Social-Psychological Techniques: After the group has been recruited, they develop a set of mechanisms to keep them confident as a group, spread their message, and maintain group order.
Propaganda is the most vital tool in this process. It educates new members in the accepted ideals, reinforces the ideal to existing members, and provides them with convenient methods with which to spread the group's message to those outside. Woolf and Huslitzer talk about propaganda as that which is used to "increase the 'otherness' of the object of hate."
Anyone can view a log of original visual content surrounding #Gamergate
here, and the propagandistic slant is extreme: #Gamergate's primary methods of disseminating information have been in the form of aggressively doctrinaire images, Youtube videos, and pastebins. In a cursory look through the 8chan boards, I found these images:
"Gaming is not a crime," for example, suggests that #Gamergate members consider themselves under siege; the image of movement mascot Vivian James, accompanied by a mantra of all the horrible things #Gamergate claims not to be, emphasizes that her iconography supports integrity in journalism and women in gaming. James, we are to understand, epitomizes #Gamergate despite her womanhood.
The social emotions prompted by these differing slogans show exactly how the ideas of #Gamergate have evolved and taken hold. They feel the need to defend themselves from those who accuse them of being elitist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted. Their intended public image is that they are first and foremost fighting for "integrity in journalism" and being "supportive of women in gaming." This is the image they want to present to the world and each other.
The problem with that presentation, both to others and themselves, is that it contradicts the true, underlying feelings they harbor. This is shown in a comment about a response to my survey:
[IMAGE NOT SUITABLE FOR GTPLANET]
In contrast to the propaganda they're producing and distributing to create the "believed lie" about their cause, this comment is a window into the group's honest attitudes. As Margaret Duffy stated in her 2003 article "Web of Hate: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of the Rhetorical Vision of Hate Groups Online": "Restatements, metaphors, inside cues, and jokes flowing from different communicators may be taken as evidence that a fantasy has chained and people have converged symbolically to a shared reality." In other words:
Am I doing it right, guys?
These asides might seem harmless, and will be passed off as harmless among members of #Gamergate, but the jokes themselves contain so much misogynistic and racist content that it reinforces the "shared reality." Whether these ideas are sincerely held or not, they become a part of the group ideology and inform their actions.
Once these tools and ideologies are developed, #Gamergate uses hate and fear tactics to create a culture of silence around the topic and prevent progressive dialogue around them. McNamee, Peterson, and Pena's 2010 study on "Understanding the Communications of Online Hate Groups" mentions one particular method that is fundamental to the way hate groups take their ideologies and transition them into action: Indictment, or the "messages that blame other groups for various offenses."
In this specific case it chiefly means demonizing the media and entertainment industry, or any other groups that #Gamergate claims to have been misrepresented by. #Gamergate as an organization has been internally confused over the past two months as it tries to sort out its message, but ultimately, the blame falls most consistently and often with the game industry's "corruption" and "corrupt media."
However, their current leaderless and anonymous qualities, combined with their ability to replicate the appearance of active members through dummy accounts, creates a powerful mob mentality in which anybody can suggest a radical way of leveraging hate or fear, pressure others into following suit, and thus continue to perpetuate their narrative through action. By selling themselves as a "grassroots movement of the people," they're able to pressure parties ignorant of their origins into doing what they want.
This practice is known as Astroturfing, and it's how a small group can pressure a big distributor like Intel into
pulling their ads from Gamasutra. (Note: I was
published at Gamasutra last March.) It's how hundreds of emails get sent to an address asking that someone be fired for having an "SJW-oriented opinion." (SJW meaning "Social Justice Warrior.") This is how a thread of two people talking about corrupting my data led to an instant deluge of mocking and harassing responses
. Worst of all,
this is how Brianna Wu is driven from her home under
a barrage of thousands of rape and death threats, accompanied by her home address. While the movement may not name a leader, to say that they are without organization or without strategies for them to enact their cause as one is far from the truth.
