The next speaker in this session at the AoIR 2025 conference is my QUT colleague Vish Padinjaredath Suresh, whose focus is on the manosphere on Reddit, with a particular focus on the gamergate controversy. This phenomenon has in part been studied from the perspective of radicalisation, but this is problematic: the focus of radicalisation studies is often driven by an anti-terrorism law enforcement agenda and centres the state and its institutions while othering religious and ethnic groups, rather than emphasising human experience.
A different way of approaching radicalisation is via counterpublics theory: such counterpublics are often defined in relation to a dominant hegemonic public, with which it is symbiotically linked. However, there are also other, parasitic counterpublics which do not seek to broaden public discourse but are instead attempting to undermine the influence of prosocial counterpublics by undermining their symbiotic effect on the dominant public – this exercises a form of discursive (and sometimes physical) violence enacted on such counterpublics. Such parasitic publics often represent radical and reactionary right-wing perspectives.
Online radicalisation can then be understood as the formation of an emergent parasitic public, which is computationally mediated and afforded, and sees emergent emancipatory publics as a threat. Gamergate is an obvious example of this; it is adjacent to toxic masculine technocultures and serves as a gateway to the broader far right. As an older instance of radicalisation it can be studied in full.
Methodologically, Vish’s approach here draws on our methodological framework of practice mapping, which does not simply map direct user interactions on social media, but instead assesses similarities amongst the practices of users within the dataset, and clearly shows distinctions between the various subreddits across which gamergate unfolded: generic gaming spaces, girl gamer and feminist spaces, and ‘men’s rights’ and other manosphere spaces each operate in highly distinctive ways, and there is evidence of a pathway from generic gaming discussion into highly masculinist and misogynist subreddits.
This points to a gradual coalescence of such spaces over time; it may be driven by a phantasmagoric process that operationalises the spectre of threats to men’s rights as a driver of radicalisation.
