Academics have called for the so-called manosphere to be treated as a public health problem, with the harms it causes online confronted in the same way as those created by the tobacco industry.

The manosphere , according to the authors of a new report, is “a diffuse commercial ecosystem and loose collection of online communities united by shared beliefs about masculinity, misogyny and male victimisation”.

The movement centres on a so-called crisis of masculinity and a shared conviction that feminism has systematically disadvantaged men, they said.

It has contributed to many health harms, the authors argued.…