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The GamerGate controversy and journalistic paradigm maintenance

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Abstract

GamerGate is a viral campaign that became an occasion, particularly from August 2014 to January 2015, to both question journalistic ethics and badger women involved in game development and gaming criticism. Gaming journalists thus found themselves managing a debate on two fronts: defending the probity of gaming journalism and remediating attacks on women. This study explores how gaming journalists undertook paradigm maintenance in the mid of the controversy. This was analyzed through interviews with gaming journalists as well as a discourse analysis of the texts responding to GamerGate that were produced by their publications. Although gaming journalists operate within a form of lifestyle journalism, the journalists repaired their paradigm by linking their work to traditional journalism and emphasizing a paternal role.
Journalism
2018, Vol. 19(4) 553 –569
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1464884916670932
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The GamerGate controversy
and journalistic paradigm
maintenance
Gregory P Perreault
Appalachian State University, USA
Tim P Vos
University of Missouri, USA
Abstract
GamerGate is a viral campaign that became an occasion, particularly from August 2014
to January 2015, to both question journalistic ethics and badger women involved in game
development and gaming criticism. Gaming journalists thus found themselves managing
a debate on two fronts: defending the probity of gaming journalism and remediating
attacks on women. This study explores how gaming journalists undertook paradigm
maintenance in the midst of the controversy. This was analyzed through interviews with
gaming journalists as well as a discourse analysis of the texts responding to GamerGate
that were produced by their publications. Although gaming journalists operate within a
form of lifestyle journalism, the journalists repaired their paradigm by linking their work
to traditional journalism and emphasizing a paternal role.
Keywords
GamerGate, gaming journalism, journalism scandal, lifestyle journalism, paradigm
repair
Introduction
What began as a blog attack by an ex-boyfriend against a female video game developer
led to an Internet phenomenon that raised questions about the ethics of gaming
Corresponding author:
Gregory P Perreault, Department of Communication, Appalachian State University, 245 Walker Hall,
Boone, NC 28607, USA.
Email: perreaultgp@appstate.edu
670932JOU0010.1177/1464884916670932JournalismPerreault and Vos
research-article2016
Article
554 Journalism 19(4)
journalism. Writing on a blog, Eron Gjoni accused his former girlfriend of sleeping with
a prominent gaming journalist, Nathan Grayson of Kotaku, to obtain better news cover-
age for her game (Kaplan, 2014). Kotaku quickly disproved this claim, demonstrating
that while Grayson had been in a relationship with the developer, Zoe Quinn, he had
never reported on her game and did not cover her work after they began a relationship.
But as sometimes happens on the Internet, the questions raised became more interesting
than the answers. Critics used the Twitter hashtag #gamergate to argue that gaming
journalists were too connected to the gaming industry, actively colluding with the
industry to promote a social justice agenda and focusing on cultural/social aspects of
games as opposed to assessing their technical and play features. Simultaneously, the
hashtag was used to harass women and minorities in game development and gaming
criticism through death threats and doxing – researching and releasing the personal
information of game developers and critics (Chess and Shaw, 2015). Women were dis-
proportionately targeted (Massanari, 2015). Throughout the GamerGate controversy,
gaming journalists were called upon to explain and defend their role. Gaming journal-
ism was suddenly being attacked on two fronts: regarding ‘the relationships between
independent game developers and the press’ (Golding, 2014) and as quasi-representa-
tives of the gamers who ‘make the gaming community an unwelcoming space for
women and other marginalized groups’ (Cote, 2015: 18). Journalists responded to these
accusations by articulating their journalistic roles and their professional ethics.
This study explores the paradigm maintenance performed by gaming journalists early
in the GamerGate controversy. In the wake of ethical controversies, journalists com-
monly take the occasion to reaffirm the legitimacy of their paradigm (Berkowitz, 2000).
With this in mind, this study draws on comments about GamerGate from in-depth inter-
views conducted during the controversy with 17 gaming journalists and from the pub-
lished responses to criticism, either from the journalists themselves or from their news
organization. Discourse analysis of their responses addresses how gaming journalists
articulated their role during the controversy and how gaming journalists performed para-
digm repair.
Much like sports journalism and technology journalism, much of gaming journalism
operates as an ‘enthusiast-press’ (Carlson, 2009: 4,10) and is somewhat reliant on coop-
eration from industry officials it covers. Gaming journalists rely on industry officials in
order to obtain early copies of the games they review. The nature of this relationship is
familiar in lifestyle journalism – fashion, travel, film, television, and personal technol-
ogy reporters similarly rely on industry officials in order to do their work.
While the connections between journalism and the market may be stronger in gaming
journalism, the connection certainly persists in other journalism niches. GamerGate
would have been a classic journalistic ethical controversy, but for the integral gendered
aspect to the controversy. While many GamerGate supporters stated that their aim is to
see change in gaming journalism, another aspect of the controversy is the harassment of
female game developers and public relations people – who were accused of adversely
affecting the quality of gaming journalism. Understanding how journalists worked to
maintain their paradigm while negotiating the harassment conducted by a portion of their
audience helps provide shape to how gaming journalists conceive of their role within the
journalistic field. It also helps shed light on how they maintained that role in the midst of
Perreault and Vos 555
controversy. This is valuable for journalism studies in that such analysis reveals norms
and operations within the growing enthusiast-press.
Literature review
Paradigm repair
In his foundational work, Kuhn (2012 [1970]) argues that paradigms are foundational
systems that shape the conceptualized boundaries, norms, and practices of a given pro-
fession. A paradigm consists of
broadly shared assumptions about how to gather and interpret information relevant to a
particular sphere of activity … When a group acquires near-universal faith in the validity of a
system of representing and applying information, that system attains paradigmatic standing.
(Bennett et al., 1985: 54)
Paradigms are rarely explicit, more often unwritten and unspoken norms that are learned
through having experience in a field. Paradigms tend to be hegemonic in nature in that a
member of the field must stay within a paradigm in order to be a respected member of
the community (Reese, 1990) and to maintain authority (Coddington, 2012). As
Coddington (2012) concludes, ‘Journalism exhibits many of the characteristics of a pro-
fession guided by paradigms’ (p. 280). Paradigm shifts, however, disrupt and reshape a
field (Kuhn, 2012 [1970]). This happens gradually through the identification of problems
that are unaddressed by the paradigm. Those within a field tend to respond to attacks on
their paradigm by trying to either diminish the problem or by demonstrating how the
existing paradigm addresses the problems.
Prior research has found that, when journalists are being critiqued for ethical lapses,
they engage in paradigm repair as a way of normalizing the situation (Bennett et al.,
1985; Hindman and Thomas, 2013; Zelizer, 2004). While elements of the GamerGate
controversy make it a unique situation, the key element of this study – the journalists’
response as a method of repairing the paradigm – is a standard feature in paradigm main-
tenance (Berkowitz, 2000; Hindman, 2005; Hindman and Thomas, 2013). Critiques can
come from at least three different places: from within the journalistic field, as was the
case in the Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times (Hindman, 2005); from other
social institutions, such as the government in the case of journalist Helen Thomas’ com-
ments about Jews (Hindman and Thomas, 2013); or from the public, as was the case with
the death of Princess Diana (Berkowitz, 2000). Avenues for public criticism had been
limited in the past, largely confined to letters to the editor. With the rise of social media,
the public is increasingly able to engage in criticism of journalism. Knowing who is criti-
cizing journalism and who is doing the paradigm repair is important to how the repair
work occurs (Berkowitz, 2000).
Beyond respecting the norms of their professional community, journalists must also
reinforce and affirm them, particularly in the face of criticism (Zelizer, 2004). Paradigm
repair is ‘the notion that when journalists perceive an event or situation as undermining
journalists’ or news organizations’ credibility and authority they will go to great efforts
to restore their own image and reputation’ (Steiner et al., 2013: 705–706). Berkowitz
556 Journalism 19(4)
(2000) notes that paradigm repair accomplishes the ‘double duty’ of ‘outlining the
boundaries of the community’ by reaffirming professional norms for the public (p. 127).
Journalists’ paradigm repair typically operates through the use of editorials and opin-
ion pieces that identify the wrongdoing and indicate how that wrongdoing occurred
(Bennett et al., 1985; Berkowitz, 2000). Scholars have examined paradigm repair as
occurring in controversies as diverse as the death of Princess Diana, when the tabloids’
behavior was blamed for the crash leading to her death (Berkowitz, 2000; Hindman,
2003), the revelation that The New York Times reporter Jayson Blair had fabricated and
plagiarized stories (Hindman, 2005) and the demise of the Rocky Mountain News and the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Carlson, 2012). In the case of each controversy, the unwritten
assumptions of the journalistic paradigm were challenged, prompting journalists to
engage in paradigm repair. It should be noted that in the earlier examples, the claims lev-
eled against journalism were true, whereas many of the most specific claims of
GamerGate were false. Yet journalists responded to the claims and in so doing, main-
tained their paradigm. Hence, GamerGate still operates as a classic paradigmatic attack.
Much of early gaming journalism operated as a sort of buyer’s guide – it provided
advice, either explicitly or implicitly, through its criticism about what to purchase. Some
of the earliest gaming journalism – in particular at Nintendo Power and Sega Visions
was actually marketing, the magazines themselves supported by video game companies.
Yet, this buyer’s guide journalism is the sort of ‘objective’ journalism many GamerGate
supporters desired (Foxman and Nieborg, 2016) – however, many gaming journalism
outlets broadened their role to address cultural and social issues in games. Hanusch
(2014) describes this type of journalism as lifestyle journalism. It is a market-driven
form of journalism in which Hanitzsch (2007) argues, ‘lifestyle journalism exemplifies
[the] trend toward a blending of information with advice and guidance’ (p. 375). Gaming
journalism is emblematic of that trend, particularly in its emphasis on giving purchasing
advice.
Classic journalistic conceptions of news tend to look down on lifestyle journalism,
but the role of giving advice and guidance can actually be socially valuable (Hanusch,
2014). Thomas (2016), seeking to rehabilitate a notion of paternalism, argues that jour-
nalists play a valuable role as a citizen’s guide. ‘Paternalism calls for a journalism that
gives people the tools they need to flourish … and address those issues that prevent them
from doing so’ (Thomas, 2016: 96). Conceptualized this way, the paternalistic role goes
beyond purchasing guidance to how to live, vote, and behave as citizens. Of course,
paternalism has other meanings. It also refers to a kind of authority that would save per-
sons from their own poor decisions and discipline them toward more responsible behav-
ior (Thomas, 2016).
Role conception
All of this suggests that gaming journalists, like other kinds of lifestyle journalists, per-
form a different kind of role relative to the rest of the journalistic field. But, since jour-
nalists typically find their ‘professional identities’ in their roles (Johnstone et al., 1972:
131), and since roles are generally articulated relative to contributions to democracy
(Christians et al., 2009), gaming journalists are bound to struggle to articulate
Perreault and Vos 557
their identity in the absence of clear democratic functions. Fürsich (2012: 22) found that
lifestyle journalists articulate their role in developing a ‘close connection to the audi-
ence’, ‘following trends’ and blurring the ‘boundaries between news and entertainment’.
Roles function as important forms of social stability – giving journalists a clear sense of
self-identity, and also establishing a clear social-identity (Christians et al., 2009).
Established roles insulate journalists from attacks from the public and from other institu-
tions by providing an agreed upon set of role-related practices and tools (Hanitzsch,
2007).
Some of the early scholarship on journalistic roles, however, was less narrowly
focused on justifying roles in terms of contributions to democratic self-governance.
Lasswell (1948), for instance, identified three media roles: ‘surveillance of the environ-
ment’, ‘the correlation of the parts of society in responding to the environment’, and ‘the
transmission of the social heritage from one generation to the next’ (p. 38). Wright (1960)
added ‘entertainment’ as a fourth role or function (p. 16). Subsequent research by Weaver
and Wilhoit (1991, 1996) identified other roles: dissemination, interpretation, adversar-
ial, and, later, populist mobilizer (Weaver et al., 2007). These role conceptions, while not
inherently expressive of democratic values, nevertheless express forms of journalism
that fit within democratic theories of the press (Christians et al., 2009). But, these role
conceptions – apart from the democratic implications – still provide journalists, regard-
less of their beat, with a framework for doing their jobs.
These roles are largely descriptive, rather than injunctive, norms (Lapinski and Rimal,
2005). While these roles or functions describe journalists’ approach to journalism (they
are norms in as much as they are normal), they do not capture the normative nature of
roles as the good, right, and moral rules for the journalistic field. Journalists typically
defend descriptive roles because they are so closely identified with the identity of jour-
nalism (Berkowitz, 2000), but journalists also turn to normative roles as a form of legiti-
macy, since they root journalism in pro-social values and shared societal beliefs
(Christians et al., 2009). Again, given that gaming journalists cannot easily appeal to
norms rooted in democratic service, it seems reasonable to explore how they do articu-
late their role.
Hence, we pose the following research questions:
RQ1. How do gaming journalists articulate their role, particularly in relation to the
gaming industry?
RQ2. How do gaming journalists engage in paradigm repair in addressing the
GamerGate controversy?
Method
In order to gauge how journalists responded to the GamerGate controversy, we inter-
viewed 17 journalists who cover gaming at niche journalism publications and collected
the GamerGate-related editorials, opinion, analysis, and interpretative pieces produced
by those publications. Many gaming journalism websites drew little differentiation
between editorials and opinion pieces in that, as enthusiast media, they tend to
558 Journalism 19(4)
emphasize the personalities of their reporters, with much of gaming journalism falling
broadly into the category of opinion (Nieborg and Sihvonen, 2009). Editorials and opin-
ion pieces written by journalists can be considered ‘as close as is possible to being an
institutional voice’ (Hindman, 2003: 671) in that they ‘provide views of media profes-
sionals on issues pertaining to media norms, values, and responsibilities’ (Hindman and
Thomas, 2013: 272). Most studies of paradigm repair focus solely on textual analysis in
order to infer about the paradigm that created the texts. This study hopes to bring addi-
tional insight into the paradigm maintenance process by learning about the agents who
undertake paradigm maintenance. In-depth interviews provide useful supplemental
forms of data by providing interpretation, summary, and integration (Weiss, 1994). In
addition, interviews help researchers understand the complicated processes that lead to
the content produced (Gans, 1979).
The 17 journalists interviewed included writers, editors, and columnists at different
organizational levels, ranging from editor-in-chief to contributor. They were interviewed
in the earliest, peak months of GamerGate, from August to December 2014. Since the
GamerGate controversy included harassment of gaming journalists – particularly female
journalists – some publications chose not to participate, despite potentially having a per-
spective to add to the story. Only two women consented to be interviewed. Most inter-
viewees were male and white. In short, the majority of interviewees were not subject to
the worst harassment and felt comfortable enough to discuss a controversy potentially
endangering their journalistic niche and certainly endangering some of their colleagues.
The publications where journalists worked – and whose texts were analyzed – included
Kotaku, Polygon, Verge, Joystiq, RPGFan, RPGamer, PC Gamer, The Guardian, The
New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, IGN, Forbes, VICE, and a former editor at
GamePro magazine. The outlets selected reflect an array of different media models and
journalistic approaches. GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly represent the old
guard of fan-oriented magazines, which are heavily subsidized by advertisements from
video game companies. The New York Times and The Guardian are international news-
papers that in recent years have reported on video games through their personal technol-
ogy and arts departments. Forbes is a traditional business magazine that has spawned a
lively blog on its website dedicated to television, movies, and digital games. Entertainment
Weekly has long covered games from an entertainment standpoint. IGN, Kotaku, Polygon,
Joystiq,1 RPGFan, and RPGamer represent a new wave of gaming journalism that is
online-only, emphasizing aggregation, a mixture of short news briefs, longer reviews,
and first-person reflections.
Since gaming journalism columns and websites are not uniformly cataloged via Lexis
Nexus or similar services, individual articles were identified through using the native
search function on the news website of each journalist interviewed for this research. This
resulted in 32 total editorials and opinion pieces from these websites between August
2014 and January 2015 – during the peak of the GamerGate controversy in which most
press responses took place.
Discourse analysis was employed in analyzing the articles and interview texts.
Discourse analysis brings to the foreground the discursive strategies and techniques used
by writers and speakers to create meaning; it is attentive to word choice, metaphors, and
lines of argument (Alba-Juez, 2009; Hall, 1980; van Dijk, 1988). Discourse analysis
Perreault and Vos 559
locates discourse within social and institutional contexts (Burr, 1995; van Dijk, 1977),
which is particularly appropriate for understanding how journalists discursively con-
struct their work. This form of analysis is useful in that we are most interested in the
discursive strategies employed in paradigm repair. Researchers paid attention to the
emergence of themes in the strategies employed in both interview discussion of
GamerGate and in text responses. The data was examined and then the researchers sepa-
rately proposed discursive themes that emerged until we reached consensus.
The interviews with gaming journalists were conducted during the controversy. The
controversy did involve danger to journalists, since some faced death threats and some
had their personal information hacked and posted online. Given these dangers, this study
granted anonymity to interviewees. Under the approval of the Institutional Review Board
and in accordance with the style of the American Psychological Association, individual
journalists were assigned a letter, with the corresponding interview subject known only
by the researcher. Conducting the interviews from the beginning and throughout
GamerGate meant that the authors were able to get robust interview data regarding para-
digm work. It should be noted that the journalists who were interviewed were not neces-
sarily those whose texts were analyzed.
Background
In order to interpret the discourse occurring in gaming journalism, it would be useful to
place the findings in the context of the controversy and the culture that led to the
controversy.
The controversy developed in three ways. First, it created a discussion about journal-
ism ethics. Jenni Goodchild’s blog about GamerGate collected the charges from anony-
mous posters: that gaming journalists were not transparent about their personal and
professional connections to game developers, that gaming journalists were pushing a
social justice agenda (Goodchild, 2014a), that academics involved in the Digital Games
Research Association were conspiring with journalists to shift the agenda (Chess and
Shaw, 2015; Goodchild, 2014a), and that gaming journalists on a private mailing list
were colluding to shape game coverage (Goodchild, 2014a). The charges of collusion
seemed to have some support among critics when, from 28 to 30 August 2014, numerous
news organizations, including Kotaku, Wired, The Guardian, and Polygon, published
articles arguing ‘gamers are dead’ (Massanari, 2015). The charges of an academic con-
spiracy and institutional collusion were dismissed in large part, although discussion of
the other charges continues in GamerGate circles. This was a discussion gaming journal-
ists largely engaged and welcomed.
Second, female game developers and critics suffered through a sustained campaign
of misogynistic attacks (Golding, 2014) largely stemming from its origins in a male-
centric gaming culture. This culture was developed in no small part through early gam-
ing journalism itself (Cote, 2015). Nintendo Power in the 1990s did not ‘treat women
as equal members of the gaming community’ (Cote, 2015: 16–17). With this context in
mind, the developing audience for gaming – now nearly half female (Casti, 2014) –
might be a reason for the early, cultivated, and exclusionary masculine audience to feel
threatened.
560 Journalism 19(4)
The GamerGate controversy emerged out of digital forums like Reddit, 4chan, and
8chan that ‘exhibit the tendency to view women as either objects of sexual desire or
unwelcome interlopers or both’ (Massanari, 2015: 8). Gjoni, the jilted ex-lover of Zoe
Quinn made his initial post in the SomethingAwful forums, charging Quinn with using
intimate relationships with gaming journalists, in particular Nathan Grayson of Kotaku, in
order to obtain better coverage (Kaplan, 2014) – these charges later moved to other forums
(Chess and Shaw, 2015; Massanari, 2015). These accusations reached an audience online
when actor and conservative pundit Adam Baldwin coined the hashtag #gamergate and
tweeted two videos attacking Quinn. Chess and Shaw (2015) noted that Baldwin’s ‘190k
plus followers quickly helped the hashtag spread, which then spawned Web sites, reddit
subthreads, additional 4chan and then 8chan threads, and a sustained online movement’
(p. 210). Golding (2014) argued that the viciousness of the GamerGate controversy evi-
denced ‘the end of gamers and the viciousness that accompanies the death of an identity’
(Golding, 2014). In the most widely reported situations, Quinn, game developer Brianna
Wu, and gaming critic Anita Sarkessian received death threats and had their personal
information, such as address and phone number, published online (Golding, 2014).
Third, in part through the attention of conservative pundits, critics questioned the
authority of game journalists to critique sexist and violent depictions in video games.
Why, the critics asked, couldn’t the journalists just focus on games for what they were
– a type of technical pastime – and avoid ‘political correctness’ altogether?
Findings
In the face of the controversy, journalists articulated two distinct roles – that of a paternal
figure and that of a traditional journalist. Meanwhile, journalists engaged in paradigm
repair by distancing themselves from the hostile activities of some of their readers and by
linking their work to classic journalistic entities. These strategies largely map onto the
two roles identified. Thus, in the analysis that follows, paradigm repair activities are
discussed in conjunction with the roles that gaming journalists articulated.
Role of the paternal figure
In the midst of the GamerGate controversy, one way that journalists articulated their role
was as a sort of paternal figure. This was the paternalism of discipline and of saving oth-
ers from their bad instincts (see Thomas, 2016). This paternal role is predicated on giving
advice – a natural extension of gaming journalists’ history of serving as a sort of purchas-
ing guide – but not an extension welcomed by a portion of their audience. They articu-
lated this role through indicating how they envision their audience. This role was used
for paradigm repair by discursively framing arguments about the motivations for the
harassment of women and, in some cases, by disregarding the ethical allegations aimed
at the journalists, such as lack of transparency about close ties to the gaming industry.
Simply put, they dismissed the legitimacy of the GamerGate ethical allegations because
of the widespread harassment that accompanied the charges.
In discursively constructing their role, gaming journalists largely identified them-
selves as part of the gaming family and thus as closely related to their audience. The
Perreault and Vos 561
gaming journalist’s audience are people who play video games, and yet that group is so
large – 63 percent of American households – that it is largely unwieldy (Industry Facts,
2016). As this controversy illustrates, this audience includes gamers from a ‘masculine
gaming culture’ actively interested in excluding women from participation (Chess and
Shaw, 2015: 208). Gaming journalists responded to the ethical questions regarding their
work with willingness and eagerness, yet they quickly pushed attention to the gamers’
harassment of women in order to condemn it. For example, in Kotaku’s post ‘About
GamerGate’, Editor-in-Chief Stephen Totilo (2014b) notes,
I’m a gamer. I don’t mind the term. If you do, that doesn’t bother me. I’m confident in who I
am. If you’re a gamer who harasses, who sends rape threats or stalks Twitter feeds or terrorizes
people from their home or gloats at others’ struggles – Find a new hobby. If you’re a gamer who
wants better games reporting? Be specific about what you dislike. Please seek, support and
celebrate those whose work you do like.
Throughout the discourse, journalists were eager to respond to the harassment, per-
haps because they are also ‘gamers’. However, journalists put discursive distance
between themselves and their audience by asserting and practicing a paternal role – a role
where they acted as disciplinarian and moral voice.
This role bore some similarity to a more traditional watchdog or adversarial role.
However, the subject of the role was not the government or a corporation but the gaming
press’ own audience. One participant in the study (Participant C) noted that the event in
its entirety showcased a disconnection with a portion of his audience. This supports the
idea that gaming journalists felt compelled to guide their audience, not just to be adver-
sarial to it. So, while the gamers who only wanted the traditional buyers’ guide claimed
journalists were rejecting them as an audience (Cote, 2015; Goodchild, 2014b), journal-
ists saw an expanded, paternal relationship and role.
Journalists engaged in paradigm repair in some cases by attempting to discursively
frame the harassment perpetrated by their audience. In a sense, journalists modeled their
professional obligation by attempting to distill the motivations of those involved in the
harassment. This falls in line with Totilo’s (2014c) argument that gaming journalism
should be about the people playing games – not just previewing new releases. The dis-
cursive strategy employed here is one of explanation. While the journalists were discuss-
ing the motives of those behind the harassment, they were simultaneously contrasting
those motives to their own. The motivation behind the harassment was fear, according to
one interviewee (Participant I). The informant noted that he shared an important com-
monality with those conducting harassment in that they all love video games. But he
added, ‘I think people … feel that through the criticism, video games are hurt, and that
critics weaken them’ (Participant I). As a result, those conducting the harassment feel
that the kinds of games they love will be taken from them if they are subjected to certain
kinds of intense criticism (Stuart, 2014). He voiced disagreement with that notion – ‘the
outcome of having stronger criticism is more voices in criticism and better video games’
(Participant I).
Some journalists were unwilling to acknowledge the ethics aspect of GamerGate,
arguing that giving credence to ethics complaints ultimately legitimized the harassment
562 Journalism 19(4)
(Participant I, Participant J). This is also a way in which paradigm maintenance occurred.
Journalists expressed that the harassment threatened to delegitimize their craft, not
because of problems with their journalism, but out of disgust with the audience (Totilo,
2014d).
The gaming journalists sometimes discursively expressed their role in explicitly
paternal or maternal ways – swinging between parental pride and impatience. Plante
(2014) argued that GamerGate supporters were like the ‘obstinate child’ who throws a
temper tantrum, except ‘the people behind these temper tantrums are hurting others …
It’s time to grow up’. Similarly, McNamara (2014) wrote, ‘We have not covered the
movement at Game Informer up to this point because we feel that the moniker misrepre-
sents the issues’. This approach amounts to a sort of punishment of those involved in the
harassment by not granting them coverage. In this case, the discursive strategy employed
was one of creating distance from gaming bullies by declining to respond to the ethics
allegations.
Participant C similarly noted that some gaming journalists were unwilling to discuss
the ethical issues in GamerGate, yet very few journalists actually wanted to dismiss the
claims outright. Most journalists did say they struggled with how to address the ethical
allegations while also making sure to express disgust with the harassment of female
game developers and critics. The journalists interviewed in this study, and indeed, the
majority of articles did address the ethical allegations raised regarding their role and their
connection with the gaming industry.
In articulating their role in terms of paternalism, gaming journalists extended their
role of providing purchasing advice to providing moral advice and judgment. In seeking
to repair their paradigm, journalists sought to distance themselves from vocal gamers
who were engaging in online harassment of women. In some cases, journalists went so
far as to avoid engaging in the ethics discussion of GamerGate altogether in order to
avoid providing legitimacy to such gamers.
Role of traditional journalism
As one gaming journalist puts it, ‘There’s good journalism and shitty journalism every-
where’ (Participant A). It was a statement that applied to gaming journalists, but also to
all kinds of journalists. Some of the discourse acknowledged that bad gaming journalists
were no doubt guilty of some of the things for which they were criticized, such as taking
gifts from the gaming industry. But these ‘bad apples’ were portrayed as holdovers from
a past era, before a professional turn in gaming journalism in the last decade. The gaming
journalists studied here defended good gaming journalism as no different from ‘tradi-
tional journalism’, to use the label of one participant (Participant G). Gaming journalists
served the same kinds of roles and delivered the same kinds of social benefits as tradi-
tional journalism. This discourse served as its own kind of paradigm repair. It marked the
controversial gaming journalism as unworthy of the label of journalism and posited com-
mon cause with the role performed by good journalists everywhere.
The gaming journalists made common cause with traditional journalism in a variety
of ways. One of the chief discursive strategies noted that the role played by good gaming
journalism was the role played by all good journalism. The role of a journalist is to tell
Perreault and Vos 563
the truth, and gaming journalists proudly claimed this was the role they performed, often
in the face of game industry resistance and audience indifference. As one puts it, ‘you are
seeking the truth and your intention is to deliver that truth to an audience that needs it’
(Participant G). Gaming journalists were also disseminators of information, just like all
journalists. As one puts it, they are all ‘focused on getting the news up as quickly as pos-
sible’ (Participant D).
But, above all, gaming journalists discursively constructed their role as being facilita-
tors for the exchange of socially relevant discussion and debate: gaming journalists were
‘improving the conversation culturally about what it means to play video games’
(Participant A) and ‘engage with gamers’ about social issues (Kain, 2014b). Thus, gam-
ing journalists were critics – not just reviewers, but adversaries of practices harmful to
the public good (Totilo, 2014d), and facilitators of a ‘safe space for our readers, writers
and contributors’ (Grant, 2014). Indeed, nearly all of the game journalists said journalists
were targeted in GamerGate because they advocated for diversity and inclusiveness in
the gaming industry. They nearly all pledged to redouble those efforts in the face of criti-
cism and harassment. Thus, the gaming journalists emphatically defended their journal-
ism in normative terms – they were critics of sexist and violent depictions in games and
promoters of a diverse public sphere and civil dialogue. The gaming journalists discur-
sively attached their work to the role of all journalism. Thus, the paradigm was sound, as
sound as the journalism field in general.
Another discursive strategy noted that good gaming journalists followed the same
standards and guidelines practiced by all journalists. For example, they followed the
Society of Professional Journalists’ ‘code of ethics’ (Grant, 2014); they avoided conflicts
of interest and the game industry had no effect on ‘our editorial decision-making process’
(McNamara, 2014); they were ‘straightforward’ with readers (Participant P), ‘upfront’
about professional relationships (McNamara, 2014), and practitioners of ‘transparency’
(Grant, 2014). They told readers that ‘inquiry is always welcome’ (Totilo, 2014a), they
looked through the ‘bullshit of the surface’ to find the stories (Kuchera, 2014), they fol-
lowed processes for sound ‘research’ (Participant G) and for ‘meticulous editing’
(Participant I), and they did ‘investigative reporting’ (Totilo, 2014d).
Ultimately, they claimed, gaming journalists had become highly professional in their
journalistic practice in recent years. Gaming journalists belonged to professional devel-
opment associations, as journalists of all sorts have since the 19th century (Grant, 2014),
and they had journalism degrees (Participant E). As one gaming journalist boasted,
‘Journalism about video games is better than it’s ever been’ (Participant J). Or, as another
said, the ‘writing has improved dramatically and the coverage has improved dramati-
cally’ (Participant G). Even if the professionalization of gaming journalism was not com-
plete, it had ‘gotten much better’ (Participant C). What’s more, ‘the act of journalism’
that gaming journalists accomplished was far from easy – they got the ‘true story the best
you can’ in the face of a ‘locked down’, and uncooperative gaming industry (Participant
I). Gaming journalists might have faced an even tougher challenge than other journalists,
since video games were ‘hard enough to describe in the first place, but now you have to
figure out how to describe in a traditional journalism sense’ (Participant H).
The gaming journalists’ argued that criticism of their craft was in line with criticism
of all journalism. Sometimes that criticism was warranted; although criticism about
564 Journalism 19(4)
being too dependent on industry sources was ‘an issue in journalism everywhere’ (Grant,
2014). As one journalist puts it, ‘these problems are faced in other areas of journalism as
well’, including ‘politics’ (Kain, 2014a). Simply put, criticism of ‘the press’ was as old
as the press itself (Gera, 2014). And gamer critics, the argument went, used the same trite
criticisms used against all journalists – for instance, they are too ‘liberal’ (Gera, 2014) or
‘biased’ (Kain, 2014a). What’s more the critics were largely of the same cloth as those
finding fault with other sound journalism – they were ‘Tea-Party-ish’ groups (Participant
J) and ‘reactionary moral campaigners’ (Stuart, 2014) who spun ‘conspiracy theories’
(Totilo, 2014b). Old forms of press criticism had been dismissed, and so, the argument
went, should the criticism of gaming journalism. Implicit in this discursive strategy was
also a call to all professional journalists, who had no doubt been unfairly criticized in the
past, to come to the defense of gaming journalists.
Finally, gaming journalists pointed out that the topic they covered differed little from
other topics covered by other journalists. The video game industry was big business,
reaching a ‘demographic … worth billions of dollars to companies and shareholders’
(Watson, 2014). The journalists saw an obligation to address it. Chris Suellentrop wrote
in The New York Times, ‘I used to cover things like presidential campaigns … at some
point, video games began to seem as consequential as those subjects, if not more so’
(Suellentrop, 2014). Thus, gaming journalists were covering tough and important social
issues, such as demeaning depictions of women in video games. If anything, this work
surpassed ‘human interest’ journalism (Participant H) and, as one editor puts it, his writ-
ers ‘are pursuing what I consider to be real news’ (Participant D). Again, gaming journal-
ists sought protection within the familiar and, to their way of thinking, still legitimate
paradigm of traditional journalism.
Conclusion
The paradigm repair performed by gaming journalists bears similarities to other instances
of paradigm repair discussed in the existing literature. Gaming journalists divided the
field into good and bad journalism, attached themselves to the good, and marginalized
the bad (Hindman, 2005). As was the case with Princess Diana’s death, the criticism
came from the public (Hindman, 2003). And yet, the GamerGate criticism was more of
a mixed bag: some elements of public criticism were more typical – calls for journalists
to maintain professional independence from industry officials, academics, and other
journalists and for transparency in relationships that did exist; but other elements of pub-
lic criticism were less typical – calls for journalists to jettison their paternal role in criti-
quing gamer culture and a social justice orientation in order to focus as a buyers’ guide.
Journalists responded by articulating their role in two ways: as a paternal figure and as a
traditional journalist. Journalists adopted a paternal figure role by providing a moral,
disciplinary voice to their audience – gamers – a niche group of which gaming journalists
are largely members. In adopting this role, journalists repaired their paradigm discur-
sively in two ways: by trying to explain the actions of a minority in their community to
a larger audience and by dismissing the ethical charges altogether – an action justified by
the fact that many of the claims were baseless (Totilo, 2014a). In trying to explain the
action of harassment to their larger audience, gaming journalists were trying
Perreault and Vos 565
to understand the connection between the ethical charges regarding their work and the
harassment of women in gaming and gaming criticism. There was no rational explana-
tion for the harassment done to women; yet gaming journalists attempted to understand
and convey that understanding since gamers, the community the journalists cover, perpe-
trated the harassment. Yet in other cases, this paternalistic role encouraged journalists to
largely dismiss the charges outright, in that they viewed the harassment as delegitimizing
the ethical charges made against them. This is a moral, disciplinary judgment, which
argues that those conducting the harassment do not deserve to be granted a voice.
Journalists also adopted the role of the traditional journalist, linking themselves with
established journalistic entities and practices. Journalists engaged in paradigm repair
through this role, both in interviews and in published articles, by discursively linking
their work to professional journalistic organizations, such as the Society for Professional
Journalists, and by noting their similarities with traditional journalism – gaming journal-
ists performed similar roles, followed similar guidelines of professionalism, faced the
same set of marginalized critics, and provided real news about a culturally and economi-
cally important industry. The journalists acknowledged that gaming journalism had suf-
fered from inadequacies in the past; these had been the unwritten assumptions of the old
paradigm (Bennett et al., 1985; Carlson, 2012) that they were now ready to explicitly
address. Thus, in face of the GamerGate criticism, the journalists decisively broke with
the old paradigm of an enthusiast-press and claimed their place within the paradigm of
traditional, public-minded journalism.
This research adds to the literature in a number of ways. It provides shape to how
lifestyle journalists might conduct paradigm maintenance. Prior research into paradigm
maintenance largely examined the repair process as traditional journalists performed it.
As Hanusch (2014) noted, there has been a shift in the journalistic field toward a greater
focus on lifestyle journalism. Gaming journalism is an example of lifestyle journalism in
that implicit in the specialty is the idea that gaming journalism provides purchasing guid-
ance. Yet, as this study demonstrates, in the process of paradigm repair, this guidance
function was emphasized more heavily. Gaming journalists went beyond advice on what
to purchase to providing moral judgments on behavior. Simultaneously, gaming journal-
ists performing paradigm repair linked themselves to more hard news and traditional
journalistic sources to support the way they work.
Even though there appears to be a shift underway toward lifestyle journalism, these
particular lifestyle journalists – when confronted with an ethical controversy – wanted to
link their work with the roles, ethical procedures, and professional practices of tradi-
tional journalists. This is consistent with Reese’s (1990) and Berkowitz’s (2000) argu-
ment that members of a field seek legitimacy by positioning themselves within the agreed
upon boundaries of the paradigm. The gaming journalists rejected the notion that they
were simply reviewers. They argued they played an important social role – critic and
adversary of sexism and violence in games – which was vital to a healthy, inclusive, and
diverse public sphere. While the gaming journalists did not explicitly tie their journalism
to serving the cause of democratic self-governance, which remains at the root of most
Western normative theorizing about journalism (Christians et al., 2009), they neverthe-
less implied as much. Gaming may not be a matter of public policy, but the gaming
journalists discursively constructed their work as valuable to the marketplace of ideas
566 Journalism 19(4)
and to civic and personal well-being. This falls in line with the paternal role posited by
Thomas (2016) – the journalists justified their work in terms of improving public life. In
making these claims, the gaming journalists reaffirmed the norms of traditional
journalism.
The fact that gaming journalists themselves performed the paradigm repair is impor-
tant – it meant they could legitimize their own field. Journalists had done paradigm
repair following Princess Diana’s death by essentially expelling the paparazzi from the
fraternity of journalism (Berkowitz, 2000; Hindman, 2003). Here, with gaming journal-
ists engaged in their own paradigm repair, they discursively attached themselves to the
paradigm of traditional journalism and hence to the legitimacy it afforded.
Furthermore, the use of interviews in this study helped to make ideas that could be
inferred from the texts more explicit. While the gaming journalism texts used the roles of
traditional journalist and paternal figure in responding to the ethics allegations, the inter-
views indicated how these roles worked to repair the paradigm. Hence, this study show-
cases that the use of interviews for paradigm maintenance research can be useful in
unpacking the operation of paradigm repair.
This research is rooted in the interpretivist and culturalist traditions and, as such, no
claims can be made as to the generalizability of the study. And while these traditions
assume that the interpretations are unavoidably those of the researchers and not objective
descriptions of the texts (Hesse-Biber, 2010), it should be noted that the co-authors
arrived at agreement on the interpretations offered here. It must be acknowledged that
the development of GamerGate in the midst of the study, while fortuitous in terms of
understanding the operation of paradigm repair while it was occurring, also limited the
interview sample. Several gaming journalism organizations refused interviews during
the controversy, and, as a result of the rampant harassment of women during the study,
only two women consented to be interviewed. It is possible that the lack of involvement
from female gaming journalists and the lack of input from journalists from a few key
journalistic entities could have skewed responses. For example, both female participants
noted that they felt a responsibility to promote independent games – games from small
developers. This was not represented in the rest of the data. With a greater number of
female participants, it is possible that the promotion of smaller, experimental, and at
times paradigm-challenging games could have been seen as an additional role for jour-
nalists to develop or maintain.
Journalism studies scholarship would benefit from additional research regarding
gaming journalism. As a relatively new form of lifestyle journalism, it has routinely
needed to confront issues in the gaming community before they hit the American main-
stream, such as bullying via social networks, male identity crisis, and ethical concerns
regarding augmented and virtual reality. Thus, this particular niche presents a fruitful
area of study in that it portends topics of broader cultural concern. In addition, journal-
ism studies scholarship would benefit from additional research into how lifestyle jour-
nalists conduct paradigm repair. As Hanusch (2014) noted, in the shifting journalistic
paradigm, lifestyle journalism is receiving greater emphasis. Yet, extant studies of para-
digm repair largely focus on traditional journalism. Hence, it would worth conducting
further examination into how other niches within lifestyle journalism conduct paradigm
maintenance.
Perreault and Vos 567
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this
article.
Note
1. Joystiq was the first among these to appear on the Internet in June 2004. During the time of
this study, in February 2015, Joystiq closed due to declining readership (Crescente, 2015).
The interviews from Joystiq were conducted prior to the closure of the website.
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Author biographies
Gregory P Perreault is an assistant professor of Multimedia Journalism at Appalachian State
University. His research areas include media sociology, media paradigms, and media and religion.
His work has appeared in the Howard Journal of Communications and the Journal of Media and
Religion.
Tim P Vos is chair and associate professor of Journalism Studies and Coordinator of Global
Research Initiatives at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His research areas include
media sociology, policy, and history. He is co-author of Gatekeeping Theory and co-editor of
Gatekeeping in Transition.
... This was particularly visible during the Gamergate phenomenon (Braithwaite 2016;Mortensen 2018;Perreault and Vos 2018;Shepherd et al. 2015), which took place in the second half of 2014. Despite presenting themselves as advocates for ethics in games jour nalism, a great number of Gamergate supporters engaged "in concentrated harassment of game developers, feminist critics, and their male allies on Twitter and other plat forms" (Massanari 2017, 334). ...
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