Talk Title:  BBL Speaker Series: Gamergate never ended; it just got worse: How the endless harassment campaign brought us Trump and DOGE

Speaker: Adrienne Massanari, Associate Professor, Communication Studies Division, School of Communication American University, USA

Location: IRB 4105 and Zoom

Abstract:  In this talk, drawn from my book Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right (MIT Press), I discuss the ways geek masculinity and the politics of platforms like Reddit have created a fertile ground for the ascendence of Trumpism. Specifically, I revisit 2014’s Gamergate harassment campaign and discuss how it normalized toxicity online. I trace the connections between tech entrepreneurs, political operatives, and gamer culture to explore the ways that games, tech, and social media have become intertwined with far-right politics. I argue that the ultimate goal of these groups is to metagame democracy and undermine our faith in democratic institutions by gaming free speech.

Bio: Adrienne Massanari is an Associate Professor in the Communication Studies division at the School of Communication (American University, USA). Her research interests include digital culture, online communities, platform politics, game studies, pop culture, and gender and race online. Massanari’s new book for MIT Press (October 2024), Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right, discusses how Silicon Valley’s culture and politics contributed to the rise of the far-right. Her 2015 book, Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit (Peter Lang), explored the unique culture of Reddit.com. Massanari’s work has appeared in New Media & Society, Feminist Media Studies, Social Media + Society, Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and First Monday.