Using “Small Data” to Map How Men’s Rights Came Online (Work-in-Progress)

Abstract

While the advent of the Internet can be seen as a “revolution” in how social movements communicate and organize, digital methods and materials do not necessarily constitute a “revolution” in how we study movements or their histories. My paper enters this discussion by suggesting a "small data" approach for studying the early digital presence of the men’s rights movement, and its transition from print to digital media. I compare two unique data sets involving print and digital archives to map out the geographical locations of men's rights groups and adherents in the early 1990s. I demonstrate how: 1) there is significant overlap between the print organizations and early digital spaces for men's rights activists; and 2) men’s rights communities in North America were often concentrated in areas like Southern California, the Pacific Northwest, and the North Eastern Seaboard. Ultimately, I argue that print materials, “small data,” and non-computational methods are still valuable tools to study social movements and their early digital histories.