50 Percent Of Gamers Are Exposed To "Extremism" When Playing Online, According To Research
51 percent of gamers who played online games last year were exposed to extremist rhetoric. This is according to new research into how the gaming community is being used to spread extremism, with groups, such as neo-Nazis, using everything from Minecraft to Discord to share bigoted material.
According to the study, which focuses on online communities rather than the content of games themselves, the industry needs to do more to combat extremism in their games. The study also shares examples of racist groups openly recruiting on sites such as Discord, clearly using far-right dog whistles that still manage to evade moderators.
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This research comes courtesy of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, a research and advocacy group attached to a business school. It says that the purpose of the report is to give context to recent high-profile stories involving the gaming community, such as the leaking of military documents, hate crimes, and real-world violence.
"Extremists are using gaming and gaming-adjacent sites to disseminate radical narratives,
network with likeminded individuals, mobilize for action, and broadcast their violence," reads the report, citing examples of real-world violence such as the Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand.
"These radical narratives are having grave real-world consequences...51 percent of all gamers surveyed had come across extremist statements or narratives, and 36 percent had experienced acute harassment while playing online multiplayer games in the last year," the report continues. "In the most extreme instances, individuals radicalized in gaming sites have committed horrific acts of mass
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