Hypermasculinity, Twitter, and #MAGA

The concept of hypermasculinity was first theorised in the early 1980s, with the work of Mosher and Sirkin (1984) being the best known. They were writing at a time when masculinity was perceived as being under threat from the great advances in gender equality made following the arrival of Second Wave Feminism. This form of masculinity rather fell into abeyance over the next 30 years, but in the last five years we have seen a rise in this performance of masculinity on the national stage, often aligned with right wing politics and a heightened sense of national identity in face of a perceive over-reaching of liberalism. This paper will explore how some politicians use social media to promote their messages, side-stepping the otherwise regulating voice of the mainstream media. Social media such as Twitter offer researchers a wealth of data. Its text is currently limited to just 140 characters and the global reach of the medium in particular make it a valuable resource. In particular, this paper will use tweets from the personal account of Donald Trump to offer an explanation for at least part of the appeal of the ‘Make America Great Again’ hashtag, and argue that resurgent hypermasculinity can be used to explore such data