In this paper, we present a large-scale characterization of the Manosphere, a conglomerate of Web-based misogynist movements roughly focused on "men's issues," which has seen significant growth over the past years. We do so by gathering and analyzing 28.8M posts from 6 forums and 51 subreddits. Overall, we paint a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the Manosphere on the Web, showing the links between its different communities over the years. We find that milder and older communities, such as Pick Up Artists and Men's Rights Activists, are giving way to more extremist ones like Incels and Men Going Their Own Way, with a substantial migration of active users. Moreover, our analysis suggests that these newer communities are more toxic and misogynistic than the former.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2001.07600,
title = {The Evolution of the Manosphere Across the Web},
author = {Manoel Horta Ribeiro and Jeremy Blackburn and Barry Bradlyn and Emiliano De Cristofaro and Gianluca Stringhini and Summer Long and Stephanie Greenberg and Savvas Zannettou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.07600},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
To appear at the 15th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2021) -- please cite accordingly