The article “Hate speech in video games and online gaming communities – State of the art” signed by the Portuguese team of the European project Play Your Role: Gamification against Hate Speech, Susana Costa, Beatriz Isca, Filipa Cerol, Bruno Mendes da Silva and Mirian Tavares has just been published in the new issue of the journal Comunicando.
This article framed by the European project Play your Role – Gamification Against Hate Speech, proposes the study and analysis of the state of the art in video game panorama, focusing the tendency to the use of hate speech by young players. The immersion of the player in the symbolic arena of the game, where everything becomes possible, raises moral questions about the relationship between video games, in the virtual world and the player’s behaviour in the physical world. It is shown that the use of anonymity and the creation of communities and game groups can lead to exclusion and attacks to minorities; chat communications can facilitate the sharing of interests and game techniques as well as insults in times of tension between players, what justifies the reflection on the role of gaming platform in the control of the shared content. Considering the possibilities of video games, this article also reflects about game literacy and how games can become powerful learning tools.
Full article can be read here.