Mathilda Åkerlund has received 4,5M SEK in funding from the Swedish Research Council for the three-year research project “Men who hate women online: A study of the internet as a new arena for the mobilisation of organised gender-based hate”, in which organized forms of misogyny that are expressed in Swedish internet environments will be analyzed. The project will specifically focus on so-called incels.
Project Summary
In this project, we will analyze how organized forms of misogyny are expressed in Swedish internet environments. Specifically, we will analyze the rapidly emerging movement of so-called incels — a self-ascribed identity used by men in ‘involuntary celibacy’, who express misogyny in male-separatist online discussion forums. There is a lack of academic research into Swedish incels even though these are relatively numerous and are rapidly growing more extremist. Therefore, there is a need to understand why the incel movement is on the rise in a country like Sweden, where gender equality efforts have come so (comparatively) far. Concretely, this project aims to map and analyse Swedish incels by exploring (a) how and to what degree Swedish incels are organized; (b) how Swedish incel discourse takes shape; and (c) how Swedish incels are understood by the surrounding society. To answer these questions, we will use several large-scale digital, textual datasets, which we will analyse using methodological approaches that combine computational and qualitative elements. Through such combinations we will be able to identify overall patterns as well as intricate details. We approach the incel movement not as a deviant subculture or a small, extremist fringe phenomenon but as a symptom of deep-rooted societal problems that have now found new outlets through digital technology. And while the number of attacks attributed to incels are still limited, violent attacks are but the most extreme outcomes of a culture aimed at limiting the rights and freedoms of women for the benefit of men’s percieved rights to their bodies. With women’s health, safety, and rights at stake, there is need for more research that addresses why women remain so exposed to gender-based hate. Overall, this project will contribute important knowledge about organized forms of gender-based hate and their expressions online. Beyond this, the insights generated by this project will also be put to more concrete use through a report with policy suggestions, which we will develop in collaboration with the international, non-profit organization HateAid — an organization which, among other things, provides legal support and advise to victims of digital violence.
Mathilda Åkerlund is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology, Umeå University, specializing in digital sociology. Her research interests center on digital politics in general, but with a special interest in far-right political expressions and how these expressions are enabled by different types of media and platforms. She is also senior editor of DIGSUM’s Journal of Digital Social Research (JDSR).
Read more about DIGSUM’s research group on Digital Sociology [here].