Sexism in the circuitry

Abstract

In this paper, the authors discuss sexism and misogyny within video game culture through the lens of two high-profile examples of cyber-mob harassment and vilification of 'girls in gaming'. We discuss the representation of women within games as a set up for a discussion of Anita Sarkeesian and her Women versus Tropes in Games Youtube series. We then discuss indie game developer Zoe Quinn and what has become known online as 'gamergate. We use logs from the participants in Quinn's harassment to deconstruct the anatomy, techniques and methodology of misogynist online harassment, and how it is permitted and normalized by wider gaming culture. We stress that while this is not universal, it is wide-spread, insidious, and a major problem for video gaming culture. We conclude with a short discussion on the ways in which the issue can be addressed.

Bot-based collective blocklists in Twitter: the counterpublic moderation of harassment in a networked public space

“…(Duggan, 2014). Coordinated harassment campaigns are increasingly organized by more-and-less organized groups, who synchronously flood a target's social media feeds (Heron, Belford, & Goker, 2014;Phillips, 2015). Given the chilling effects that harassment has, it is a compelling civil rights issue about the capacity for people to participate in public spaces (Citron, 2014).…”

“…Blockbots were initially created around the broader issue of online harassment in Twitter in 2012, although this issue has received substantially more attention in 2014 and 2015 due to a number of more-and-less organized harassment campaigns that unfolded on Twitter -including those aligned with the GamerGate movement (which has opposed feminist video game critics) and multiple shorter cases in which celebrities have been harassed (Chess & Shaw, 2015;Heron et al, 2014;Matias et al, 2015). In 2012, some people who were facing coordinated harassment campaigns for their feminist political stances called for changes to Twitter's policies, enforcement mechanisms, and user interface features, in order to minimize the impact of harassment and take action against identified harassers.…”

‘Did my grandfather storm the beaches of Normandy for this shit?’ Mnemonic wars and digital games

“…For example, users can operate several accounts at the same time to give the impression that they speak for a representative majority. Studies show that this happens time and again, especially in ideologically highly contested subject areas, such as the representation of women and/or people of colour (PoC) in digital games, and yet it is sometimes difficult to prove this truly is the case (Heron et al, 2014; Mortensen and Sihvonen, 2020). To analyse this user-generated data, I use different techniques depending on the social medium.…”

“That Really Pushes My Buttons”

“…Digital innovation addressing occupational bullying and harassment behaviors has largely focused on three areas: aggressive behaviors on social media [46,64]; automatic detection of toxic behavior [14,40]; and investigations of bullying behaviors in ICT settings [28,48]. Although there is a wealth of work of their online counterparts (cyberbullying and cyberstalking), considerably less work has addressed bullying and harassment in their physicality.…”