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A Netnographic Study of the Online Community r/KotakuInAction

Master of Arts: Media and Communication Studies – Culture, Collaborative Media, and Creative Industries Master’s Thesis (Two-year) | 15 credits Student: Oskar Larsson Supervisor: Maria Brock Year: 2021 Word Count: 15,937 Abstract This thesis examines how 'othering' discourse can be used to construct and negotiate boundaries and shape collective identities within online spaces. Through a mixed-method approach of thematic analysis and a netnographic study, and by drawing on theoretical concepts of online othering and identity formation, this thesis explores how the Gamergate community r/KotakuInAction can be understood in relation to Gamergate, the Alt-Right and society at large. The results show that the community perceive and construct the SJW as a common adversary – a monstrous representation of feminism, progressiveness and political correctness. The analysis also revealed how racist rhetorics and white male anxieties characterize the communitys' othering discourse. Through an in-depth study of user-submitted comment, this thesis argues that r/KotakuInAction's collective identity is fluid and reactionary in nature, characterized by a discourse that is indicative of Alt-Right ideology and white male supremacy. Future research should further explore the network of communities that r/KotakuInAction is part of, as well as examine how the community transform over time.

Keywords: Gamergate, Reddit, Alt-Right, Online Othering, Collective Identity, Discourse, SJW, political correctness

Contents Abstract ...... 1

List of Figures and Tables ...... 4

1. Introduction...... 5

2. Background ...... 8

2.1 Gamergate ...... 8

2.2 The Alt-Right ...... 10

2.3 Reddit...... 10

3. Literature Review ...... 11

3.1 Gamergate and Beyond...... 12

3.2 Redpilling and Radicalisation ...... 14

3.3 Reddit and Toxicity Online ...... 15

3.3.1 Kotaku in Action...... 16

4. Analytical Framework and Methodology ...... 19

4.1 Analytical Framework ...... 20

4.1.1 Online Othering ...... 20

4.1.2 Collective Identity ...... 21

4.2 Methods ...... 22

4.2.1 Netnography ...... 22

4.2.3 Thematic Analysis ...... 23

4.2.3 Data Collection and Codebook development ...... 24

4.2.4 Research design ...... 27

4.3 Research Paradigm ...... 28

4.4 Limitations ...... 29

4.5 Ethical Considerations ...... 30

4.5.1 Researcher Reflections ...... 31

5. Key Findings and Analysis ...... 32

5.1 Identifying and Constructing the Outsider ...... 34

5.1.1 The Woke Social Justice Warrior ...... 34

5.1.2 White Masculine Anxiety ...... 36

5.1.3 Cancel Culture, Jurnos and Leftism...... 39

5.2 The Collective Gamergater identity...... 42

6. Discussion and Concluding Remarks ...... 45

References...... 49

Appendix A...... 56

Appendix B ...... 57

List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1. Graph showing the distribution of othering discourse per each major theme in percentages.

Figure 2. Graph showing distribution per each minor category within theme F – ethnicities and cultures.

Figure 3. Side banner from r/KiA, with a quote and depiction of the subreddits official mascot (Reddit, 2021a).

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of data recorded from r/KotakuInAction.

Table 2. The coding process, including inductive and deductive approaches.

1. Introduction

It comes as no surprise that the advent of social media permanently changed the way people communicate and interact with each other. The internet came into peoples' lives with the promise to facilitate interaction among friend and family over great distances. It also gave people the freedom to communicate and debate anonymously with an unlimited number of users worldwide (Almerkhi, 2020, p. 294). A perhaps unexpected consequence of this was a radical change in people's behaviour and attitude toward each other, with the introduction of Cyberbullying, toxic technocultures, social media-based harassment campaigns, and cyber threats (Farrell et al., 2019, p. 89). More often than not, these threats were aimed at women and minorities, forcing them to flee social media and even their homes (Blodgett, 2019, p. 184). Research suggests that far-right extremist groups exploit young men's rebellion and dislike of "political correctness" to spread racism, islamophobia and misogyny – a kind of radicalisation happening through message boards and social media (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 29).

In 2014, Gamergate was one of the most iconic and prominent online harassment campaigns to date. Proponents of the campaign proclaimed ethos was for a return of ethics in games journalism but has since been proven to have been an intentionally organised façade for misogynistic harassment and systematic abuse in the form of death-, rape-, and bomb-threats (Poland, 2016, p. 157; Todd, 2015, p. 64). The term 'Gamergater' has since become shorthand for a certain kind of geek masculinity that feels marginalized by mainstream society, particularly progressive politics and popular feminism (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 8). To this date, Gamergaters cling to the notion that 'Actually it's about ethics in games journalism.

"GamerGate is a consumer revolt triggered by overt politicisation, ethical misconduct, and unprecedented amounts of censorship targeted at gamers." (Reddit, 2021b). This is how the Gamergate community r/KotakuInAction (r/KiA) describes the events of 2014. Members of the community argue that the waves of abuse women within the gaming industry had to endure was merely the result of "a few bad apples". R/KiA is a Reddit based community where 125.000 Gamergaters claim to be discussing the gaming community, gaming industry, media issues and nerd culture (Reddit, 2021a). However, research also suggests that the community regularly resort to aggressive "othering" and

5 the ridiculing and loathing of political correctness, feminism, racial equality, sexual identification, representation, and social justice (Potts et al., 2019, p. 361).

These values share a striking resemblance to those of the online extremists known as the "Alt-Right" – an aggregate of websites, forums, personalities, and online communities united in their hatred of liberalism, feminism, political correctness, and multiculturalism (Gallaher, 2021, p. 224). These similarities are unsurprising considering that Gamergate gained early support from the Alt-Right – with researchers arguing that extremist forces hijacked gaming culture to push a political agenda (Greene, 2019, p. 34; Salter, 2018, p. 248)

A key characteristic trait of these communities is norms and ideals upheld by the discursive 'othering' of dissenters and opponents via intersectional categories of gender, culture, and sexuality. Othering, in this context, is understood as the encapsulation of a myriad of power contestations and abusive behaviours manifested within online spaces in the form of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and ableism. The use of othering discourse seeks to draw borders in and around virtual spaces and shapes the norms and rules governing which communities and individuals who are legitimised and given status to partake within these spaces (Harmer & Lumsden, 2019, p. 2). Moreover, as members of the Alt-Right share othering discourse with other community members, these exchanges actively produced a shared sense of 'we', a collective identity (Gaudette, 2020, p. 3). This shaping and negotiating of the groups collective identity works to shape the discursive 'other' and further reinforce the borders that separate the 'us' from 'them' (Perry & Scrivens, 2016, p. 4). As the problem of hate speech, radicalisation, disinformation, and aggressive online harassment is growing increasingly prominent, understanding how these communities facilitate abuse and build consensus is vital (Potts et al., 2019, p. 361).

A study by Gaudette et al. (2020) found that the Alt-Right subreddit r/the_Donald's use of aggressive othering discourse worked to facilitate and shape the community's collective identity. This is also what preceded the community's ban and removal from the site – due to the antagonising of Muslims, the left, and other communities and failing to meet Reddit's "most basic expectations" (The Verge, 2020). Other Alt-Right and harassment affiliated subreddit such as r/QAnon, r/FatPeopleHate and r/Incel has been subject to the same fate (Farrell et al., 2019; Gaudette et al., 2020: Potts et al., 2019). Meanwhile, r/KiA has managed to persist, despite Gamergaters' reputation and history of abuse. 6

In their study, Potts et al. (2019) found that the community used metatags as a way of gatekeeping, othering, and negotiating of acceptable topics. They also found that unlike communities, such as r/the_Donald, r/KiA is more than simply a collection of abusive trolls - they operate with strict rules, defined topics and moderators. Gaudette et al. (2020, p. 14) suggest that research should examine the discourse within these extremist forums since this may provide insight into how collective identities form in online communities. While previous research by Jhaver et al. (201) and Potts et al. (2019) help in understanding crucial aspects of r/KiA, none engages with or examines how the community discursively construct themselves or the imagined 'outsider'. This is the knowledge gap this thesis aim to address.

This study, therefore, raises the following research question:

RQ1: How can we understand the characteristics of r/KiA users’ use of othering discourse?

RQ2: How can we understand the function and purpose of r/KiA users’ othering discourse when constructing a collective identity?

While both questions pertain to the practice of discursively othering, one is concerned with the imagined ‘outsider’ and how this entity is characterized within the community - and one is concerned with the reflexive function of othering discourse in the context of r/KiA, aiming to understand how the group perceive themselves and construct a collective identity. Together they provide a holistic understanding of the community and how it can be situated and contextualised within contemporary society and culture. Engaging with and examining r/KiA contributes to the field of media and communication by providing empirical data on and analysis of othering discourse used by a community with a history of hatefulness, harassment, and abuse online. This thesis also proposes and utilises an adapted methodology suitable for analysing the discursive themes of a specific online community. Understanding how users of r/KiA engage in othering discourse illuminates how the group perceives themselves and others and how their collective identity is shaped.

This study employs a mixed-methods approach of a netnographic study and a thematic analysis to answer these questions. The netnographic approach aims to gain an insider perspective on the group's culture and niche language use. By engaging with the community in a natural setting using unobtrusive methods, this approach provided rich

7 and detailed understandings of the social and cultural contexts (Kozinets, 2012; Kozinets, 2018a). The netnographic approach laid the necessary foundation for the subsequent thematic analysis, which aimed to quantify, describe, and analyse thematic patterns used in the othering discourse. Together, these methods illuminate the breadth of nuanced othering discourse used by the community to differentiate themselves from the perceived 'other' and subsequently define themselves.

2. Background

Three primary elements require background context to situate r/KotakuInAction within broader academic discussions regarding aggressive online communities, how they operate and organise. These elements are:

• Gamergate • The Alt-Right • Reddit

Understanding how these elements work, both individually and collectively, is crucial to understand the cultural and social significance of social media-based radicalisation of youth and the normalisation of right-wing extremism within mainstream online communities. This chapter aims to provide the necessary contextual background on these elements since the subsequent literature review and study draw from research on these themes.

2.1 Gamergate

The reason why a seemingly obscure internet forum such as r/KiA is such an interesting community to study primarily has to do with its origin and history – Gamergate. Gamergate marked the first instance of the wider public recognizing and becoming aware of the misogynistic tendencies and structural harassment of women within gaming and the gaming industry (O'Donnell, 2019, p. 2). An unprecedented amount of death-, rape-, bombing-, and mass shooting threats directed at women and progressives was denoted by mainstream media as a culture war (Todd, 2015, p. 64). One side of this war consisted of the women, feminists, minorities and victims and the other consisted of conservatives and

8 gamers making a stance for "ethics in games journalism". This slogan has since been proved to be a front for sexist harassment and abuse, representing an aggressive backlash against political correctness and SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) (Massanari & Chess, 2018, p. 525). Gamergaters argued for their cause by claiming that mainstream media had begun to pander toward women and minorities rather than the traditional demographic of white cis men (Blodgett, 2020, p. 191; Greene, 2019, p. 58; O'Donnell, 2019, p. 3). Researchers suggest that gaming took such a political turn due to gaming culture being hijacked by extremist movements, such as the Alt-Right. (Greene, 2019, p. 34; O'Donnell, 2019, p. 2; Salter, 2018, p. 248).

While undoubtedly being the result of a complex mix of influences, anxieties and forces within gaming, researchers propose that Gamergate's birth can be traced to a series of incidents following posts made on 4chan in 2014 by Eron Gjoni, accusing former partner Zoe Quinn of infidelity. Gjoni declared that they (Quinn goes by they/them) had been sleeping with video game journalists to acquire positive reviews for their upcoming game, Depression Quest (2013). Before the accusations could be contested, both Quinn and their family were subjected to severe harassment in the form of doxing (publicly revealing someone's personal information (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 9)) and daily rape- and death threats. The accusations made against Quinn has since been proven unfounded, but the backlash caused irreversible damages for the victims (Blodgett, 2020, p. 185; Todd, 2015, p. 64). Following this, anyone with a critical stance against the portrayal of women and minorities in games and the embedment of misogynistic structures within the industry was exposed to waves of abuse and harassment (Todd, 2015, p. 65).

After 2014, the movement split into several directions. Some pushed back against political correctness and feminism, claiming that gaming culture is being attacked and free speech is being infringed upon, interpreting feminist critique as systemic oppression of geek identity. Gamergaters argued that SJWs were pushing a political agenda – by promoting a more positive and diverse representation of women and minorities in video games (Blodgett, 2020, pp. 187-191; Greene, 2019, p. 58; O'Donnell, 2019, p. 3). Many also continued efforts to defame and harass Quinn and other feminist industry personalities, such as Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu (Todd, 2015, p. 64).

2.2 The Alt-Right

The Alt-Right, short for "alternative right", is an umbrella term referring to a loose network of people and communities on the extreme political right (Greene, 2019, p. 33), coined by Richard Spencer in 2008 to describe right-wing political views at odds with the conservative establishment (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 9). The group's ideologies, motivations and beliefs are part of a broad spectrum and is therefore complicated to accurately describe. According to research, their form of extremism can be understood as a racially, ethnically and/or sexually defined nationalism, typically framed in terms of white identity (the in-group), grounded in exclusionary understandings of perceived threats. This combination of threats consists of non-whites, Muslims, Jews, refugees, immigrants, feminists and members of the LGBTQI+ community (the out-group - others) (Conway et al., 2019, p. 3; Gaudette et al., 2020, p. 5). The Alt-Right is a blend of white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, anti-feminists, men's rights advocates, anti-SJWs, and "bored young people" (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 3). An activist movement, in the vein of Gamergate, seeking a cultural shift and return to traditional values where the white man's value and role remain uncontested (Bergman, 2018, p. 1). The group's presence online is characterised by an ironic, self-referential culture in which depicted violence, Nazi imagery, and misogyny can be explained as either sincere or entirely tongue-in- cheek (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 4). Apart from an inescapable presence online, the group have in the recent year become increasingly affiliated with violent hate crimes (Colley & Moore, 2020, pp. 4-5), such as the Christchurch shooting, El Paso shooting, and Charlottesville car attack (BBC, 2019; The Guardian, 2019; Vox, 2019).

2.3 Reddit

Reddit is a social news, entertainment, information, and message board site. The site brings in 50 billion monthly views, 52 million daily users and is home to over 100,000 communities, making it one of the world's most popular social media aggregates (Redditinc, 2021a). The platform is open-source and entirely dependent on user- submitted and user-created content. All submitted posts consist of a title that forms a hyperlink that directs to an external link or a text post within Reddit. Each post has its own comment section. Reddit's most characteristic feature is the voting algorithm, which gives users the ability to influence where posts and comments appear on any given page

(Topinka, 2018, p. 2052); it provides users with the means to spread and promote any type of content within a particular community (Gaudette et al., 2020, p. 3). Highly upvoted material, be it posts or comments, appear higher up on the site's front page and therefore receives more attention from users. Posts and comments are accompanied by a number of points (score) which loosely corresponds to the sum of upvotes and downvotes received. This score translates into a total score across a user's post-history and is called "karma", a currency marking a user's contribution to the platform (Massanari, 2017, p. 331).

User-created communities of interest are called subreddits. Subreddits can revolve around any given topic but often reflect geek sensibilities, such as computing, science, fandom, or gaming (Massanari, 2017, p. 330). If a user cannot find a specific niche interest or topic represented by a subreddit, they can easily create one instead (Massanari, 2017, p. 331). Each of the thousands of subreddits ranges in participant size from very few to millions of users. Reddit itself often does very little to moderate the platform, and each subreddit is therefore user-moderated, relying on a "fiefdom" model where volunteer users manage and moderate the posts and accompanying comment sections (Potts et al., 2019, p. 352).

Beyond niche geeky subreddits, the platform has been notoriously known to host an array of misogynistic and hateful subreddits, such as r/fatpeoplehate, focused on harassing overweight people; r/creepshots, focusing on photos of unsuspecting women; r/jailbait, featuring photos of nearly underage, in some cases underage girls; r/beatingwomen, featuring graphic images of violence against women. There are also big support networks in stark contrast, such as r/tryingforababy, r/suicidewatch, and r/twoxchromosomes, focusing on women's perspectives (Masanari, 2015, pp. 44-45; Topinka, 2018, p. 2053). This all goes to show that Reddit hosts a complex and diverse culture, ranging from the geeky to the silly, to the ableist, racist and misogynistic.

3. Literature Review

This thesis engages with the three major studies done on r/KiA to date. The first explores the way members of the community perceive themselves (Jhaver et al., 2018). The second investigates how Reddit as a platform hindered Gamergates' efforts in becoming a sustained movement (Buyukozturk et al., 2018) – and the last one examines the subreddits use of metatags as a way of gatekeeping and community knowledge formation (Potts et 11 al., 2019). However, none of these studies engages with the discourse used by r/KiA or situates the community within a contemporary socio-political context. Therefore, the following literature review will present research done on Gamergate, the Alt-Right, and research on how these groups make use of certain tactics and strategic discourse to rise to prominence and radicalise youth using social media. This, in turn, helps us to understand and explain the particularities of r/KiA and why the community is situated within an essential area of research.

3.1 Gamergate and Beyond

Despite much of the harassment and abuse being backed up with evidence (Poland, 2016, p. 144; Sarkeesian, 2019; Wu, 2019), Gamergaters have chosen to defend their brethren's actions and maintain the mantra, "Actually, it's about ethics in gaming journalism" (Jhaver et al., 2018, p. 17). Framing and shaping the narrative in such a way is typical for reactionary anti-feminists when looking for an excuse to harass women (Poland, 2016, p. 143). Using the buzz surrounding the controversy, Gamergaters seized the opportunity to interpret feminist critique as systematic oppression of gamer identity (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 8). By making feminists such as Quinn, Wu and Sarkeesian out to be driving forces behind the attack on gaming culture, Gamergaters created a narrative that sanctioned the abuse - strategic attempts to portray gamers and white cis men as marginalized groups (O'Donnell, 2019, pp. 10-12). Systematic abuse and harassment of women, minorities, and progressives were framed as a cause concerned with ethics in journalism (Buyukozturk et al., 2018, pp. 595-596).

Researchers suggest that Gamergaters actual cause and motif from the very start has been to maintain a status quo within gaming culture, where the goal for all developers and publishers should be to appeal to the straight white man. Progression, representation, and inclusivity are not perceived as addressing societal and cultural issues but rather as attacks on gamers and their culture (Bergman, 2018, p. 6; Poland, 2016, p. 145). For Gamergaters, gaming culture was a refuge under attack from aggressive SJWs and political correctness.

Gamergate also brought with it a ground-breaking legacy by acting as a testing bed for a new kind of web-based mobilisation strategy. The group's success in mobilising impressionable gamers to push an ideological agenda indicates the potential of 12 radicalising internet-based communities (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 9), demonstrating unprecedented levels of organisational efforts within gaming culture (O'Donnell, 2019, p. 3). According to O'Donnell (2019, pp. 4-18), much of the discourse surrounding the movement's strategies and methods alluded to militaristic language - a representation of masculinity that gamers seek to defend by attacking women and feminists online, illustrating a gamified approach to harassment and misogyny.

Gamergaters exploited news cycles, algorithms, and mainstream media's fascination with sensationalism to frame and drive their movement (Blodgett, 2020, p. 187). In a thought- out step-by-step model, well-versed members captured media attention by appearing to be part of a spectacle or controversy in need of addressing. These stories would then climb up the media ladder until they eventually would reach mainstream news outlets (O'Donnell, 2019, p. 10). In doing so, Gamergaters were able to succeed where others have failed - mainstreaming misogyny and far-right extremist thought. On the flipside, Gamergaters also cleverly exploited social media and message boards in order to distribute extremist and crude content to those most likely to agree with the message, on websites like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit (Poland, 2016, p. 156) – all whilst masking their presence from the rest of the web (Blodgett, 2020, p. 187). This is one of the most characteristic traits of far-right discourse that the following analysis engages with - Gamergaters ability to cloak and normalise extreme and hateful speech.

In time, proponents of Gamergate swiftly transitioned into memberships in the Alt-Right and MRA (Men's Rights Activists), showing how modern movements fluently adapt to new conditions. The controversy presented disenfranchised young men with communities where toxic and angry mindsets not only fit in but were also encouraged (Poland, 2016, p. 157). Related campaigns have since reached areas not even remotely connected to gaming or the gaming industry whatsoever – the one consistent factor is the emphasis on anything related to the Alt-Rights' conception of SJWs (Massanari & Chess, 2018). This study's thematic analysis provides an illustration of the characteristics of the SJW.

Ultimately, the professed cause to fight for ethics in video games journalism does not seem to be what the events of Gamergate resulted in. It did, however, set the conditions for the rise of the Alt-Right, with several of the most prominent promoters of Gamergate now being core Alt-Right personalities, including Andrew Aurenheimer, Matt Forney, Vox Day, and Milo Yiannopolous (Gallaher, 2021, p. 230). Potts et al. (2019, p. 361)

13 argue that the presence of future political operatives within Gamergate suggests that the movement's leadership was driven by broader political concerns beyond gaming and geek culture, though they still decided to make game designers and game journalists targets for their particular agenda.

3.2 Redpilling and Radicalisation

The Alt-Right have a long history of using social media to recruit and radicalise new members (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 9), in a process they call "Red-Pilling the normies" (2017, p. 29). By exploiting young men's rebellion and dislike of political correctness and feminism, the Alt-Right exploit the loneliness and anxieties of fringe communities (gamers, for instance) to spread xenophobia, misogyny and white supremacists thought (Bergman, 2018, p. 1). Bergman (2018, p. 3) further argues that in building its membership from communities who feel threatened in their privileged identity or rejected by women, the Alt-Right champions a deeply embedded white male entitlement that is far too easily radicalised into fascism. According to Gaudette et al. (2020, p. 2), right- wing extremist movements are increasingly expanding their operations across national borders, and the internet is the fundamental medium that has facilitated these movements transnationality.

Gamergate was one of the first big incubators for this recruitment process by presenting entitled young white men with spaces where sexist and hateful mindsets fit in (Poland, 2016, p. 157). Bergman (2018, p. 1) explains that the young men who are most at risk of radicalisation feel disenfranchised in other areas of their lives, especially those who already feel alienated from mainstream culture. It is this outsider-ness that the Alt-Right strategically exploit. A crucial tool in this process is the formation of a collective identity. As young men and geeks are positioned as an embattled minority under attack from politically correct feminists, they perceive rejecting and fighting against progressive ideals necessary to protect their culture. As members share ideas and discuss topics with other members of their in-group, these exchanges produce a shared sense of "us" versus "them" binary, and by extension, a collective identity. By identifying and discursively "othering" perceived enemies and adversaries, such interactions act to further define the borders between the "in-group" and "out-group" (Perry & Scrivens, 2016, p. 4). As the Alt-Right continues to rise to prominence, bigotry and white supremacy are becoming

14 mainstream norms among youth (Colley & Moore, 2020; Gallaher, 2021; Greene, 2019, p. 36), the problem of radicalisation and digital hate crimes grows increasingly prominent (Jhaver et al., 2018, p. 2; Salter, 2018, p. 259). This is a considerably understudied area of research that this study seeks to contribute to by analysing and examining the discourse of a community notoriously renown for engaging in such acts.

3.3 Reddit and Toxicity Online

In recent years, online spaces such as 4chan, 8chan and Reddit have received criticism for their proliferation and facilitating of extreme Alt-Right content, which has provided adherents with spaces to anonymously discuss and develop misogynistic and racist ideologies (Gaudette et al., 2020, pp. 2-3). In a study of the now-banned subreddit r/The_Donald, Gaudette et al. (2020, p. 13) found that the discourse was characterised by extreme 'othering' of Muslims and the Left, riddled with hateful sentiments against members' perceived enemies. Muslims were described as violent perpetrators and themselves as those who must defend themselves from "them", framing themselves as victims rather than perpetrators (2020, pp. 11-12). An othering tactic prevalent among Alt-Right extremists, especially during Gamergate (Bergman, 2018, p. 6; Poland, 2016, p. 145). Similar to how researchers describe the Alt-Rights use of deliberate ambiguity (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 7), members of r/The_Donald would deliberately present radical views in subtle ways, cloaking racism and misogyny in fear that they will be banned from the community (Gaudette et al., 2020, p. 12). However, despite these efforts, amendments to Reddit's content policy that targets hate speech led to the subreddit ban in 2020 (The Verge, 2020).

Moreover, Gaudette et al. (2020, p. 13) also found that Reddit's voting algorithm played a central role in facilitating collective identity formation among the users of r/The_Donald. By promoting and bringing forth otherwise unacceptable views, the feature functioned to normalise hateful and racist discourse. It created a narrative that reinforced extremist views against the out-groups, thereby strengthening bonds within the in-group.

Colley and Moore (2020, p. 2) argue that further research on these spaces can assess the nature and extent of manipulative, transgressive and abusive discourse associated with the Alt-Right. It can also provide evidence regarding the radicalisation process linked to 15 these communities and illuminate the extent to which these communities pose a threat to outside groups, specifically the marginalised groups targeted. This study has aimed to provide empirical material and analysis of such a community. The result of this analysis helps to contextualise and situate r/KiA in relation to groups such as the Alt-Right and society at large.

3.3.1 Kotaku in Action r/KiA, short for r/KotakuInAction, is a subreddit that primarily serves as a discussion platform for Gamergaters (Reddit, 2021a). It is named Kotaku in Action because it aimed to satirise Kotaku, a progressive news and opinion site about games at the time of its birth. Gamergaters criticised Kotaku to have partaken in alleged unethical journalistic practices, hence the mantra "ethics in games journalism" (Poland, 2016, p. 141). Since the origins of Gamergate rest in the uneasiness that CIS men felt as women and minorities found more representation (though still very minimal) in gaming and geek culture in general, SJW concepts such as sexual identity, feminism, racial equality and representation plague the r/KiA as insults to their ability to enjoy games, movies and tv-shows (Potts et al., 2019, p. 361). Considering Gamergaters history and the group's affiliation with the Alt- Right (Greene, 2019, p. 34; O'Donnell, 2019, p. 2), there is considerably limited research on r/KiA. The subreddit brings in thousands of users and posts per month, and members of the community maintain the classic Gamergate mantra of being concerned with "ethics in games journalism" (Reddit, 2021a).

The forum is considered one of the milder Gamergate forums online today, with less controversial speech than similar discussion on sites such as 4chan, 8chan or Twitter (Jhaver et al., 2018, p. 8). As previously mentioned, the subreddit has managed to avoid the fate of other subreddits with ties to histories of aggressive harassment and abuse. The subreddit has even been resurrected from deletion after the founding moderator had deleted the page out of regret for the community's actions (Potts et al., 2019, p. 354). This ability to maintain an aggressive community while limiting the abusive behaviour outside of the subreddit makes this community such an interesting topic to study in regard to content moderation and extremism within online spaces.

The most extensive studies on the community to date are done by Jhaver et al. (2018) and Potts et al. (2019). Jhaver et al. set out to understand who these people are and how they 16 perceive themselves. How sociotechnical systems and features influence their behaviour and what they can learn about controversial speech and harassment by considering their perspectives (2018, p. 2). The study by Potts et al. (2019, p. 351) examines the subreddits use of metatags as a form of community knowledge and gatekeeping, similar to the use of 'othering' discourse.

Jhaver et al. conducted a number of qualitative interviews with prominent forum members and what they found was that a central theme of discussion on r/KiA is anger regarding "political correctness", a term used to describe words and actions that are used to avoid offending or disadvantaging people, especially members of oppressed groups in society. Especially conservative groups consider these actions excessive and therefore use the term "PC" as a pejorative slur (2018, p. 6).

Moreover, the study also found that in contrast to the popular portrayal of Gamergate proponents as angry, misogynistic trolls (Blodgett, 2020, p. 185; O'Donnell, 2019, p. 2; Poland, 2016, p. 126), members of r/KiA do not view themselves as such. Instead, participants were eager to state that outside forces have been giving the entire group a bad name, claiming that they have been wrongly accused of harassment (Jhaver et al., 2018, p. 29), which is in strong contrast to previous research on Gamergate and its members' actions (Richard & Hoadley, 2014, p. 261; Todd, 2015, p. 64). In their study, Jhaver et al. got to speak with a self-selected subset of Gamergate proponents who were willing to converse with academics and probably were on their best behaviour (2018, p. 34). This is one reason why this thesis's netnographic approach to engaging with and understanding the community works well in contrast with previous research. It has allowed for less pre- processed and filtered data gathering and a genuine insider perspective on the groups' values and discursive methods.

Jhaver et al. (2018, pp. 8-9) explain that the participants embrace strong support for freedom of speech, the idea that white men are discriminated against, the belief that the quality of journalism is in decline, the view that political correctness has gone too far and that the mainstream press all too blindly follows the values of PC culture. In line with research on Gamergate and online mobilisation strategies (Marwick and Lewis, 2017, p. 28). R/KiA provides members with a platform where they can discuss and share information, as well as organise and mobilise supporters to take actions for addressing problems and concerns online (Jhaver et al., 2018, p. 16).

Meanwhile, in a study of the subreddits' use of metatags, Potts et al. (2019, p. 353) found that uncivil discourse and name-calling were viewed as acceptable behaviour within the community, as long as that behaviour stopped short of actions that Reddit might use against the subreddit. They also found that discussions revolving around SJWs brought out the most trollish, childish and anti-PC rhetorics of r/KiA, while discussions of ethics tended to signal a less playful and more serious tone (2019, pp. 354-355). The study also found a clear hierarchy of topics within the subreddit, with the top tier consisting of discussions of censorship, humour, opposition to social justice, and ethics violation (2019, p. 358).

When examining how Reddit as a platform might hinder r/KiA's collective action efforts during Gamergate, Buyukozturk et al. (2018, p. 598) found that the platform did not help Gamergaters spread a unified message or build cohesion. Instead, they found that members failed to present coherent narratives and ways to frame the controversy, which stunted efforts to form a collective identity. Instead of enabling cooperation, Reddit fostered contestation and facilitated dissolution (2018, pp. 605-606). However, it is important to note that the data collected comes from comments and posts made in September of 2014 until June of 2015. Moreover, the selected topics and discussions only revolve around the Gamergate controversy and how members framed the events. Since then, the subreddit has more than doubled in size and discussions, and for the most part, does not revolve around Gamergate (Potts et al., 2019).

One crucial find by Potts et al. (2019, p. 362) is that the subreddits popular posts are dominated by a "meaning-making elite". Meaning that out of 100,000 users, nine of them created 153 of the 749 popular posts. Potts et al. argue that the power of these influencers to dominate the topics to this degree suggests an identifiable ethos within the subreddit that sophisticated users can appeal to. This is similar to Colley and Moore's (2020, pp. 15-17) study on the 4chan board /pol, in which they found attempts by induvial influencers to dominate and shape conversations. Potts et al. (2019. P. 362) also found that these influencers were largely successful in their attempts, highlighting the importance of knowing what values are important to a community.

4. Analytical Framework and Methodology

To answer the proposed research questions, this study employs a two-phase mixed- methods approach. A netnographic study provided the necessary foundational social understanding and cultural contextualisation of the online community r/KiA. Following this, a thematic analysis of thematic and discursive patterns within the comment sections of r/KiA was carried out.

The netnographic study aimed to provide a cultural approach to understanding the social interactions within the community; this involves an understanding of cultural elements such as rituals, discourse, roles, values, identities, myths, meanings, and ideologies (Kozinets, 2018a, p. 4). In order to arrive at a research representation of the Gamergate community, the researcher has carefully tracked and pursued cultural and contextual connections from within r/KiA by spending an extended amount of time engaged with the community online. This process went on from mid-February until early May of 2021. Through non-intrusive observation techniques, the method has allowed immersion within the virtual environment in which these interactions were performed (Addeo et al., 2019, p. 6; Kozinets, 2018b, p. 8).

Beyond providing rich explanations and cultural contextualisation of r/KiA, the netnographic method inductively revealed thematic and discursive 'othering' patterns within the community's comment sections. These patterns and themes laid the foundation for the codebook development used in the subsequent thematic analysis. Initially, the aim was to use a content analysis, but as the analysis unfolded, a deeper level of thematic analysis emerged, prompting a deeper examination of the community's discursive operations. It is an adapted version of a content analysis with an added layer of thematic analysis and will be referred to as a thematic analysis for the purpose of this study.

The thematic analysis aimed not to simply quantify and summarise the user's usage of othering phrases, but rather to provide deep analysis of the most prominent discursive themes. Identified themes and categories were analysed individually and compared to examine similarities, differences, and correlations. The analysis was continuously done according to the analytical framework and research on Reddit, Gamergate, the Alt-Right and white supremacy.

The following section provides an overview and explanation of the study's analytical framework, which is based on research on online communities use of othering discourse 19 as well as its role in collective identity formation. The analytical framework also includes descriptions of discursive patterns used by the Alt-Right and Gamergaters, which is necessary in order to understand how the discourse used by r/KiA can be understood in relation to previous research.

4.1 Analytical Framework

4.1.1 Online Othering

Throughout much of the research on Gamergate, the Alt-Right, toxic Reddit communities and r/KiA, a trait that characterises the communities' interactions is 'othering' discourse (Colley & Moore, 2020, pp. 18-21; Topinka, 2018, p. 2053). To understand this term, this study draws upon Harmer and Lumsden's (2019, p. 13) theory of the concept of 'online othering'. It is understood as a means of describing and examining behaviours, interactions, and discourses that seek to draw boundaries in and around virtual spaces, such as r/KiA. It also shapes the norms and rules within these particular spaces. It is the practice and process in which a community constructs the imagined 'outsider'. It also serves as a way for this thesis to move beyond the inflexible and loaded ways of understanding and categorising Gamergaters' discourse as purely hateful or abusive.

As with any discourse analysis, understanding a particular online community's use of 'othering' entails addressing the role of power and privilege at various levels, including at the participatory level of active users within the community, and without consideration of the unanticipated consequences which might have real-life, potentially harmful, repercussions (Harmer & Lumsden, 2019, pp. 21-22). As Jhaver et al. (2018) remark, the members of the community seem reluctant to acknowledge the toxic and abusive behaviour by Gamergaters, denoting it as a "few bad apples" – echoing the same sentiment from 2014, where threats of death and rape were excused as necessary anomalies in the fight for ethics in games journalism (Poland, 2016, p. 143). Harmer and Lumsden (2019, p. 20) explain that the formation of the discursive other must start with some imagined difference, which is always a product of history, ideology, culture, and power.

4.1.2 Collective Identity

Furthermore, this study understands othering power contestations to be further enabled by the "many to many" social media interactions. It is easier than ever for young men to be exposed to and engage with misogynistic or racist ideas and ideals within open online communities (Gaudette et al., 2020, p. 3). One aspect that separates traditional forms of media from modern online venues is how collective identities are accomplished interactively. Whereas old media predominantly acts as passive conduits for propaganda, digital media allows for the exchanging of ideas. The interactive nature of social media aggregates, such as Reddit, invites participation wherein users actively and discursively construct collective identities (Perry & Scrivens, 2016, p. 1).

This study primarily draws from Perry and Scrivens (2016) research on white pride to understand how collective identities are shaped online and their role in recruitment and radicalisation. Collective identities are shaped by and rooted in particular discourses, fluid and relational in nature. They emerge from the interactions of audience members, bystanders, to allies to opponents. Such interactions provide the grounds on which members can delegitimise the opposition's claims and categorise themselves and the 'other'. The social construction of collective identities is argued to be a cultural representation, an array of shared meanings that are negotiated, produced and reproduced in the interactions of individuals (Perry & Scrivens, 2016, p. 3). The act of discursively othering, identifying and targeting the perceived enemies is key in the process of defining the border between the in- and the out-group (Gaudette et al., 2019, p. 3). As Perry and Scrivens (2016, p. 4) explain:

A collective identity provides an alternative frame for understanding and expressing grievances; it shapes the discursive "other" along with the borders that separate "us" from "them"; it affirms and reaffirms identity formation and maintenance, and it provides the basis for strategic action.

Considering Gamergate's highly contested purpose (Buyukozturk et al., 2018, p. 595), r/KiA connections to Alt-Right ideology (Topinka, 2018, p. 2053), the community's ambiguous nature, and members' diverging perception of their role in facilitating Gamergaters' history of abuse and harassment (Jhaver et al., 2018), examining how the community constructs their collective identity using 'othering' discourse advances research on the subject by providing a basis for situating the community within a social

21 and cultural context. Both in terms of how the community perceives themselves and how they can be understood from an outside perspective.

4.2 Methods

This study is guided by the following research questions: "How can we understand the characteristics of r/KiA users’ use of othering discourse?" and "How can we understand the function and purpose of r/KiA users’ othering discourse when negotiating a collective identity?" To answer these questions, a mixed-methods approach has been used. The methods used are netnography and thematic analysis, meant to complement each other. The netnographic method provides essential thick descriptions and contextual understandings of the culture within r/KiA, and the thematic analysis uses this data as a foundation in building a codebook and deeper analysis of identified discursive 'othering' themes and patterns. The following sections cover how these methods were employed in practice, how the study used the social constructivist paradigm, and limitations and ethical considerations.

4.2.1 Netnography

As the name suggests, the netnographic methods stem from traditional ethnography; it is a qualitative participant-observational research method based in online fieldwork. By using computer-mediated texts and communication as data sources, the method arrives at the ethnographic representation and understanding of a cultural phenomenon (Addeo et al., 2019, p. 6; Kozinets, 2012, p. 3). In the case of this study, the fieldwork took place within the online community r/KotakuInAction, a subforum of the social media website Reddit.com. It is important to note that where other studies have focused on the specificities, technicalities and affordances when examining r/KiA and other subreddits (Gaudette et al., 2020; Potts et al., 2019), the netnographic method values a different approach. While the study is based within social media, netnography is not a media- centric method – the medium’s affordances are not the focus. While immersed within the community, the researcher has not been attending to the platform-specific affordances of Reddit, but has instead focused on culture, discourse, experiences, and interactions (Addeo et al., 2019. P. 3). Nonetheless, the researcher acknowledges that Reddit does

22 possess an array of affordances that facilitate specific cultures and interactions. Gaudette et al. (2020, p. 13) found that the upvoting and downvoting feature plays a central role in promoting and normalizing otherwise unacceptable or highly contested views against out- groups. The upvoting function produces a one-sided narrative that reinforces users’ extreme views, thus strengthening the relations within the in-group. Whilst the downvoting function ensure that users are not exposed to content and posts that challenge the beliefs and norms of the community – resulting in echo chambers for a specific ideology. This function also served to correct the behaviour of dissenting members and opinions. These are important and crucial affordances of Reddit, serving an important role in communities’ collective identity formation. Although it was beyond the scope of the netnographic study to examine how these factors functioned within r/KiA specifically, the study’s subsequent analysis brings up a necessary reflection on how the platform- specific affordances possibly relate to the community’s collective identity.

Initially, the aim was to follow the six steps of ethnography; research planning, entrée, data collection, interpretation, ethical standards and research representation (Costello et al., 2017, p. 5; Kozinets, 2012, pp. 4-5). However, as I spent more and more time immersed within the community, discursive patterns and themes would emerge from users' interactions, patterns which would lend themselves well to a thematic analysis – this is expanded upon in 4.2.3.

From mid-February 2021 until early May of 2021, I aimed to spend at least six hours per week immersed within the comment sections of r/KiA, separated over three days, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. However, there was no new noticeable activity at certain points, and re-reading comments from old posts did not benefit or add to the lived experience. In total, this resulted in about 70 hours immersed within r/KiA across the span of three months - enough time to understand, track and pursue cultural and social connections within the community.

4.2.3 Thematic Analysis

For this thesis, thematic analysis is understood as the systematic study of symbols, signs, themes and patterns that have been assigned values according to a codebook. It builds upon the content analysis method but with an additional layer of in-depth analysis. In this case, the symbols and signs are the specific words and phrases used by members of r/KiA 23 when discursively othering and the relationships between these values are analysed according to the analytical framework and previous research. This is done to build theory and draw inferences about the meaning of the symbols (Riffe et al., 2013, pp. 11-14).

4.2.3 Data Collection and Codebook development

Despite netnography's epistemology primarily valuing a human-level interpretation, recognising the humanity operating the technology, it is still a method heavily reliant on data (Kozinets, 2018b, p. 8), making a complementary thematic analysis extra suitable. This study uses two primary forms of data: the researchers' fieldnote data and archival data.

Archival data in the form of captured posts and comment sections from r/KiA have been recorded using NVivo's browser-extension NCapture (QSR International Pty Ltd., 2020). The initial aim was to automate this process to record the five most popular posts' comment section three times per week. However, this was instead done manually due to the program not being able to differentiate between ads and regular posts. The totals can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of data recorded from r/KotakuInAction

Posts recorded 80

Total comments 7584

Unique posters 55

Average comments per post 95

During the data collection, field notes were recorded – data authored by the netnographer. It constitutes first-hand observations about the participation, reflections on interactions, emotions and experiences. Observing interactions online as they are created affords a sense of community, which differs from that obtained by merely examining archived texts (Costello et al., 2017, p. 7). Therefore, it was essential to continuously enter the subreddit continuously rather than to sample and analyse historical data. The field notes were vital to contextualise, understand, and interpret certain niche aspects of the community (Addeo et al., 2019, p. 18).

The fieldnotes primarily focused on capturing and discerning discursive othering patterns and themes employed by users when commenting and interacting with each other. These patterns laid the foundation for the first iteration of the coding protocol, or codebook. The codebook is the framework that dictates which data that should be extracted from the recorded content and what value this data should be assigned (Riffe et al., 2013, p. 46). It is the first step in the process of transforming the recorded "raw" data from NCapture, into analysable and tangible data. The first iteration was used in the Pre-Coding stage, as shown in Table 2. The coding followed a step-by-step process, modelled after Wheatley and Vatnoey (2020, p. 13), see Table 2.

Table 2. The coding process, including inductive and deductive approaches. Stage Approach N= Description Pre-Coding Sorting for 7584 Automated sorting using NVivo A inclusion/exclusion according to coding protocol, based on field notes, see Appendix A. Pre-Coding Sorting for 2033 Manual sorting and reading of B inclusion/exclusion every comment according to coding protocol. Stage 1 Inductive 1364 Reading of a 10% sample to further identify, develop and define categories and subcategories. Stage 2 Inductive & Deductive 1364 Reading of a new 10% sample. Categories and subcategories were refined and grouped into eight othering themes. Examples gathered. Stage 3 Reductive 1364 Re-reading of subsample for final refinement and definition. Stage 4 Deductive 1364 The entire sample was coded according to the final codebook, see Appendix B.

According to the fieldnote protocol, the first step used NVivos automated text search to reduce the number of comments from 7584 down to 2033. The sorting function also included stemmed words and inflexions. Following this, the new sample was manually read for further sorting according to the following criteria:

• Contain any othering or implied othering, such as "SJW", "PC", "feminazi", "woke", for a complete list, see Appendix A. • Be intelligible. • Contain clear and codable discourse or speech. Many comments were only short praises or reactions to either the original post or another comment. These were not included in the sample as they did not convey anything that would contribute to answering the study's research question.

After the manual sorting, 1364 comments remained. With an inductive approach, 10% of this sample (subsample A) was further analysed (n=136). Both to test and reiterate the fieldnote protocol and develop and establish new themes and categories. The inductive approach was beneficial as it allowed for identifying and generalising new patterns within the data, which had not been observed during the fieldwork (Blaikie & Priest, 2019, p. 111). In Stage 2, a new sub-sample (subsample B) of 10% was generated (n=136) and examined to test and further refine the established categories and subcategories. These categories were then grouped into eight 'othering' themes. During this stage, example comments were gathered from each category, serving as useful illustrations. The following themes were identified, resentment, hostility or antipathy expressed toward:

A. SJWs, PC-culture or Wokeness. B. Activist movements (excluding Alt-Right). C. American politicians D. Left-leaning or progressive politics. E. Women, feminism, sexualities or identities. F. Ethnicities, immigration, religion, racism, and cultures. G. Censorship, cancel culture, pandering and journalism. H. Right-wing politics and the Alt-Right.

Each theme also contains several subcategories; a complete overview and description can be found in Appendix B. After each of these themes and categories were identified and

26 examples gathered, subsample A was re-read and tested according to the Stage 2 codebook. This was necessary to ensure consistency in the codebook and coding process.

The final phase was the actual coding of the entire sample (n=1364). Firstly, using NVivo, each comment was sorted into one or several of the eight othering themes. Thereafter each theme was further sorted into subcategories. For instance, the comment "I don't know how any modern man right now doesn't while on a first date hear a woman say "I'm a feminist" and doesn't stand up and walk date", was first sorted into the primary theme "E" (Expressing resentment toward women, feminism, sexualities or identities) and thereafter into subcategory "a" since it refers explicitly to feminism or feminazis, giving it a final value of "Ea". This coding method was beneficial since it allowed for comments to be coded into several themes simultaneously, which subsequently would reveal relationship patterns and overlaps between themes.

4.2.4 Research design

This research design aimed to arrive at a holistic final analysis of all the gathered data and cultural information. This meant that, within the analysis, the researcher's social and contextual interpretations and cultural understandings must merge with the results from the coding process (Kozinets, 2018a, p. 10). In practice, the combined netnographic study and thematic analysis followed the following steps, an adaptation of a method suggested by Addeo et al. (2019, p. 19):

Coding: Data gathered from field notes and recorded data were classified into categories. Eight major categories were identified, with three to five subcategories each, see Appendix B. Data recorded using NCapture (QSR International Pty Ltd., 2020) was coded and assigned particular units of value.

Noting: Continuous and iterative recording of reflections and comments regarding the data during collection and processing.

Abstracting and comparing: The initial analysis phase. Qualitative fieldnote data was evaluated and examined in order to define patterns into higher-order constructs, concepts and discourses. This is done in dialogue with the recorded and coded sample, providing quantifiable and empirical support to fieldnote data and richer contextualisation where

27 necessary. This phase also entailed identifying similarities, relationships and, most importantly, differences in the data.

Generalising: In this stage, a smaller set of generalisations and prominent themes were elaborated on, explaining identified and refined constructs and concepts. The chosen themes were those deemed most relevant to the study, with the highest potential to answer the research questions and illuminate necessary and particularly interesting findings within the data. Moreover, identified and refined constructs and concepts are explained and expanded upon.

Theorising: In this final phase, the generalisations, interpretations and themes were connected to previous research on white supremacy, Gamergate and the Alt-Right, as well as the study's analytical framework. To an extent, new theory was constructed as well.

4.3 Research Paradigm

This study aims to gain an insider understanding of how the community r/KiA uses discursive othering and how this helps to shape the community's collective identity. Therefore, this study adheres to the research paradigm called interpretivism. Within this paradigm, social reality is regarded as the product of its inhabitants. It states that the experienced world is constituted from the meanings members inhabitants produce and reproduce. Blaikie and Priests (2017, p. 98) state that:

Interpretive social science aims to describe, understand and hopefully explain any area of social life by first getting inside that world and learning how the inhabitants conceptualise and understand it.

This line of thinking aligns perfectly with this study's netnographic method. In this case, the world entered is the community r/KiA, the inhabitants are the members, and the area of the social life that aims to be explained is how the community engages in discursive othering without violating Reddit's code of conduct. Interpretivism also provides a number of assumptions and ways of relating to data, which has helped guide the research (Blaikie & Priest, 2017, p. 101):

• Language and discourse is the medium of social interaction, and everyday concepts and phrases are structuring social reality.

• Social reality is socially constructed. It is a product of continuous negotiation and reproduction by its inhabitants, who maintain it as a necessary part of everyday life. • The social reality is already interpreted before the researcher arrives – this means that the researcher must grasp these interpretations if they wish to understand and explain any aspect of social life.

Adhering to and valuing these assumptions provided guidance when determining the logics of inquiry for the thematic analysis and reinforcing the importance of truly understanding and engaging with the community on their terms.

4.4 Limitations

The limitations that came to affect this study primarily revolve around the type of data recorded and interpreted using NCapture. While it was able to discern the number of comments, isolate said comments from the rest of the page, isolate different threads of comments, and discern the number of unique original posters, it could not isolate the number of unique commentators. It turned out that the natural language processing of NVivo was not able to differentiate between the comment itself and the user's name or ID. While technically it would have been possible to do this manually, due to time constraints, this was deemed superfluous. Moreover, this study is concerned with the discourse and speech acts by the users rather than the users themselves.

The study is also limited by the time the researcher spent engaged within the community. Where previous netnographic studies suggest extended periods ranging between six months up to several years as appropriate (Gandolfi & Gandolfi, 2020, p. 42; Kozinets, 2018b, p. 11), this study has been limited to three months. This is due to the nature of the thesis course in which this work takes place. However, the researcher believes that this limitation does not substantially impact the quality or richness of the cultural understandings and data recorded. Kozinets, the father of the netnographic method, argues that the end goal of the method is cultural fluency, meaning that the netnographer must be conversant and fluent in the symbolic languages of the field of study (2018b, pp. 8-10). While this is an arguably subjective position to reach, the researcher believes that this was indeed possible in three months. Partially due to previous experiences within gaming culture, see chapter 4.5.1, and partially due to low cultural complexity. Within 29 research on Gamergate and the Alt-Right, there are reports of cryptic use of language and idiom, requiring deciphering and particularly nuanced understanding of cultural references and codes (Marwick & Lewis, 2017; O’Donnell, 2019, pp. 4-6) – this is not the case within r/KiA. Although offensive and crude, the community’s main references, language use and cultural codes did not stretch further back than the events of 2014 and was primarily expressed in reference to mainstream popular culture and contemporary politics.

4.5 Ethical Considerations

As this thesis aims to analyse empiric material sourced from social media, the most evident ethical issues revolve around questions of privacy, anonymity, and consent (Thomas, 2013, p. 57; Townsend & Wallace, 2016). According to Vetenskapsrådet (2017, p. 27), it is the researchers' responsibility to ensure anonymity for involved individuals. However, when the material is publicly available, informed consent and privacy decisions become increasingly complex (Burles & Bally, 2018, p. 4), simultaneously as a crucial and central aspect of all types of research is informed consent (Townsend & Wallace, 2016, p. 6). When signing up for an account on Reddit, users must agree to the “Reddit User Agreement” (Redditinc, 2021b) – this agreement states that any post, text or content submitted by a user is publicly available information and viewable by anyone. Although it is important to note that this does not necessarily equate to informed consent within research since there is no way to ensure that the user has understood and thoroughly read the agreement. Nevertheless, NCapture (QSR International Pty Ltd., 2020) could not correctly connect users with their respective comments in the data collection and thus it would be problematic to acquire informed consent from each user since the sample consists of an unknown number of users.

Moreover, a common theme during Gamergate was malice directed against academia, with scholars reporting to have experienced abuse and harassment (Todd, 2015, p. 65). In relation to this, Townsend and Wallace (2016, p. 12) argue that potentially harmful or ideologically contested social media content should be exempt from informed consent to protect the researcher's safety and ensure that social media research ethics does not result in censorship of research.

Furthermore, the boundaries between the private and the public are very thin – one line of thinking in netnography considers online spaces to be similar to territories and research to be an invasion or incursion of individuals important interactional and communicative spaces (Kozinets, 2018b, p. 11). One of the main benefits of netnography, which differentiates it from other approaches, is its non-intrusiveness. It offers a more naturalistic approach compared to interviews, surveys, and experiments. Therefore, the ethical considerations mainly revolve around questions of consent because it uses information and data that may not have been intended for use in research (Kozinets, 2018b, p. 3). In the case of this study, it is used to investigate a sensitive and contested online community, which makes a cautious stance toward human subjects and research ethics all the more critical. Traditionally, researchers gather data and information from individuals who consent to its use in research. In netnography and this specific study, this is not the case (2018, p. 11).

Harmer and Lumsden (2019, p. 22) explain that when 'interrupting' otherness, the researcher must think about their own and others 'otherness' without depicting or relating to these as fixed attributes. This is one of the problems with the netnographic method, the act of speaking for others. It is essential to make explicit and reflect upon how my own autobiography impacts how I depict and experience r/KiA. This is also evident in and supported by the interpretive research paradigm (Blaikie & Priest, 2017, p. 101); as the name suggests, everything experienced in the netnographic study is subject to interpretation and, therefore, subjective in depiction. To an extent, the accompanying thematic analysis serves as a more objective empiric counterpart, either supporting or disproving subjective findings. Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny the subjectivity present in the netnographic method. The following section aims to address factors that may have impacted the researchers' interpretations.

4.5.1 Researcher Reflections

When conducting a netnographic, as with any ethnography, it is vital for the researcher to be reflexive and acknowledge the background they bring to the research and interpretation of contextual circumstances (Costello et al., 2017, p. 7). Prior assumptions shape how meaning is inferred, and this may turn problematic if the research cannot tell if the content is serious or ironic (Colley & Moore, 2020, p. 9). I approached this

31 community as a white male, which puts me in a less vulnerable position as a researcher. Even though I personally disagree with the majority of beliefs expressed within r/KiA, I recognize that I, for the most part, fall under the umbrella which the community seek to include rather than exclude. Moreover, I entered r/KiA already familiar with much of the topics under discussion, including games, technology and movies. This allowed me to quickly grasp the different topics and particular niche references since I share a similar cultural background to most members. Still, I found plenty of comments and styles of othering highly disturbing, particularly the normalization of racism within a community claiming to be concerned with "ethics".

As with traditional ethnography, netnography aims to generate a deep understanding that reflects the lived experience and social world of a member of the specific community. However, due to the fluidity of notions such as membership, culture and community within different online contexts, there is debate regarding what constitutes participation (Kozinets, 2018a). It may not necessarily involve actively posting in forums and comment sections, but researchers argue that it does suggest an understanding that is acquired from an extended time of various interactions. (Kozinets, 2018b, p. 7). The researcher's active participation may also turn problematic when dealing with sensitive or risky matters, such as highly political or contested content (Costello et al., 2017, p. 7). Therefore, I decided to abstain from engaging in discussions and keep the tactile interactions limited to up- and down-voting posts and comments.

5. Key Findings and Analysis

Previous research on Gamergate and Gamergaters suggests that the community can be characterised as a collection of discriminatory, misogynistic and abusive young men online (Richard & Hoadley, 2014, p. 261; Todd, 2015, p. 64). Meanwhile, members of r/KiA argue that this is defamation. The harassment accusations are supposedly widely unfounded and are the result of outside perpetrators giving the entire community a bad reputation (Jhaver et al., 2018, p. 29). However, this is in the words of a small sample of Gamergaters in conversation with researchers.

The following chapter presents key findings from the netnographic study and thematic analysis of the community r/KiA. Firstly, the findings from the thematic analysis and coded data are presented and expanded upon. This is followed by an analysis with the 32 aim to examine and understand how the community perceives and constructs the imagined outsider through the use of othering discourse. After that, the subsequent section aims to understand how the community negotiate and produce a collective identity. Lastly, in combination, these findings aim to provide a holistic understanding of and cultural and societal contextualisation of r/KiA.

35,00%

29,40% 30,00% 29,00%

25,00%

20,00%

14,40% 14,30% 14,10% 15,00%

10,00% 6,40% 5,40% 4,30% 5,00%

0,00%

SJW, PC & WOKENESS ETHNICITY & CULTURE FEMINISM & IDENTITY CENSORSHIP & CANCEL CULTURE LEFTISM THE RIGHT & THE ALT-RIGHT AMERICAN POLITICANS ACTIVISM, BLM & ANTIFA

Figure 1. Graph showing the distribution of othering discourse per each major theme in percentages.

As shown in Figure 1, 29,4% of the comments (n=401) expressed resentment or hostility toward SJWs, political correctness or wokeness. This correlates with previous research on Gamergaters and the Alt-Right. However, what is surprising is the almost equal amount (n=396) of hostility or antipathy expressed against other ethnicities and cultures. While research on Gamergaters suggests a favouring toward whiteness, this level of explicit resentment against non-whites is not common within research on the community, which is usually focused on misogyny. Misogyny or resentment toward feminism, sexuality and questions of identity was "only" represented in 14,4% of the comments (n=196). On a similar level, we find hostility against left-leaning politics (14,1%, n=192) and notions of censorship, cancel culture and journalists (14,3%, n=195), or "journos" as they are called internally. Least represented were othering of Right-wing politics, American politicians, and activist movements, at 6,4% (n=87), 5,4% (n=73), and 4,3% (n=58) respectively.

5.1 Identifying and Constructing the Outsider

The following chapter presents an analysis of the three major othering themes used in r/KiA. Together these themes form a depiction of the community's perceived adversary, the imagined outsider. Much of the research on Gamergate correlate to these findings, but there is a surprising level of white supremacy present – characteristic of Alt-Right discourse but not typical within the literature on Gamergate, which historically is more concerned with questions of feminism and identity.

5.1.1 The Woke Social Justice Warrior

Along with Gamergate came the popularisation of the Alt-Right's favourite pejorative slur, SJW - the social justice warrior. Gamergaters used the term to denote the feministic and progressive opposition they faced. It was used to describe those whom they claimed to be overly invested in political correctness (PC) and identity politics, a humourless shrill taking pleasure in demonstrating moral superiority by policing and censoring others (Massanari & Chess, 2018, pp. 525-527). Interestingly, no previous research on Gamergaters and r/KiA mention or reflect upon the community's favouring of the term "woke", "wokeness", or "wokester" which is used interchangeably with PC and SJW to patronise progressive attempts at inclusion, diversity or consciousness-raising. For the purpose of consistency and clarity, for the remainder of this thesis, "wokesters", PC and SJWs will be referred to as SJW or SJWs, which makes up 29,4% (n=401) of the community's othering discourse, found in 62 of 80 posts.

During Gamergate, the SJWs supposedly threatened not only gaming but Western culture at large by aggressively invading male-dominated spaces, making demands and pushing a political agenda (Blodgett, 2020, p. 191; Greene, 2019, p. 58; O'Donnell, 2019, p. 3). Post Gamergate, the term was quickly embraced by the Alt-Right mediasphere and moved from obscurity to mainstream right-wing online spaces. It no longer solely described opponents of Gamergate but could be applied to anyone engaging in politically correct policing. It became a strawman for easy and nameless attacks (Massanari & Chess, 2018, p. 528). The SJW is depicted as someone who perversely derives happiness from spoiling other peoples' enjoyment - emotionally driven rather than rational; the SJW cannot fathom opposing views while also being offended on their own or others' behalf (2018, p. 534). This view is present within r/KiA, exemplified in the following comments: "The most 34 disturbing trend I've noticed with these miserable [SJWs] is their incapacity for happiness. It's almost as if their existence is based solely on what they hate about society and the world" and "The only way for representation to be good enough is for anti-SJWs to hate it. Spite is the only thing that ever makes SJWs happy". These comments illustrate how the SJW is constructed as some inhumane paradoxical entity, both incapable of happiness whilst simultaneously deriving happiness from ruining other peoples' fun. Research suggests that within r/KiA, the term SJW has been used as a linguistic gatekeeping tool. Its use marks the community's interest in upholding an unrestricted libertarian approach to free speech while also requiring a level of insider knowledge to understand (Massanari & Chess, 2018, p. 528; Buyukozturk et al., 2018, p. 598).

This leads to the interesting evolution of the SJW. Previous research suggests that Gamergaters and the Alt-Right paint up the SJW as a rather meek presence, a "whiny collection of weak snowflakes" (Blodgett, 2019, p. 191; Massanari & Chess, 2018, p. 528). This is not the case within r/KiA. Here the SJW is a global force that has nestled its way into the highest power structures, influencing the powerful elites. As one user puts it: "Twitch (and really every big company in the last 3 years) have proved that the Citadel and the SJW machine have succeeded in their goal. Now companies preemptively flog themselves to virtue signal." One other user explains that: "You see, the Twitter SJW mob and their buddies cannot tolerate people who don't cave in to them. They will just double down and go even more crazy even if it reveals to people how fucking insane they are." This is a possible indication that, as time has gone by and society progresses, r/KiA perceive the SJWs to have transitioned from a small selection of "weak snowflakes" to an encompassing, angry and insane "SJW machine". There is an undeniable conspiratory tone to much of the discourse surrounding SJWs. When reading the different comment sections, I understood the SJW as a faceless, toxic and plague-like presence, set on the goal to destroy gaming and geek culture.

As seen in Figure 1, in contrast to previous research on Gamergaters, Feminism and questions of identity are not the most significant threat anymore. This is not to say that there is a lack of misogyny present. In a thread that was initially about the unnecessary censoring of female characters bodies in comic books, one user suggested that the SJW mob had turned people scared of sex - an end of femininity and the sexual revolution. Another user interfered to say that it instead rendered sexuality highly inconsistent, resulting in things such as "WAP" – a popular song by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion

(2020). To which a third user replied, "wap is fucking disgusting Cardib and Megan Stallion are diseased whores." Furthermore, when discussing a Kotaku article with the title "Sorry, Your Cis White Woman Protagonist Isn't Progressive" (Parrish, 2021), one user responded, "All those stupid white suburban bitches better take a huge fixing red pill or were fucked”, suggesting that unless white women get radicalised in some fashion, the in-group will perish.

Meanwhile, one user stated that "Ironically, the author only has a job writing about video games because she is black. She sure as hell didn't get that job based on talent.", illustrating not only misogynistic speech but also racism. The exclusion of women using othering discourse is where r/KiA is the most similar to Gamergate (Greene, 2019, pp. 33-34). At the time of recording, these comments had been up for one and two days, respectively, but have since been removed by a moderator for violating the subreddits code of conduct. This illustrates that while this type of misogyny is still a part of r/KiA's othering discourse, it is not deemed acceptable and will be policed. This is possibly the results of attempts by the community to move past Gamergaters' reputation as a primarily misogynistic mob.

5.1.2 White Masculine Anxiety

"I've come to the conclusion that a sizeable chunk of black Americans are, indeed, racist against white Americans."

Gamergate can be understood as a movement propelled by white men's anxieties over losing ground in a universe assumed to be homogenous (Gray & Leonard, 2018, p. 11). Throughout research, the rallying point that emerged was retaliation against the feminist critique of games and gaming culture (Bergman, 2018, p. 4). Toxic masculinity at odds with feminism. Although present to an extent, not nearly the same amount of light has been shed on the movement's retaliation against the increased representation of minorities and people of colour. As seen in Figure 1, discursive othering against other ethnicities and cultures was the second most common, coming in just behind SJW othering. When entering the community, one aspect that surprised me was the insistent obsession with defining, redefining, and negotiating what does and does not constitute racism.

50,00% 45,00% 43,40% 40,00% 35,00% 30,00% 28,50% 25,00% 22,70% 20,00% 15,40% 15,00% 8,60% 10,00% 3,80% 5,00% 2% 1% 0,00% Black representation Racism Whiteness China and East Asia Middle East and muslims Immigration Judaism Christianity

Figure 2. Graph showing distribution per each minor category within theme F – ethnicities and cultures.

As seen in Figure 2, 43,3% of the comments (n=172) revolved around black representation in mainstream media, as well as general othering against African American communities. One user made the following comment: "Blacks are actually overrepresented, by a huge amount, in hollywood/film/tv. It's an objective fact. But if you talk about this, somehow it's racist???", and in the same thread another user posted:" when are we gonna admit theres corporate lead black supremacy uprising? theyre clearly attacking white people while heavily pushing for black success."

This is arguably the same exclusionary rhetoric of Gamergaters' past, where the primary goal is upholding the status quo of white male hegemony within games and popular media (Poland, 2016, pp. 144-145). Research suggests that the history of white hegemony and white supremacy has instilled in white people the expectation of always being at the centre of attention (Fernandez, 2003, p. 36). When these expectations are not met, white anxieties ensue. These anxieties are reflected in emotions of annoyance, anger and rage (Gray, 2020, p.34). As seen in the following comment: "He's a white cis male! The trifecta of unforgivable crimes against humanity", while presumably sarcastic, this comment and this rhetoric pattern within the comments serve to perpetuate the white male victim narrative of Gamergate and the Alt-Right. By positioning white cis males as the oppressed, women, people of colour and any non-white are positioned as oppressors - a common strategy that perpetuates marginalisation and defines the outsider as a tormentor

(Gray, 2020, p. 35) - neglecting the societal struggles of women and minorities. 22,7% of the comments (n=90) revolved around notions of whiteness and perpetuating the white victim narrative. This is done either by explicitly depicting the white male as a marginalized minority or by making light of and downplaying white supremacy. This phenomenon can be understood as an active engagement with a fabricated reality, projecting a world in which white men are central and superior - with the primary function to establish a white racial innocence at the collective and individual level (Lavelle, 2017, pp, 529-530).

This is evident in these comments, "I think they villainised the new [Captain America] intentionally because he is white", "Everything is white supremacy these days, including black on black crime", and "Critical thinking is white supremacy". This line of reasoning was present in the comment sections of articles about increased visibility and of women and minorities within games, movies and TV. Users immediately assumed defensive positions, as if white masculinity as a whole was under siege. In their defensiveness, users were always quick to sarcastically reflect upon the issue at hand, with phrases such as: "As a white straight male, the most evil of breeds."

Moreover, one user comments: "It's weird, I've never seen myself as being different from other people, but I guess it's wHiTe PrIvIlEgE", the capitalisation of random letters is in reference to a meme-format aimed to mock and patronise (KnowYourMeme, 2017). In this case, the user mocks the term "white privilege", insinuating its non-existence or trivial nature. This is similar to Gray's (2020, p. 59) explanation of common patterns within racist memes - a perpetuated "colour blindness" and denying of the existence of structural racism. When reading the comments of the posts revolving around notions of culture, ethnicities and racism, there is an impression that many users genuinely did not perceive the discourse they engage in as racist. Bonilla-Silva (2018) suggests that this is akin to a phenomenon within white ideology where people may believe that discourses, actions and attitudes that perpetuate racism are race-neutral. This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, also common within gaming culture. When examining the experiences of African American gamers in online gaming spaces, Gray (2012) found that gamers who engage in racialised activity did not perceive their behaviour as racist and failed to see links to systemic racial supremacy. Undoubtedly present within r/KiA as well, as one user makes the argument, "white people as a majority seem to be the only people actively trying to not judge others based off skin color".

As seen in Figure 2, 28,5% of the comments (n=113) revolved around proving or disproving what is and what is not racist. In the process of deflection, the SJW is commonly described as the racist, exemplified in the following comments:

"Woke religious zealots who like employing Woke religious zealots. Also, extremely bad human beings, who are massively racist, but like to think they are morally superior to others under all circumstances so they follow the Woke religion. They are Woke Supremacists."

“The alt-right is left-leaning. It's a mixture of democratic socialism with white supremacy flavoring. But they identify as right, because everyone's bought into this shitty narrative that racism is inherently right-wing. The vast majority of actual racism these days is of course in the ctrl-left and their identity politics.”

Not only does this serve to both confirm Bonilla-Silva's theory, but it also illuminates users lack of self-awareness and reflection. Most importantly, however, it increases the monstrosity of the SJW, imbuing the perceived outsider with racist traits. A type of projection often used as a rhetorical tool to escape guilt and affix blame elsewhere (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, pp. 64-66). This chapter demonstrates a level of racism that is previously not accounted for within research on this community. It also illuminates how rather than explicitly expressing white pride, users express white anxiety - anxieties about the perceived loss of white primacy within games and mainstream media, positioning any non-white as the ‘other’.

5.1.3 Cancel Culture, Jurnos and Leftism

“The industry honestly needs to be burnt to the fucking ground.”

The third common type of othering discourse within r/KiA, at 14,3% (n=195), relates to users perceived notions of censorship, cancel culture, pandering and journalistic practices. It pertains to the way members’ feel that corporations and journalists misrepresent, mistreat or ignore geek culture.

A common topic of discussion in recent years has been around the concept of cancel culture and whether or not it exists. One side argues that it is merely a villainized version of accountability or critique – a catch-all for facing the consequences for ones’ actions

(Hagi, 2019). An imaginary movement acting as a smokescreen to distract from actual systemic suppression (Willingham, 2021). Meanwhile, researchers such as Ng (2020, p. 623) seek to legitimize the concept and describe it as:

“The withdrawal of any kind of support (viewership, social media follows, purchases of products endorsed by the person, etc.) for those who are assessed to have said or done something unacceptable or highly problematic, generally from a social justice perspective especially alert to sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, racism, bullying, and related issues.”

While r/KiA seeks to legitimize the concept as well, users do not perceive and understand it in the same progressive fashion as Ng (2020). One user explains, “We're slowly devolving into Communist China, where things considered unacceptable or rebellious are being suppressed heavily. They don't realize how much like the Star Wars Empire they've become”, one user replies to this with: “More like we're slowly devolving into capitalist conservative moral majority USA where republicans led the charge to cancel offensive things like The Simpsons and Rap Music.” This is interesting because this reveals an ambiguous understanding of the nature and origin of cancel culture. On the one hand, it is the product of left-wing politics moving into communist territory, and on the other, it is the byproduct of western capitalist conservatism. Nonetheless, it is a devolution rather than progression. As shown in Figure 2, 28,5% of the comments regarding other cultures explicitly othered Chinese or eastern Asian cultures (n=61), where one user stated the following in regard to leftism “This propaganda comes from the East trying to weaken us. They are the source of this virus.” Antipathy or resentment toward left-leaning politics is highly characteristic of both Gamergaters and the Alt-Right, often expressing anxieties and fear of losing key civic and educational institutions to “Cultural Marxism”, which is often associated with cancel culture (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 18). This is common within r/KiA as well, with 14,1% of the comments (n=192) seeking to other left-leaning politics, ideologies or ideas. Within r/KiA, there is a consensus that corporations, journalism, censorship and leftism go hand in hand - any left-leaning movement or idea is part of the oppressive machinery that seeks to dismantle traditional western values and ideals.

Similar to the expressed victimhood in relation to whiteness, there is also a victimhood that pertains to right-leaning politics. One user state that: “Its very important to critical

40 theory to breed an asymmetrical society. All movements by the left must be tolerated while any and all by the right must be stopped”, sarcastically implying that society is more predisposed to accept and embrace left-leaning politics, whilst right-leaning politics is doomed from the get-go. Harmer and Lumsden (2019, pp. 36-37) suggest that this is the result of white male privilege no longer living up to its promise within Western political contexts. People who mourn the loss of entitlement and privilege by virtue of their sex or political leaning. When examining the othering of transgender people online, Colliver et al. (2019, p. 222) found right-leaning victimhood to be a common theme as well. This illustrates that the victimhood members of r/KiA express is not unheard of - rather, it is a typical pattern of behaviour amongst privileged white men faced with a progressing society.

One reason why r/KiA might feel so strongly about cancel culture and censorship is because it goes against the libertarian approach to free speech (Buyukozturk et al., 2018, p. 598). Users are encouraged to archive everything to preserve articles in their original format in case they are edited in the future. Users are also encouraged never to post direct links to sites such as Kotaku, but instead use a mirror link so that their klicks do not generate any monetary value for said outlet. The Alt-Right upholds a similar approach to free speech, arguing that all speech should be acceptable, no matter how hateful, racist or misogynistic it may be. It is part of a process of widening the “Overton window”, which means expanding the range of acceptable discourse (Greene, 2019, p. 11), normalizing hateful speech that would otherwise be considered extreme (Colley & Moore, 2020, p. 9). To do so, the Alt-Right have adopted similar strategies to that of traditional satirists to advance what Greene (2019, pp. 33-34) refers to as a decidedly white supremacist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, and deadly serious agenda; to radicalize potential supporters, opposing progressive ideals, shifting public discourse, and to construct a counter-public by weaponizing satire and irony.

A common othering pattern present during Gamergate’s heydays is still present within r/KiA as well – the disapproval of games press and journalists. One user suggests that “Game journalists really are failed political bloggers. Talk about video games, you fuck. That's what they're paying you for, you fucking monkey.” Meanwhile, one more ask, “Why games journalism are so fucking incompetent and just terrible shitty people?” These comments both express attempts to discredit and devalue the author (Kesore, 2021) and illuminates a highly hostile stance against the journalistic practice.

On the one hand, this is a trend that is increasingly common within many parts of society (Forbes, 2021), but it is also indicative of Alt-Right principles (de la Brosse et al., 2019). The community’s aversion to journalism and mainstream media is interestingly mirrored in Gamergaters’ media literacy and capacity to gamify sensationalism (Blodgett, 2020, p. 187; O’Donnell, 2019, p. 10). Their historical proficiency in exploiting news cycles and algorithms indicates that members have probably spent a significant amount of time immersed in it to achieve these aptitude levels despite loathing the gaming media. This is perhaps also a reason why they oppose the medium; they have identified patterns and, as one user puts it, “see through the bullshit and lies.”

This chapter demonstrates how the other is constructed as a left-leaning, censoring, judgmental and powerful institution. Within western society, the other is in alliance with China and heavily influenced by eastern Asian regimes and values. Users also express explicit contempt against journalism and a great deal of distrust of the news and mainstream media.

5.2 The Collective Gamergater identity

Due to the anonymous and reactionary nature of the othering discourse within r/KiA, determining “who” makes up the in-group turns a bit complex. As aforementioned, users extrude a lack of self-reflection, and the comments primarily revolve around the imagined outsider. Perry and Scrivens (2016, p. 7) explain that the formation of “us” is built on the corollary formation of “them”. Perry (2001) further strengthens this by arguing that within othering contexts, identity is shaped relationally. The in-group is established in reference to the out-group. This informs us that the community’s othering discourse and continuous negotiation and renegotiation of whom to exclude constructs both the collective self and the collective other.

Figure 3. Side banner from r/KiA, with a quote and depiction of the subreddits official mascot (Reddit, 2021a).

Fortunately, the information regarding the imagined outsider and excluded actors is readily available in this study. So far, we have learned that through the use of othering discourse, members of r/KiA exclude the following groups: SJWs, people of colour, women and non-males, non-western cultures and ethnicities, leftism, journalists, corporations and institutions which are perceived to either pander or lean into progressive politics. Thus, these “anti-groups” or outsiders is starting to reveal the in-group and traces of the collective identity. An American or European white cis male, conservative or libertarian and right-leaning. It is at this point worth reflecting on the notion of r/KiA being a right or left-leaning community. Throughout the subreddit there are indications that the community is neither right nor left and only concerned with “the ethics of human decency”, see Figure 3. This is also evident in certain comment sections where users make explicit points to criticize both leanings, such as “They say "That was the right wing 43 media spreading those lies. The left wing media is totally trustworthy” despite literally being the same people.” And “Old and stupid. It doesn't matter if republican or democrat. This is what most of them are. Fucking old, fucking stupid.” However, the coding revealed that the othering discourse condemning the left (14,1%, n= 192) far outweighs the right (6,4%, n= 87). It is also important to note that within the 6,4% condemning right- wing politics, the majority is only condemning Donald Trump and the American republican party, not right-wing ideologies and beliefs. Identification and empathy with right-wing ideologies are also present in comments such as, “I'm pretty sure there have been actual studies that show right-leaning people are statistically more attractive than left-leaning people.”, and “Well, guess I'm probably alt-right then - and pretty glad of it. It's getting to the point where I'm tempted to consider being called alt-right a compliment.”

When analysing the collective identity formation within the subreddit r/the_Donald, Gaudette et al. (2020, p. 13) found that Reddit’s technological affordances played a role in facilitating this formation – with upvotes promoting and normalizing extremist views and the downvote policing and shrouding any opposing views or ideas. Although it was beyond the scope of this thesis to examine these affordances during the netnographic study, highly indicative traces of these tendencies are present within the collected data. As seen in Figure 1, the identified othering discourse themes were largely homogonous and rarely contested. As aforementioned, the researcher was surprised by the amount of racism present within the community; reflections or scrutiny regarding this was not found to any extent within the comments. This suggests that these extremist, racist, misogynistic, and hateful thoughts must have become normalized and promoted within r/KiA. The homogeneity of the othering discourse and lack of internal policing and scrutiny among members is also indicative of echo chambers, another aspect of collective identity formation that Gaudette et al. (2020, p. 13) is connected to or stems from Reddit’s downvote function. This suggests that, in line with research on other extreme subreddits, the technological affordances of Reddit arguably plays a role in how the community shapes and negotiate the collective identity of r/KiA.

This study’s analytical framework draws inspiration from Perry and Scriven’s research on collective identity formation within white pride groups. Initially this was primarily done to build an understanding and theory of how collective identities form in online communication – but as it turns out, the focus on white supremacy has become relevant

44 to this study as well. However, where Perry and Scrivens (2016, p. 17) found a white male pride to be a conjoining factor in the identity formation – the results of this study’s analysis indicate white male anxiety to be what ties the community’s use of othering discourse together and shape the collective identity of r/KiA.

It is a community originating in gaming and geek culture, spaces where members once could feel safe and secluded from the pressuring realities of society. Spaces in which their status as privileged white men were not questioned or contested. The triggering factor that prompted collectivisation was the march of SJWs and progressive forces invading these previously safe spaces, challenging old ideals and attempting to transform the very nature of gaming culture. As society progressed, media companies and institutions no longer solely prioritized the white male western audience. Whilst rooted in gaming and associated by name, Gamergaters’ main concerns have come long ways from gaming. Collectively, r/KiA builds their identity in anxieties about progressive ideals, feminism, leftism, globalism, cancel culture and perceived notions of censorship. Most importantly, it is a community anxious about a society and culture in which being a white cis male might not prompt the same levels of privilege as it once did.

6. Discussion and Concluding Remarks

When examining r/KiA in relation to previous research on Gamergate and the Alt-Right, there are plenty of aspects that bear striking similarities, but there are also several key characteristics that are nowhere to be found. Brigading and systemic abuse, for instance – throughout research on Gamergate, it is argued that members encourage, plan and execute strategic harassment campaigns and brigade victims’ online spaces (O’Donnell, 2019; Todd, 2015). For the entirety of the Netnographic study, none such traces could be found. The quite apparent reason why is because this is part of a ground rule within the community, “We are not your personal army - Don't post a call to action against someone or something you disagree with.” As with the policing of misogynistic comments, this is indicative of the community’s attempts to move past its complicated history.

The perhaps most surprising aspect of entering this community was the abundance of racist rhetoric and the othering of any non-white culture. During the time spent immersed within the community, there was a continuous struggle to maintain a neutral and objective stance to the community’s values without assuming or imposing preconceived ideologies 45 onto the nature of the discourse. Especially notions of assuming members to be part of the Alt-Right, as this would have restricted and confined the potential dynamics and nonconformities within the community. Nevertheless, in light of the findings of the analysis, there are unquestionable traces of Alt-Right anxieties and beliefs present within most of the othering discourse present within r/KiA. Research (Marwick & Lewis, 2017, p. 18; Gray, 2018) suggests that the discourses within Alt-Right forums can be understood as the manifestation of a number of fears and anxieties, including:

• Fear of erosion of morality and traditional values by globalist elites. • Fear of a vast Jewish conspiracy that controls mainstream media. • Fear of immigration, especially from Muslim nations. • Anticipated loss of white primacy in western nations. • Fear of the emasculation of men linked to the transformation of traditional masculinity and feminists’ contestation of traditional gender roles. • Transphobia and homophobia linked to modern articulated gender identities, including trans and nonbinary people.

At an early stage of the netnographic study, the subreddit introduced an “Enforcement update and hard removal of a topic.” This meant a blanket ban on anything relating to transgender-related topics, including discussions about LGBTQI+ communities. This policing is automatically enforced and quickly acted upon, which is why no posts were recorded relating to these anxieties and fears. It is also worth reflecting upon the possibility of the community not engaging in these discussions for other reasons, such as tolerance or disinterest. However, the most upvoted comment on the announcement post reads, “but of course, slandering and slurring against CIS this or that or white straight males is perfectly fine...”, once again inferring white male victimhood.

Fear of a vast Jewish conspiracy is also not common, making up 2% of the comments (n=8) othering ethnicities or cultures. Though this number could possibly have been higher depending on when the comment section was recorded, since there were several comments such as this present, “Oh hey look, you're on about jewish folk again. Remember last time Well here we are again with more of the same bullshit from a guy with 11 comments on the sub. So let's help you out. Of the airlock. R1.5 - Pattern of Behavior - IDPol Malice from low participation account - Expedited to Permaban.” This is a comment from one of the subreddit’s moderators, banning a user for partaking in anti-

Semitic othering. The original comment had only been up for a few minutes before being removed, which implies high priority among the moderators to police anti-Semitism.

Beyond these two deviant factors, the othering discourse within r/KiA bare striking similarities to research’s depiction of the Alt-Right and Alt-Right beliefs. With the help of China, the SJW is a driving force behind the erosion of morality and traditional values in western cultures. As is the white man’s loss of primacy a product of a “corporate lead black supremacy uprising.” In a thread about Star Wars, one user makes the following poignant statement, “The ambiguously and broadly-defined "alt-right" is arguably the biggest boogeyman currently invoked by those in power in politics, entertainment, finances, and social media.” Fortunately, this study is not part of neither of these institutions and has thus been able to arrive at a narrower and more precise understanding of the term. This is brought up because it is a fascinating mirroring of r/KiA’s depiction of the SJW. It is perhaps the most effective way to understand the collective identity of the community. The SJW is constructed as a faceless, abstract, over-encompassing and an omnipresent entity that is impossible to embody or realize within a human body. It is, however, possible to understand the SJW as the negative space surrounding r/KiA (Perry, 2001; Perry & Scrivens, 2016, p. 7). The collective identity of r/KiA is whatever the SJW is not. This is in line with the fluidity and shapelessness of interpretivism (Blaikie & Priest, 2017, p. 101), as well as Perry and Scrivens (2016, p. 17) explanation of the global white supremacy identity. It is a product of constant policing, negotiation, and reproduction by its active members. When engaging in othering discourse, members of r/KiA actively and collectively shape and reshape who they are as well as who they are not. This is how we can understand r/KiA user’s use of othering discourse as a process of boundary policing and construction of the out-group, as well as a process of negotiating a collective identity.

This thesis has provided a netnographic study and thematic analysis of the othering discourse used by the online community r/KotakuInAction. The findings reveal that the community’s members actively participate in a continuous process of negotiating and renegotiating r/KiA’s collective identity and boundary. Due to the anonymous nature of Reddit, it is not possible to make a specific assertion about the personal characteristics or ethnicity of the in-group. Nevertheless, what is certain is that the community expresses anxieties and concerns correlating to that of western, white cis men. Through the use of othering discourse, members purposely exclude women, feminists, journalists, leftists,

African Americans, and any perceived enemy of the white man. Previous research on Gamergate and Alt-Right can help in situating r/KiA within contemporary society and cultural contexts - but due to the reactionary nature of fluidity of the community, arriving at a fixed positioning and understanding turns more or less futile. It is a community that exists in tandem with progressive forces within society; when the SJW makes a move, r/KiA is sure to react and move in the opposite direction, a symbolic counterbalance.

This study also provides a methodology suitable for analysing and understanding niche online communities. By starting out with a prolonged netnographic study, the researcher was able to gather necessary contextual and cultural information of the nuances, language and discourse within the community. This, in turn, allowed a content analysis to transform into a more prosperous and deeper thematic analysis - this would not have been possible had the researcher not gained enough cultural fluency. This study was delimited to only one particular subreddit, which was suitable within the timespan and context of the thesis course, but it also illuminates possible future areas of research. R/KiA is just one community within a more extensive network of subreddits, including r/SocialjusticInAction, r/TorInAction, and r/WerthamInAction (Reddit, 2021a).

As shown in the analysis, r/KiA has shown several attempts to progress and move beyond the misogynistic history of Gamergate, even going as far as introducing a hard ban on any topic relating to transgender and trans folk. In tandem with this progression, the community has also become increasingly concerned with questions of representation and ethnicity. Therefore, it would be beneficial for future research to keep a continuous check on r/KiA’s use of othering discourse - both to increase understanding of how the community relates to the Alt-Right and examine how the community’s values, anxieties and concerns evolve over time. This study suggests that the community is reactionary in nature, only moving in relation to the perceived outsider – prolonged observation would be able to pick up and examine instances where the community deviate from this pattern or perhaps construct new ideas and beliefs, independent of the SJWs presence.

All in all, this study illustrates the complexities in accurately arriving at a fixed understanding of an online community. R/KiA is a diverse community with many ideologies and beliefs at play, subject to perpetual transformation and reconfiguring. By examining users use of othering discourse, it was possible to uncover how the group perceive the outside, thus revealing the inside.

References

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Appendix A

Sorting query based on field note protocol:

Alt-Right Extremist Liberal Scum

Antifa Feminist Marx Sheldon

Biden Fucking Mongoloid SJW

Black Gatekeeping Muslim Socialist

BLM Gender Non-binary SocJus

Border Hate Obama Syria

Bullshit Idiot Pander Trans

Cancel Immigrant PC Trump

Censor Immigration Propaganda Warrior

Communist Jew Race White

Correct Left Racist Woke

Democrat Leftist Retarded Wokeness

Appendix B

Codebook

A. Resentment, hostility or antipathy expressed toward SJWs, PC-culture or Wokeness. a. SJW, Social Justice Warrior or SocJus b. Political Correctness, PC or PC-culture c. Woke or wokeness

B. Resentment or hostility expressed toward activist movements (excluding Alt-Right). a. Black Lives Matter b. Antifa c. Other

C. Resentment or hostility expressed toward American politicians. a. Barack Obama b. Joe Biden c. Donald Trump d. Hilary Clinton e. Other

D. Resentment or hostility expressed toward Left-leaning or progressive politics. a. The Left b. Liberalism c. Socialism d. Communism e. Marxism f. Democrats

E. Resentment, hostility or antipathy expressed toward women, feminism, sexualities or identities. a. Feminism or Femininazis

b. Women, bitch or whore c. Gay, faggot, dyke, homo, homosexuality or twink d. Trans, transgender, tranny e. General misogyny.

F. Resentment, hostility or antipathy expressed toward Ethnicities, immigration, religion, racism, and cultures. a. Alluding to racism b. Immigration c. Syria, Muslim or Islam d. Jew or Jewish e. Black, blackness or African Americans f. Christian g. China, Japan, or "The east" h. White or whiteness

G. Resentment, hostility or antipathy expressed toward Censorship, cancel culture, pandering and journalism. a. Censorship b. Cancel culture c. Pandering d. Brigading e. Journalism or “journos” f. Gatekeeping

H. Resentment, hostility or antipathy expressed toward Right-wing politics and the Alt- Right. a. The Right b. Nazism c. Alt-Right d. Libertarianism