MEN4DEM systematically advances our understanding of how political masculinities are constructed and mobilized by the extreme right in Europe. We are developing an evidence-based alternative paradigm to prevent and counter the growth of anti-democratic masculinities. In constant co-creation with young men and societal and artistic partners, we develop and test interventions to promote models of democratic masculinity. Our interventions include concrete tools for policymakers, practitioners, civil society groups and political parties to de-normalize gender-based exclusion.
Contact: Liza Mügge
Towards a new democratic paradigm
MEN4DEM develops a theoretical framework. Co-created with innovative methods from theatre and the arts, we build on both academic and practical experiences to develop a joint understanding of what anti-democratic masculinities are and what more inclusive, democratic masculinities could be. The framework guides the project and is tailored to the different users: academics and social actors. The first iteration of our framework is available as a working paper. It provides the conceptual, methodological and normative foundation for our research activities and is revisited as research findings and practical interventions emerge over the course of the project. In its final version, it will synthesize and incorporate findings and experiences and be formulated so that it can be used by others.
Contact: Elin Bjarnegård
‘we will build on both academic and practical experiences'
Socialization into (anti)democratic masculinities
To study socialization into political masculinity roles, the project collects new survey data in Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. It collects data on democratic values, political participation, nationalism, gender role attitudes, male toughness, sexual diversity and views towards women in political roles. Socialization also increasingly takes place online and is therefore studied using web tracking data that links individual information diets to political attitudes. A particular focus will be on the antifeminist and misogynistic ‘manosphere’, where we also use qualitative methods such as netnography to understand how extremist content is disseminated and how new participants are attracted to extremist communities.
Contact: Vera Lomazzi
Spillover to mainstream politics
We know that ideals of anti-democratic and violent masculinities spill over to the mainstream political sphere. The project therefore focuses on political party youth wings to shed light on how this happens among young, politically engaged men. Youth wings operate both online and offline, and hybrid ethnography – focusing on multiple field sites, including physical, digital and digital-physical – is used to capture these intertwined activities in Greece, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. Influencers constitute another politically important group in the spread of extremist ideas. Their politicization of gender and their content production, discursive strategies and interaction with followers is analysed by scraping social media data and closely following a selected number of influencers.
Contact: Brit Anlar
Political leaders and AI-driven charisma
The integration of (anti)democratic masculine ideals into political leadership is also important for understanding how these ideals are cemented into the party apparatus but also deployed to attract new supporters. We analyse parliamentary speeches and social media posts by extreme-right leaders to create a typology of extreme-right leadership styles. As online and offline spaces are intertwined and leaders increasingly transfer the jargon, communication style and practices of the online space into parliamentary/official language in a selective way, the project maps the effects of AI-driven amplification of extremist content.
Contact: Theoni Stathopoulou
Developing alternative perspectives on being a man in the 21st century
Interventions for more democratic masculinities
Together with our societal and artistic partners, we will develop a series of interventions that will be tested and refined to ultimately produce an effective intervention model. There will be two kinds of interventions: theatre-based workshops designed to shape more democratic and inclusive versions of masculinity, and short online videos aimed at building resistance to manipulation techniques used by anti-democratic groups. The first intervention will be an immersive, live-action role play (LARP) that lets participants experience group dynamics from the inside. In the MEN4DEM LARP What Happens When We Meet?, a family reunion serves as a metaphor for society. Participants will explore how belonging, authority, and exclusion influence the ways people join, follow, resist, or leave a group - including processes of radicalisation. The sessions will be run by trained facilitators, mainly practitioners working with young people, in particular young men who are vulnerable to extremist recruitment. Thanks to the transferable LARP methodology, the intervention can be run in the same way in all countries participating in the project. The second intervention will consist of two short, animated videos that build resistance to online manipulation. The videos target techniques commonly used by anti-democratic movements and work like a vaccine: by exposing viewers to weakened doses of manipulation, they prepare them to recognise and resist it in the future. Videos can reach large online audiences, and their short format makes them well suited to social media, educational settings, and public awareness campaigns. In both types of interventions, quantitative and qualitative methods will be applied to assess their effectiveness.
Contact: Tomasz Besta