Men, Masculinity and Digital Media

Discourses on men's digital media practices are often problem-focused and associate men's online practices with issues such as outsiderness, loneliness, toxic behaviour, excessive use and addiction, reflecting contemporary narrative of a masculinity in crisis described through data young men’s educational under-achievement, shorter lifespan, higher suicide rates, higher crime rates, and lower fertility rates in comparison to women. @

While we must certainly take seriously the bigger societal picture in understanding men's gendered digital media practices, it is important that we direct the lens towards the motivations, experiences, and values relating to these digital media practices. In this seminar, Nordic scholars present and discuss new research on men, masculinity and digital media, opening up for perspectives that acknowledge problematic practices while also accounting for the need for discursive and context-sensitive understandings of such practices. The aim is to share and discuss our research and open for possible interconnections that invite new ventures into research that allows us to understand gendered digital media practices.

The seminar is organized as part of the Understanding Masculinity in Gaming project, which is affiliated with the Center for Digital Narrative.

The seminar is open for all.

Program: 

09.00-09.15     Welcome by Kristine Jørgensen, University of Bergen

09.15-09.45     Kristoffer Chelsom Vogt, University of Bergen: Contextual reflections: Setting the broader context in research and debates on boys and men

Kristoffer Chelsom Vogt will start off the program with broad reflections on today`s topics in light of recent social science research, and public debates about boys and young men. He will focus on recent historical and discursive changes affecting boys and men in the Norwegian context. His reflections will largely be based on previous publications on a wide range of topics, such as how, over recent decades, children and young people`s everyday places have become institutionalized and digitalized. Discourses on young people in general, and on boys and young men in particular, have become increasingly problem-focused, fraught with often well-intentioned concern on the part of boys and young men. Young men are often portrayed as faring worse than young women, although such narratives run contrary to available registry based evidence on the broad life-course patterns among young people. Simple narratives of zero-sum oppositions between boys and girls tend to conceal intersectional processes. Patterns and discourses pertaining all girls and boys, may come in extreme variants when immigrant girls and boys are in question (2021).

09.45-10.15     Emilia Lounela (external link), Helsinki University: United by victimhood

The complex negotiations of identity, masculinity, and agency in incel online communities
In this presentation, based on my doctoral thesis, I examine how incels themselves understand inceldom, and what political implications being an incel involves to self-identified incels themselves. I look into constructions of masculinity and the way misogyny is justified. My approach is discursive: using both online discussion and interview data, I examine how the incel worldview is constructed, negotiated, and contested. I find that incels disagree on what ‘incel’ means in the first place, whether incels should be considered a political movement or not, whether political violence is justified, and what an ideal society would look like. What pulls incel discourse together, despite these differences, is victimhood. Victimhood can be evoked to defend even contradictory views and goals, but it manages to create a surface-level discursive unity. In the end, different views on the political implications of inceldom do not matter: victimhood is used to articulate a political non-agency in a way that renders any mobilisation as ultimately useless. Incels’ antagonistic, grievance-based identification can motivate sporadic violence as revenge, but it cannot promise political or societal change, no matter incels’ actions.

10.15-10.45     Kristian A. Bjørkelo, University of Bergen / Nord University: Playing masculinities

Designing roleplaying games that engage with masculinity raises significant methodological questions. Asking players to “become” masculine identities risks reducing complex lived experiences to caricature. Transformative roleplaying games (Baird et al., 2025; Bjørkelo, 2026; Daniau, 2016) such as Blood Feud (Malmberg & Persson, 2021) and Real Men (Holkar & Burns, 2015) have attempted to explore aspects of masculinity and how they are formed through different means. Both approaches are valuable, and motivate critical reflections on masculinity by the players, but have distinct limitations. This paper explores these limitations and an attempt to overcome them by designing a roleplaying game that explores the fluidity of masculinity, beyond the current theoretical conceptualizations and constraints.

10.45-11.00    Pause

11.00-11.30     Faltin Karlsen (external link), Kristiania University of Applied Sciences: Gaming, Gambling, and Economic speculation: Masculinity and Risk Perception

Over the past decade, the boundaries between digital gaming and gambling have become increasingly blurred. This convergence is visible in game design (e.g., loot boxes) and the rise of influencer-driven content that merges gaming, gambling, with trading and crypto speculation. Research suggests that an increasing number of adolescent boys and young med are involved in all these types of activities, and that norms and practices are transferred between them. Risk-taking behaviour may constitute a common denominator across these domains. This study will investigate young males in Norway, with a particular focus on the overlap between gaming, gambling, and financial speculation, examining perceptions of risk, gaming habits, and constructions of masculinity. Interviews with boys and men aged 16–24, along with a selection of live-stream recordings from YouTube and Twitch, will form the empirical basis of the project.

11.30-12.00     Synnøve S. Lindtner, University of Bergen: Masculinity as a Symbolic Resource in Teenage Boys’ Discourses on Gaming

This paper examines how masculinity is expressed, negotiated, and at times downplayed in interviews with Norwegian teenage boys about everyday gaming. Digital games constitute a central part of many boys’ daily lives, yet gaming cultures are frequently framed as sites of problematic or conservative masculinity. Drawing on focus group interviews with 25 teenage boys recruited from two Norwegian upper secondary schools with distinct social and cultural profiles, this study explores how masculinity is constructed and evaluated in boys’ talk about gaming across different contexts. The findings show how teenage boys in a Nordic gender-equality context use masculinity not as a fixed identity, but as a flexible resource for establishing belonging, status, and moral worth in peer conversations about

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.00-13.30     Mikko Meriläinen (external link), Tampere University: Pride and prejudice: Outsiderness and masculinity in gaming and incel communities

Gaming and incel (involuntary celibate) communities are frequented by young men and often centrally feature a notion of outsiderness and not fitting traditional masculinity ideals. The groups, however, differ in how they relate to non-normative manhood ideals. In geek and gaming communities, not fitting traditional ideals is often a source of pride, whereas in incel communities it becomes bitterness and hopelessness. Incel communities are especially know for their misogyny, which has also been connected to lethal violent attacks. In this talk, PI Mikko Meriläinen introduces the two-year (2026-2028) research project Against the current of manhood - Young men's negotiation of outsiderhood and gender norms in online communities that explores why the experience of not fitting manhood norms becomes bitterness and hatred in some groups yet turns into empowering pride over one's unique identity in another.

13.30-14.00     Ida Kvilhaug Sekanina, University of Bergen: Prepping – a male practice?

Preppers – people who make active preparations for future emergencies – are often portrayed as motivated by fears of societal breakdown and distrust in state institutions. They are also assumed to belong to a male dominant subculture, coupled with expressions of traditional hegemonic masculinity; protect and provide. Drawing from an online ethnography and in-depth interviews within Norwegian prepper Facebook communities, I will share observations on the gendered dimensions within these communities. What does prepping look like in a Norwegian setting, and to what extent does it reproduce conventional gender roles or constitute a distinctly male practice?

14.00-14.15 Pause

14.15-14.45     Tom Legierse, University of Bergen: The Gendered Construction of Gaming Spaces in Berlin

In this paper I analyze gaming spaces in Berlin through the interplay between material infrastructure and social gaming practices - the gaming assemblage. Specifically, I zoom in on the conditions that make gaming possible in my fieldsites, as well as the conditions that inform how gaming takes place.  I do this through a focus on moderation, for which I primarily zoom in on the perspective of employees, organizers and volunteers who made gaming happen in the spaces I visited. Building on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork including participant observations and interviews, I argue that approaching gendered gaming space through the assemblage points towards more open-ended conclusions about the construction of gendered gaming spaces.

14.45-15.15     Hilde G. Corneliussen (external link), Western Norway Research Institute, and Kristine Jørgensen, University of Bergen: Men and gaming values: Snapshots from a qualitative study 

For many game enthusiasts, gaming and games are not simply a pastime or even a hobby, but is a meaningful and valued affective practice that often goes unrecognized or may even be opposed by partners, and family. Based in interview data of Norwegian gaming men, we will discuss the value that men attach to gaming as an important and meaningful part of their self-esteem and identity formation, and how these tensions around these values are being negotiated in social relations with families and partners. Reflecting on the concepts gamer identity and gamer masculinity, we will argue for the importance of considering gaming not as an isolated activity but to consider the environment’s responses to gaming to understand game culture participation and the construction of gamer identity.

15.15-15.30 Final words by Kristine Jørgensen