Matteo Rinaldi | Audiences of Toxic Entertainment – Social Media, Masculinity, and the Trojan Horse effect: interventions and the effect on well-being

Matteo Rinaldi | Audiences of Toxic Entertainment – Social Media, Masculinity, and the Trojan Horse effect: interventions and the effect on well-being | Erasmus University Rotterdam; ESHCC, Department of Media and Communication Promotor(es); supervisor(s): Dr abil. Julia Kneer, Dr Freya de Keyzer, Dr Simone Driessen | 01-09-2024 to 31-08-2028 | rinaldi[at]eshcc.eur.nl

This research focuses on the specific interaction between toxic discourse and entertainment platforms in the context of masculinity content on social media. Notably, in the last years, there has been an increase of what has been called “manfluencers”, both as individuals (e.g. Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Myron Gaines – as well as women, like Hanna Pearl Davis ) and podcasts (Whatever podcast, Fres&Fit Miami, etc.). Such content deals with masculinity and femininity, dating, and gender and society, often presenting sensationalistic, derogatory, toxic discourse that is consumed by millions of young men every day. On the other end, social media platforms do not provide just a scalable, highly replicable, and fast-paced environment where these content and views are created and shared, but also include design and architecture choices that are able to keep users “locked in”, allowing degrees of playfulness via affordances, presence of music, text, and video, creating expectations towards the experience itself. The elements of toxicity, platform, content, users, and influencers intertwine creating a peculiar media experience where toxic content and entertainment elements not only converge, but possibly reinforce each other “lowering” the user’s critical thinking, creating an easy entrance gate for and normalization of such content, almost as a Trojan Horse for toxicity.

The goals of this research are then to (1) conceptualize Toxic Entertainment, (2) understanding How masculinity is depicted, and what are the main themes rising from social media short content (e.g. YouTube Shorts) via a qualitative content analysis. The study also wants to (3) understand How such content is consumed, analyzed, and interpreted by young male audiences via qualitative interviews and netnography analysis, and finally (4) create an intervention to counter possible negative effects with a longitudinal Experience Sampling Method experiment, where the effects on their social and psychological well-being will be measured.