/behaviours which assert their dominance over women.

-Women embodied their responses to their experiences by using their bodies to conform to or resist the manosphere’s narratives.

My research concludes that for the women involved in this research the manosphere is a lived, felt, and embodied phenomenon, rather than an exclusively online one. Therefore, further research into the manosphere and its real-world consequences is imperative.

Future research aspirations

Although challenging, undertaking the dissertation capstone project allowed me to pursue my existing research interests while exploring new methodologies and approaches to undertaking research. In the future I hope to return to Warwick and use my research experience to pursue a PhD.