Constituting affective identities: Understanding the communicative construction of identity in online men’s rights spaces

Abstract

The present study examined how identity is affectively organized online in an online men’s rights community, responding to calls to explore how sites like Reddit serve as spaces that host and support varied misogynist language and communities. We utilized scholarship of affective organizing and communicative constitution of organizations to study the identity construction through the social and communicative processes that facilitate and limit online communication. We analyzed 35,643 comments from a popular men’s rights community to interrogate how affective and gendered organizing contributed to identity construction using text mining, semantic network analyses, and qualitative analyses. Our findings revealed that affect was not merely prominent in the forum but served as a constitutive means through which the members of the men’s rights community constructed their identity individually and within their Reddit community. We advance an affect-centered approach within organizational communication scholarship, theorizing how masculinity is constituted through the interplay of affective contradictions, affective sensemaking, and affective identification.

Online identities in and around organizations: A critical exploration and way forward

“…With greater possibilities for users to generate data, individuals were enabled to express their identity publicly, outside of closed online forums, through enhanced markers: uploaded photos, “friend” connections, status updates, (dis)likes, comments (Boyd, 2002; Nagy and Koles, 2014). The “virtual” and “real” worlds, which were originally considered separate places, begun to mutually influence each other and identities constructed online increasingly spilt into offline social interactions (Barros, 2018; Fieseler et al, 2015).…”

“…This process developed an affective identity reclaiming men's supposed loss of power. Aligned with debates on the current blurring of online and offline worlds, the contribution by Eddington et al (2023) is central to understanding how affective dynamics, combined with algorithmic control, are essential to regulate the ever-precarious self. The authors show that affect fulfils both the need for group attachment and identity consistency despite contradictions in their offline and online experiences.…”

“…Second, situations in which the online and offline worlds merge have allowed the question of "disembodied embodiment" and "embodied disembodiment" to be explored, with studies showing the role of affect. Most particularly, Eddington et al (2023) explore the question of the intermingling of "virtual" and "real" bodies-a "liminal (dis)embodied duality"-in the affective regulation of participants' identities in an online men's rights community. Here, the authors put forward affect as central to a "tension of (dis)embodiment," particularly between their claimed offline rationality and the role of emotions in the constitution of their online identity.…”

“…Bonneau et al (2023), while acknowledging the ability of online communities to provide dominant archetypes in the absence of previously established professional references, analyze individuals who construct their identity by disidentifying with collective romanticized portrayals. Eddington et al (2023) explore member identification in relation to an online men's rights space, emphasizing the affective dimension that constitutes the subject and shapes misogynistic identities.…”

“…At the same time, organizations sought to use digital tools to forge their connection with members through increased identification (Bennett and Segerberg, 2011; Fieseler et al, 2015). In critical online identity studies, the use of social media affordances (Khazraee and Novak, 2018; Leonardi and Vaast, 2017) to create a collective identity that fostered engagement and commitment among participants by social movements was particularly examined (Castells, 2004; Etter and Albu, 2021; Gerbaudo and Treré, 2015; McCaughey and Ayers, 2003).…”