Men not going their own way: a thick big data analysis of #MGTOW and #Feminism tweets

ABSTRACT

Online misogyny is growing at an alarming rate, constituting a violent backlash against feminist activism for gender equality. In our paper, we analyze misogynistic discourses on Twitter generated by #MGTOW (men going their own way) using Thick Big Data. This mixed research method involved a quantitative analysis of 167,582 tweets with #MGTOW and #feminism, followed by a qualitative study of 1,000 tweets of both hashtags. Our study reveals that despite the official narrative of MGTOW as a separatist community of men “going their own way,” #MGTOW’s central goal is in fact the fight against gender equality. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the language, sentiment, tone, referred sources, and comparisons between #MGTOW and #feminism show that #MGTOW does not simply voice a separatist approach towards women but promotes violence against women and feminism. While feminist tweets are more oriented toward the creation of common identity by referring to shared values and having an internal focus, MGTOW tweets express opposition to “others” and emphasize an “us vs. them” mentality. Our study also shows that online misogyny is something larger than its common definition as a violent anti-women expression in digital environments. It is a defense of a patriarchal system that allows men to claim gender, race, and other kinds of privileges to which they feel entitled.

KEYWORDS:

• Online activism
• gender
• #feminism
• #MGTOW
• social media

Acknowledgment

Dariusz Jemielniak’s contribution was financed by a grant no. 2020/38/A/HS6/00066 from Polish National Science Center.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. As Jones, Trott, and Wright (2019) note, “the subreddit r/MGTOW has grown from 54,000 members in early 2018 to 104,000 members in early 2019 and there are 32,859 members listed on one MGTOW forum” (2).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Maria Górska

Anna Maria Górska, is an Assistant Professor at Kozminski University, and a director of Women and Diversity in Organizations Research Center. Anna Górska specializes in gender and diversity in organizations and higher education institutions. Anna has participated as a principal investigator and researcher in multiple research grants funded by the Polish National Center of Science, EU funds and Norwegian Funds. She has also been awarded scholarships and awards, including Fulbright Junior Research Award. She has gained her international experience as a visiting scholar at Columbia Business School and ESCP Business School.

Karolina Kulicka

Karolina Kulicka is an independent scholar who currently works as a civil servant in Poland. She received her Ph.D. degree in global gender studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research focuses on gender and public policy. Kulicka is a recipient of multiple awards and scholarships, including the International Peace Scholarship, University at Buffalo Humanities Institute Fellowship, and Public Administration Theory Network Fellowship.

Dariusz Jemielniak

Dariusz Jemielniak is Full Professor and head of Management in Networked and Digital Environments (MINDS) department, Kozminski University, and faculty associate at Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. His prior appointments include MIT (2015–2016, 2019-2020) University of California Berkeley (2007), and Cornell University (2004–2005). He is a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His recent books include Collaborative Society (2020, MIT Press, with A. Przegalinska), Thick Big Data (2020, Oxford University Press), Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia (2014, Stanford University Press). His current research projects include climate change denialism online, anti-vaxxer internet communities, and bot detection. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation.