Repository logo
 

Don’t You Know That You’re Toxic: Normalization of Toxicity in Online Gaming

Date

2021-05-06

Authors

Beres, Nicole A.
Frommel, Julian
Reid, Elizabeth
Mandryk, Regan
Klarkowski, Madison

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

ACM

ORCID

Type

Book

Degree Level

Abstract

Video game toxicity, endemic to online play, represents a pervasive and complex problem. Antisocial behaviours in online play directly harm player wellbeing, enjoyment, and retention—but research has also revealed that some players normalize toxicity as an inextricable and acceptable element of the competitive video game experience. In this work, we explore perceptions of toxicity and how they are predicted by player traits, demonstrating that participants reporting a higher tendency towards Conduct Reconstrual, Distorting Consequences, Dehumanization, and Toxic Online Disinhibition perceive online game interactions as less toxic. Through a thematic analysis on willingness to report, we also demonstrate that players abstain from reporting toxic content because they view it as acceptable, typical of games, as banter, or as not their concern. We propose that these traits and themes represent contributing factors to the cyclical normalization of toxicity. These findings further highlight the multifaceted nature of toxicity in online video games.

Description

Keywords

games, toxicity, toxic, normalization, moral disengagement

Citation

Nicole A. Beres, Julian Frommel, Elizabeth Reid, Regan L. Mandryk, Madison Klarkowski. 2021. Don’t You Know That You’re Toxic: Normalization of Toxicity in Online Gaming. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445157

Degree

Department

Program

Advisor

Committee

Citation

Nicole A. Beres, Julian Frommel, Elizabeth Reid, Regan L. Mandryk, Madison Klarkowski. 2021. Don’t You Know That You’re Toxic: Normalization of Toxicity in Online Gaming. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445157

Part Of

CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

item.page.relation.ispartofseries

CHI '21;438

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445157

item.page.identifier.pmid

item.page.identifier.pmcid

Collections