The Hegemony of Tradition: Part 2. The Phenomenon of Masculinity in the Requests / Search Queries of Web Users

Abstract

The analysis of popular search queries and their results enables one to find out about the way masculinity is interpreted to Internet users and to identify some general trends in the perception of men’s behavior. The study aims to characterize the images of masculinity Internet users take interest in. Users’ search queries and the texts from the search results constitute the object of the research. The authors employ the analysis of user search queries applying the toolkit Yandex. Wordstat, which enables to identify the frequency of queries related to the concept of masculinity, as well as to generate the textual data for further frequency analysis and textual modelling of the information content of the search results. The results of the study allow to draw the conclusion that the analysis of user queries indicates a growing interest in the problem of toxic masculinity and the search for alternative behaviors. Traditional norms are correlated with toxic masculinity, and this, in turn, is opposed by a new one with more egalitarian ideas about men’s behavior. Some promising perspectives for future research involve assessing the influence of traditional and new ideas about masculinity on the formation of interpersonal relationships, as well as verifying the hypothesis of correlation between traditional masculinity and the propensity to manifest violence in various forms.