The project L'Odi a les Xarxes Socials: L'Àgora de la Misogínia (Hatred on Social Media: The Agora of Misogyny), led by the University of Lleida (UdL) which involves the Research Group on Political Communication, Journalism and Democracy (POLCOM-GRP) of the UPF Department of Communication, aims to analyse the phenomenon of anti-feminist discourse on social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. In addition, it seeks to establish any correlation it may have with journalistic coverage of gender issues on social media and aims to help institutions and associations working in this area to develop resources to combat chauvinistic discourse.

Funded by the International Catalan Institute for Peace, the study also includes researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Guadalajara (Mexico) who already have a preliminary sample of 20,000 Twitter posts, 15,000 Facebook messages, and 10,000 Instagram posts from the last two years.

The research aims to learn how institutions, organizations and associations against male violence work to combat hate speech. The preventive and reactive messages they post on social media against misogynistic discourse will be studied.

Data collection has been carried out based on keywords and tags such as feminism, male violence, gender violence, feminazis or NotAllMen, among others. After completing this compilation, the team coordinated by Guillem Suau, professor of Audiovisual Communication and Journalism at the UdL’s Faculty of Arts and researcher at UPF’s POLCOM-GRP, will analyse misogynistic messages and monitor their virality.

Once this phase has been culminated, the journalistic coverage by the main media in Catalonia and by other Spanish media on social networks dealing with feminicide and gender issues will be examined in order to evaluate their ethical suitability and determine a positive or negative correlation between sexist discourse and media coverage.

This research aims to learn how institutions, organizations and associations against male violence work to combat hate speech. In this regard, the preventive and reactive messages they post on social media against misogynistic discourse will be studied, in addition to holding in-depth interviews. The ultimate goal is to collaborate with institutions and associations against gender-based violence to develop tools to help them combat these kinds of discourse on social platforms through action protocols.