7260 MicroStudy Proposal

Online Video Games and Rhetorics of Ridicule

What are the most an least popular trends of shit talking among college students who identify as casual to professional competitive online video game players?

Anonymous survey of students in my classes, perhaps other classes.

I play a lot of games online and pay attention to the competitive often offensive language used by participants. As such, I’ve become very reflective of my own shit talking so that I don’t get owned by 12 year olds. I’m biased in terms of my deep familiarity with this genre. Also because I think most people that play various online games are homophobic racist shit bags. I’m pretty sure my findings will be upheld so I’ll have a few questions on the survey that ask about sticking up for people or warning others about their offensive language etc. Hopefully this will provide the opportunity for participants to not make their demographic look like a bunch of assholes. As far as potential contributions, my aim is to use this data to pose a series of questions to the people who develop terms of service for online video games. My basic question is something like “When the game is rated MA and filled with vulgar language and violence, why when I go online do I get in trouble for telling some kid to ‘fuck off’?” Seems counter-intuitive.

Back to data organization: I’ll want to look at a few different genres of video game and for each offer a few categories of type of insult.

My methodology will be qualitative in approach and rhetorical in nature. Survey information will be primary data set. Since I only wish to identify various trends (or lack thereof) I will draw upon social humor/ridicule linguistic scholars for most of my analysis. To that end, a key part of the survey (relationship to other person(s)) will have to ask people to actually go play video games with this survey in mind. I’ll need this for any legitimate sort of analysis. The fewer variables I have to assume and generate theory for, the better.

Rough Draft Examples: I’m having difficulty thinking of clever ways to word these categories – even though I want anonymous data. Also want to be sure I hit games that are constantly played by over 350k people world wide at any given time.

Sports (Madden ’12 Online) –Relation to shit talker/victim

-Gay Stuff

-Racist Stuff

-Misogynist Stuff

-Other

FPS (Call of Duty MWF2 and Blops)

MMO (WoW, LoL)

Other — I’ll have to ask people to submit other games that I won’t have pre-listed in case I’ve missed any that still get significant attention.

7260 Collab. survey questions?

Five Questions for Collaborative Survey:

1 Do you listen to the radio? When? What stations? (Campus radio does Free PSAs)

2 Have you ever been engaged in violent physical activity with people in your current or past residences?

3 If yes to 2, were the police contacted? If no to 2, how was this incident resolved?

4 Are you currently aware of Wood County Victims Services?

5 What kinds of community outreach/volunteer work do you currently participate in?

Words and/or Numbers.. Indeed.

I like how bob broad succinctly categorizes/explains different methodologies. These readings brought up a major concern / question: In terms of the various research methodologies expressed here, what is the difference between “knowledge” and “persuasion”?

I’ll try to explain myself and my suspicions (and hence the question) briefly, but I’m not sure it will be sufficient. So a perhaps disclaimer here. To be continued?

In a very general sense, qualitative methods hold the ultimate privilege of enjoying discursive hegemony. To phrase it another way, which sentence carries more legitimacy: The Cancer medical center provides excellent up to date treatment for cancer patients — most people who attend the center early survive most cancers. or. The 80 year old aboriginal-american that lives up the block is well versed in the holistic and spiritual treatment of various cancers — most people who see her early survive most cancers.

I’m trying not to use an example that will trivialize my concern, that too often, quantitative research –or logical positivist rhetoric– is the default objective discourse. Economists and scientists will never admit that numbers and charts and graphs are metaphors and that, as Aristotle rightly noted, the metaphor is the most persuasive trope. This is why I have a healthy contempt for so-called empirical data. Additionally, if history teaches us anything about dominant discourses, they come and go when we (as a species) figure out that we used to be incorrect — not the same as interpreting the same data incorrectly.