The (neo)manosphere is an informal digital network, driven by social media technological affordances, and comprising a broad range of influencers, groups, and online communities that capitalise on the needs, frustrations, and desires of boys and men, with the aim of monetising and/or promoting masculinist and anti-feminist content. Originally confined to the English-speaking digital sphere, the manosphere has, in recent years, been undergoing a transformation, establishing itself as a glocal phenomenon.

The mainstreaming of the far right, the growing popularity of social media, and the business opportunities these developments have generated have contributed to the adaptation of the ‘Redpill’ lexicon, characteristic of manospheric ideology and previously associated with fringe internet subcultures, to the (re)production and circulation of masculinist discourses within and across platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. This expansion of the manosphere into mainstream digital spaces has not only increased its visibility and facilitated its (re)production across different linguistic contexts, but has also made it more pernicious, precisely because it is often embedded in seemingly innocuous content, including lifestyle, fitness, and well-being posts.

Until very recently, academic research into the manosphere had focused primarily on the US, the UK and Australia – contexts in which this phenomenon first emerged and took root. However, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in understanding its manifestations in other national, regional and linguistic contexts, which, in turn, has been reflected in the proliferation of studies dedicated to the local specificities of digital masculinism.

It is against this backdrop that the symposium ‘Researching the Manosphere in Southern Europe and Latin America’ aims to present, explore and discuss research carried out by academics from Southern Europe (Spain, Italy and France) and Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and Paraguay), focusing on the various glocal expressions of the manosphere. Building on this new analytical impetus, which seeks to understand digital masculinism beyond the Anglo-Saxon world, the symposium is organised around three main objectives:
a)    To shed light on the glocal dimension of the manosphere;
b)    To reflect on the specific characteristics of each national or regional context, highlighting both the elements that distinguish them and those that connect them;
c)    To bring together young researchers and established scholars who have been researching the manosphere, with the aim of fostering debate, knowledge-sharing and the creation of collaborative networks centred on Southern Europe and Latin America.

_{The symposium is part of the six-month mobility programme under the MANOS project – The Manosphere Pill: Pathways of Boys and Men into Male Supremacy Online in Portugal and Ireland (MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship, GA. 101153494) at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra.}