Open Science, Closed Doors?:Countering Marginalization through an Agenda for Ethical, Inclusive Research in Communication

The open science (OS) movement has advocated for increased transparency in certain aspects of research. Communication is taking its first steps toward OS as some journals have adopted OS guidelines codified by another discipline. We find this pursuit troubling as OS prioritizes openness while insufficiently addressing essential ethical principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Some recommended open science practices increase the potential for harm for marginalized participants, communities, and researchers. We elaborate how OS can serve a marginalizing force within academia and the research community, as it overlooks the needs of marginalized scholars and excludes some forms of scholarship. We challenge the current instantiation of OS and propose a divergent agenda for the future of Communication research centered on ethical, inclusive research practices.</p

Negative emotions set in motion : the continued relevance of #GamerGate

This chapter aims at making sense of the #GamerGate (#GG) online harassment campaign that was particularly active in 2014–2015 but to this day continues to produce hateful speech against certain ideologies and minorities in gaming culture. The campaign was especially successful at building online visibility through harassment, and the affective resonances of the issues it raised have since translated into general online campaigning how-to’s, financial earnings, and even political action outside of the gaming sphere. Although the primary breeding ground for this movement was 4chan (and later, 8chan), it only reached public awareness and visibility – hence, effectiveness – through Twitter and, to a lesser extent, through YouTube. In order to understand the emotional charge and political relevance of this campaign, we rely on both quantitative and qualitative activity analyses of the Twitter users that use the hashtag #GamerGate between 2014 and 2019. In addition to analyzing who were the most active tweeters and what kind of resonance their tweets elicited, we looked into the emotional qualities of their communication. The communication strategies of #GG tweeters took advantage of the language and cultural references of the target demographic to drive a set of topics into public discourse and, further, to political activism. This discourse utilized a combination of affective modes, based mainly on resentment and schadenfreude, that we see echoing in many places on the internet. In the end, we argue that while #GG may have been only one instance of a campaign with harassment elements, the sentiments it cultivated and amplified as well as its operational logics have since been successfully employed in many similar online movements, including the current political campaigning associated with the so-called alt-right.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Digital methods for ethnography: analytical concepts for ethnographers exploring social media environments

The aim of this article is to introduce some analytical concepts suitable for ethnographers dealing with social media environments. As a result of the growth of social media, the Internet structure has become a very complex, fluid, and fragmented space. Within this space, it is not always possible to consider the 'classical' online community as the privileged field site for the ethnographer, in which s/he immerses him/herself. Differently, taking inspiration from some methodological principles of the Digital Methods paradigm, I suggest that the main task for the ethnographer moving across social media environments should not be exclusively that of identifying an online community to delve into but of mapping the practices through which Internet users and digital devices structure social formations around a focal object (e.g., a brand). In order to support the ethnographer in the mapping of social formations within social media environments, I propose five analytical concepts: community, public, crowd, self-presentation as a tool, and user as a device

Playful Participatory Culture: Learning from Reddit

This project considers how we might understand participatory culture platforms such as Reddit through the lens of game studies. Using ethnographic techniques and approaches from actor-network theory, this research describes several playful patterns of interaction seen commonly on Reddit, and discusses the ways in which certain design choices enable and constrain the kind of play that occurs. I argue that understanding these spaces as games provides a deeper understanding of the interactions between participants and the culture of Reddit at large. It can also help us explore how individuals assign meaning to things like "karma points" and engage in reflexive talk about the rewards and rules governing play. At the same time, this research suggests the “game” of Reddit is not unproblematic, as who can play, how they can play, and what play looks like often reinscribes many hegemonic tendencies of (internet) culture more broadly

Rethinking Research Ethics, Power, and the Risk of Visibility in the Era of the “Alt-Right” Gaze

This essay explores what the “alt-right” (White ethnonationalist, fascist, misogynistic, and anti-intellectual communities) means for social media researchers in terms of research ethics, risk, and visibility. First, it outlines how #Gamergate and #OperationDiggingDiGRA indicated that academic researchers could be targets of their hostility. This essay then draws on the work of Foucault and Mulvey to theorize how far-right groups have a kind of “gaze.” Then, it discusses how far-right extremism requires rethinking ethical questions around researchers and participants. Finally, some thoughts are offered as to what this means for how individuals, organizations, disciplines, and institutions can support research into these spaces

DIY design: How crowdsourcing sites are challenging traditional graphic design practice

This paper analyzes the current debate over crowdsourced/do&ndash;it&ndash;yourself (DIY) design. Specifically, it highlights underlying tensions between discourse within the professional graphic design field and an increasingly sophisticated and global community of DIY designers who are challenging their professional norms and practices. Through an exploration of these sites&rsquo; approach to intellectual property, design education, compensation, and community, this research explain how crowdsourcing companies discursively frame (and challenge) traditional design practices. Specific recommendations as to how crowdsourcing sites and the professional design community might coexist peacefully are offered

Critical cyberculture studies

Starting in the early 1990s, journalists and scholars began responding to and trying to take account of new technologies and their impact on our lives. By the end of the decade, the full-fledged study of cyberculture had arrived. Today, there exists a large body of critical work on the subject, with cutting-edge studies probing beyond the mere existence of virtual communities and online identities to examine the social, cultural, and economic relationships that take place online. Taking stock of the exciting work that is being done and positing what cyberculture's future might look like, Crit

REDDIT'S COMMUNITIES & CONSEQUENCES

As a platform, Reddit provides a bit of a conundrum. Despite being visited by more people than Netflix and remaining one of the most visited spaces on the web, it remains extraordinarily resistant to generalization. Some of the worst of Internet culture can be found on the site. It has served to amplify the voices of misogynists, supported vigilantism, and hosted child pornography. At the same time, some of the more civil conversations and learning communities appear on the site, with subreddits like Change My View fostering respectful deliberation. Even more than many other platforms, the lack of centralized moderation means that Reddit contains a very wide range of practices, some of them quite extreme. But because these exist on a single platform, users bring these practices with them, both to the “front page” of the platform, and to other areas within. The three papers that make up this panel seek to better understand localized behaviors and how they may relate to global flows of participants and practices. Of course, many of the discursive patterns that were fostered in subreddits make their way into other online and offline contexts. But before they do that, they have often been produced as part of a culture local to one subreddit, or to a “neighborhood” of subreddits. How these practices emerge, evolve, and relate to the actions of their users runs as a thread through the three presentations

PLEASURE+GENDER+PLAY

From the start, play and game studies scholars have investigated the experiences of women and girls who play games online, as well as gendered assumptions around digital as well as non-digital play (Brunner et al., 2000; Bryce &amp; Rutter, 2002; Delamere &amp; Shaw, 2008; Fron et al., 2007a, 2007b; Pearce, 2009). Scholars have challenged ideas such as that girls and women have weaker gameplay skills than boys and men (Jenson &amp; De Castell, 2008), that women are not interested in competitive play (Taylor, 2006), that girls and women are different in their play experiences and interests (Royse et al., 2007) and that women are not frequent or loyal players (Consalvo &amp; Begy, 2015; Williams et al., 2009). However, there is still more to learn about how women, girls, boys, men, nonbinary and other individuals play, as well as how gender can play an important role beyond as an identity marker in playful expressions as well as normative expectations for play. This panel offers new ways of examining how gender, games, and other forms of online play, can be analyzed and understood. These four papers argue for a more nuanced understanding of gender and play, further challenging gaming culture’s preoccupation that certain games and certain styles of play are more “valid” than others (Consalvo &amp; Paul, 2019). To do that, we offer fresh analytical tools, different theoretical lenses and underexplored sites for study. $2 “No Need For Speed” makes a unique contribution to gaming and play literature, offering a new articulation of the temporal experiences within and external to game play - especially in COVID/pandemic times. In particular, the authors argue that the concept of “slow gaming,” might offer new possibilities for both our experiences of play and the way that time within the games industry itself is being reconceptualized. The authors offer three different games as examples of how “slow gaming” challenges our relationship to play, domesticity, notions of gender, and labor practices within the gaming industry more broadly. This paper argues that playing slow games, or playing games slowly, might provide a unique political rejoinder to contemporary life under late capitalism.$2 Two papers in this panel bring underutilized theoretical frameworks to the study of gender and games: examining how socioeconomic class and boundary keeping intersect with gender and gameplay in important ways. The presentation “Working for hearts: Social class and time management games” reads popular casual games such as Sally’s Spa through an intersectional critique. Adding to gendered examinations of casual games (Chess, 2012, 2017), this paper brings in a critique of social class. It does so through exploring the classed positions of jobs in these games, as well as how the player’s agency is limited both through classed expectations of certain occupations as well as further undermined by particular design decisions and gameplay mechanics as well as game narratives. It demonstrates how class is an important aspect of identity that can help us better understand gaming representations. The second paper to bring in underutilized theory is “Gendered expectations of playing nice, boundary keeping and problematic/toxic behaviors in casual video game communities.” This paper offers a different way of understanding the role of toxic behavior and players in game communities: through the sociological lens of boundary keeping. While not dismissing the real effects of harassment, it explores how activities such as trolling and other problematic gameplay is defined differently within different player groups, how it can strengthen some in-game communities or spur the creation of groups dedicated to combating such problems, and in the process helping to further enrich and make more inclusive gaming culture. $2 “Girls, Platforms, and Play” examines an offline form of gendered play and competition – pre-teen and teen girls riding hobbyhorses – and how the activity has been differently contested and/or constructed on two platforms: YouTube and Instagram. Legacy media video content of hobbyhorse competitions uploaded to YouTube inevitably have led – given YouTube’s largely antisocial comment culture (Burgess &amp; Green, 2018) – to hobbyhorsers’ activities to be delegitimized for a number of reasons by commenters: mainly, because it’s just girls playing with toys, not participating in a sport; or because it is an athletic endeavor, but its participants should compete in a “real” sport, like track and field; or because it’s not real equestrianism. Instagram's affordances, which help encourage connections among subculture participants and the creation of communities (Leaver, Highfield, &amp; Abidin, 2020), have allowed hobbyhorse enthusiasts to create a space of their own online