- Gamergate-refers to the controversy around a harassment campaign orchestrated primarily through the use of the Twitter hashtag typically styled “#GamerGate“, concerning issues of sexism and progression in video game culture.(The trolls are winning. GamerGate case will not go to trial)
- Ethnolinguistic vitality theory-argues that the media work as a mirror for existing social forces as much as a causal agent of them. Therefore, measuring the imbalances that exist on the screen can tell us what imbalances exist in social identity formation, social power and policy formation in daily life. (The virtual census: representations of gender, race and age in video games)
- Cyber Stalking-The Internet’s ability to forge connections enables stalking by proxy, whereby
perpetrators recruit strangers to help them stalk victims, and group cyber stalking, whereby more than one person is involved in the online abuse.6 Online harassment can quickly become a team sport, with posters trying to outdo each other. Posters compete to be the most offensive, the most abusive. An accurate name for such online groups is cyber mobs. T e term captures both the destructive potential of online groups and the shaming dynamic at the heart of the abuse (Hate Crimes in Cyberspace)
- Game Mechanic- Underlies the argument throughout, explaining how points that a player can spend on advantages like “talent,” “wealth,” “charisma,” and “intelligence” are distributed by “the computer,” and that players must “deal with them,” just like they must in real life. This argument makes racism and sexism seem socially neutral, mechanical, structural, and not a personal act of aggression or oppression perpetrated upon one person by another. In short, they are institutional, invisible, “mechanical,” always business, never personal. (Queer Female of Color: The Highest Difficulty Setting There Is? Gaming Rhetoric as Gender Capital)