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#Lads on Social Media: Investigating Young Networked Masculinities

This project explores how young men (aged 18-25 years) in the United Kingdom use social media to form and develop their masculinised identifications, social connections and networks, particularly those that centre around ‘laddish’ identities, to better understand young people’s experiences of these practices and support them in critically navigating digitized spaces.

Overview and key outputs

A key focus of this project was to consider how ‘lad’ and ‘laddish’ behaviours fit into wider processes of developing young masculine identities on social media spaces. Key questions this project addressed are: what does it mean to be a ‘lad’ on social media? What sort of content is posted, shared and liked within these spaces? What role do these digitized spaces play in forming friendships and social connections, both on and offline? To what extent do ‘laddish’ practices on social media influence young people’s behaviour in online and offline spaces?

Aims & methodologies

This project aims to make a positive societal impact by using its key research findings to develop training resources for community-based organisations in the UK who support young people in critically exploring, understanding and navigating masculinized practices in online spaces and beyond.

This project addressed these research objectives by:

  • Employing qualitative research methods (non-participant observation, data scraping, focus groups and interviews) to critically examine how young men (aged 18-25 years) use social media to form and develop their masculinised identifications, social connections and networks, from the perspective of all gendered groups in this age group.
  • Exploring the extent to which gender-making practices associated with lad identities in UK contexts influence young people’s behaviour both online and offline.
  • Investigating the role that social media networks, particularly digital infrastructures, play in the development of young masculinities, particularly those associated with ‘laddish’ identities.
  • Working with three UK community-based partners - Beyond Equality, Survivors Network and METRO to help develop research-based training materials, to support young people in critically exploring, understanding and navigating masculinised practices in online spaces and beyond.

Project outputs

The project has now been completed and based on its findings the research team developed and launched the #Men4Change toolkit. The toolkit is an educational resource for youth leaders, activists and other professionals who work with young men to reflect on issues relating to gender, masculinity and what it means to be a man in the UK today. Through a series of facilitated workshops, the resource further encourages young men to explore how harmful gendered norms and behaviours can be tackled in ways that aim to benefit themselves, their peer groups and communities. The toolkit can be accessed here. 

The toolkit has a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0. The contents can be used and adapted for non-commercial purposes only. It is free to download, but all we ask is that you let the researchers know how you use the toolkit by emailing Dr Craig Haslop at chaslop@liverpool.ac.uk.

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Published findings from the research can be seen here.

Two researchers from the Department of Communication conducted this project. Dr Craig Haslop, Principal Investigator, is a Lecturer in Media, and Dr. Fiona O’Rourke is Research Associate.

This project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

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