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European masculinities The role of media organizations and their impact on the configurations of masculinity, whether they be hegemonic (Connell, 1987; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005), hybrid (Bridges & Pascoe, 2004) or other, has been widely critically examined; however, the fundamental shifts in communication technologies at the dawn of the 20th century and on traditional media formats has had a profound impact on relationships between social actors, understood as something that acts or upon which activity is granted within a network of distinct nodes (Latour, 1987; 1996; 2006). The move from real- to virtual spaces where social identities are performed and negotiated has reduced the impact of traditional media organizations in determining these configurations. In what Manuel Castells (1996) dubs the “Information Age”, there is now a continuing tension between the social network, which has replaced previously extant modes of hierarchical social organization, and the self, where individual personal practices reaffirm social identities, including gender. The arena for negotiating social meaning has shifted from physical to virtual spaces, with these spaces becoming the primary sites for reaffirmation of social identities and, by extension, the primary site of discursive manifestations of gendered identity markers (Van Dijk, 1998). It is therefore on these virtual platforms, through the consumption of multimodal native digital media, that contemporary masculinities are structured, ordered, and reinforced. The separation between the virtual and the real world has grown increasingly thin, and the possible off-line consequences of online discourse for European countries have become apparent in recent years; one need only examine the French government’s Haute Commision a l’égalité 2023 report on the alarming persistence of sexist stereotypes due to online platforms, or a leaked 2025 report from the British government linking periods of civil unrest to the radicalization potential of antifeminist online spaces. The latter, markedly, specifically named the online “manosphere” as being a hub for hostile discourse. The online seminar therefore seeks to discuss the following questions: how is masculinity, whether hegemonic, hybrid, hyper, or other, being negotiated in European online spaces or in virtual media forms? What are the possible consequences of the technological affordances of online platforms on the discursive construction of masculinity? How does the multimodality of these platforms structure the discourse on gender-based expectations of masculinity? How are the virtual and the real worlds interlinked? Is the label “manosphere” still applicable to contemporary studies/approaches to masculinity in mediated spaces? This is not a seminar wholly dedicated to the anglophone manosphere, therefore we also welcome contributions discussing local manifestations of the discourse space, especially non-anglophone ones.
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