Viral Feelings, Digital Fights: Feminist Resistance and Masculinist Backlash in Networked Spaces

Abstract

Over the past decade, digital platforms have transformed the landscape of gender politics. Social media influencers, online feminist communities, and the so-called “manosphere” have become central arenas where gender norms, feminist ideas, and anti-feminist backlash are articulated, contested, and emotionalized. This panel explores how digital communication and online emotions shape contemporary gender attitudes and mobilizations across Europe and beyond. We invited contributions that examine three main issues: 1) how feminist and anti-feminist narratives circulate across social media, 2) how influencers and content creators mediate these debates, and 3) how emotional dynamics—ranging from solidarity and hope to resentment and indignation—structure users’ engagement with gender issues. The panel seeks to foster dialogue between research on feminist digital activism and studies of the manosphere and reactionary masculinity. By comparing these intertwined yet opposing digital ecosystems, the panel aims to deepen our understanding of how emotions, algorithms, and communicative practices sustain communities, shape political attitudes, and reconfigure the public sphere around questions of gender equality. Empirical studies using survey, experimental, ethnographic, interviews, or computational methods were particularly welcome, as are mixed-method approaches that bridge online discourse analysis with attitudinal or behavioral data. This panel examines how digital platforms reconfigure the affective and communicative terrain of contemporary gender politics. Across diverse empirical contexts—from Spain and Argentina to transnational online spaces—the papers reveal how emotions, algorithms, and digital practices shape both feminist mobilizations and reactionary backlashes. Tirado’s “Trending Voices” shows how influencers function as affective entrepreneurs, generating distinct emotional publics around feminism and anti-feminism. Díaz and Barber’s “Heal Your Divine Feminine Energy” continues this focus on affect by unpacking the postfeminist re-entanglement of spirituality, wellness, and gendered self-regulation on TikTok. Babin’s “Affects of Racialisation” extends this inquiry to the misogynistic incel subculture, exploring how racial hierarchies and white supremacy are emotionally sustained within the manosphere’s digital ecosystems. Iñigo and Ging’s “Glocalizing the Manosphere” situates these masculinist imaginaries within global and local dynamics, analyzing how the Spanish manfluencer Amadeo Llados adapts neo-masculinist discourses to regional economic and cultural anxieties. Finally, Fuentes’ “Patriarchal Technologies, Feminist Resistances” compares feminist digital activism in Spain and Argentina, showing how platform infrastructures both constrain and enable radical feminist imaginaries across the Global North and South. Collectively, these contributions bridge research on affect, digital culture, and gender politics, offering a multifaceted understanding of how emotions and platform architectures mediate the struggles over equality, recognition, and belonging in the digital age.

Title	Details
“Heal Your Divine Feminine Energy”: Digital Femininities and the Affective Re-Entanglement of Postfeminism and Reactionary Politics	View Paper Details
Affects of racialisation: misogynistic incels’ affective constructions of race and ethnicity	View Paper Details
Glocalizing the Manosphere: A Cross-Platform Analysis of Spanish Manfluencer Amadeo Llados	View Paper Details
Trending Voices: The Power of Social Media Influencers on Emotions Toward Gender Equality	View Paper Details
Patriarchal Technologies, Feminist Resistances: Lessons from Spain and Argentina	View Paper Details