[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-144825-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":85,"doc-detail-144825-en":134},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":78,"head_meta":80,"extra_data":82,"updated_unix":84},105,"en","exploring-gender-discursive-struggles-about-social-inclusion-in-an-online-gaming-community","Exploring Gender Discursive Struggles About Social Inclusion in an Online Gaming Community","","Purpose – Identify and explore gender discursive struggles about social inclusion observed in an online gaming community in South Africa. Design/methodology/approach – Apply contrapuntal analysis to examine competing discourses across 200+ messages on a local gamer discussion board, drawn from seven threads initiated by women gamer activists. Findings – Four interrelated struggles shape online gamer relations: dominance vs equality, stereotyping vs diversity, competitiveness vs cooperativeness, and privilege vs empowerment.",{"@graph":14,"@context":77},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/exploring-gender-discursive-struggles-about-social-inclusion-in-an-online-gaming-community/144825/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/exploring-gender-discursive-struggles-about-social-inclusion-in-an-online-gaming-community/144825.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Berry Peter","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-27","2026-08-26",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",20,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69,73],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"What is the paper’s main purpose?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"To identify and explore gender discursive struggles about social inclusion in an online gaming community in South Africa.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How do the authors study these discursive struggles?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"They use contrapuntal analysis to analyze competing discourses in 200+ messages posted on a gamer discussion board across seven threads initiated by women gamer activists.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What four struggles are found to animate meanings of gamer relations?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"Dominance versus equality, stereotyping versus diversity, competitiveness versus cooperativeness, and privilege versus empowerment.",{"name":74,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":75},"What practical recommendations does the paper make?",{"text":76,"@type":64},"Game designers should reinforce more accurate and positive stereotypes and foster a less chauvinistic, more representative community; gamers should show greater solidarity to fight for gender equality in online gaming communities.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":79,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":81,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":83,"site_id":7},144825,1787710620,{"code":4,"msg":86,"data":87},"success",[88,92,96,100,105,110,115,119,123,126,130],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":89,"show_sort_weight":90,"slug":91},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":93,"show_sort_weight":94,"slug":95},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":97,"show_sort_weight":98,"slug":99},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":101,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":111,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":112,"show_sort_weight":113,"slug":114},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":116,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},8,30,"research-report",{"id":120,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":121,"show_sort_weight":55,"slug":122},9,"Religion & Spirituality","religion-spirituality",{"id":55,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":55,"slug":125},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":129},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":131,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":132,"show_sort_weight":101,"slug":133},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":86,"data":135},{"doc_id":83,"user_id":136,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":137,"doc_module":4,"category_id":116,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":138,"file_id":139,"file_url":140,"file_type":141,"file_size":142,"view_count":55,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":143,"language":144,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":145,"faqs":146,"seo_title":147,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":84,"read_time":148},1374402524268,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_3d24733baf745e90a7e4bdd5f77d97b2","Exploring gender discursive struggles about social inclusion in an online gaming community  \nRennie Naidoo*, Kalley Coleman and Cordelia Guyo  \nDepartment of Informatics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa  \n*Corresponding author: Rennie Naidoo at: [rennie.naidoo@up.ac.za](rennie.naidoo@up.ac.za)  \nAbstract  \nPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to adopt a critical relational dialectics framework to identify and explore gender discursive struggles about social inclusion observed in an online gaming community, in South Africa.  \nDesign/methodology/approach – The paper uses a technique called contrapuntal analysis to identify and explore competing discourses in over 200 messages on gender struggles about social inclusion posted in the local community‘s gamer discussion board, based on seven threads initiated by women gamer activists.  \nFindings – The findings show how four interrelated gender discursive struggles about social inclusion and social exclusion animated the meanings of online gamer relations: dominance versus equality, stereotyping versus diversity, competitiveness versus cooperativeness, and privilege versus empowerment.  \nPractical applications – Game designers should reinforce more accurate and positive stereotypes to cater for the rapidly growing female gamer segment joining the online gaming market and to develop a less chauvinistic and more diversely representative online gaming community. Enlightened gamers should exercise greater solidarity in fighting for gender equality in online gaming communities.  \nOriginality/value – The critical relational dialectics analysis adopted in this study offers a promising avenue to understand and critique the discursive struggles that arise when online gamers from the different gender groups relate. The findings highlight the unequal discursive power and privilege of many white male gamers when discussing social inclusion. Advancing our understanding of these discursive struggles creates the possibilities for improving social inclusion in online gaming communities.  \nKeywords Social inclusion, gender, online gaming, contrapuntal analysis, critical relational dialectics Paper type Research paper  \nIntroduction  \nFor more than two decades, researchers have reported that video game designs are highly masculine (Bryce and Rutter, 2003; Cote, 2017; Downs and Smith, 2010; Hartmann and Klimmt, 2006; Kaye and Pennington, 2016; King et al., 1991; Maccallum-Stewart, 2008; Salter and Blodgett, 2012) . Content analysis by Glaubke et al. (2001) found that females were included in only 16% of the characters in popular video games. Similarly, Downs and Smith (2010) found bestselling games to include far more male characters than female characters. In fact, Downs and Smith (2010) add that players had far more choice in playing non-human than female characters. Irrespective of genre, game lead characters were disproportionately biased towards males. In contrast, female characters were more likely to be limited to playing the role of a ―prop‖, ―bystander‖ or as a victim of aggression (Glaubke et al., 2001; Burgess et al., 2007; Near, 2013) . Female characters generally wore sexually revealing clothing compared to male characters – that is female characters were ten times more likely to be shown partially or fully nude than male characters (Jansz and Martis, 2007; Glaubke et al., 2001) and female characters, especially females of colour, serve as ‗sexual eye-candy‘ (Leonard, 2003) . Even game reviews mentioned male characters 75% of the time while female characters are only mentioned 33% of the time (Ivory, 2006) . In the massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) , customized avatar characters created by users were still disproportionately white males compared to females and other minority groups (Fox et al., 2015; Waddell, 2014) . This trivialization of women is also evident in professional or competitive video gaming. Compared to the highest male gamer‘s total career earnings of","cbCaikGh0EEMeGms","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaikGh0EEMeGms","pdf",633442,41,"English","# Abstract\n# Introduction\n## Masculinized game design and representation\n## Structural inequalities in the gaming industry\n## Digital divide and barriers to inclusion\n# Research Methodology\n# Findings and Discussion\n## Dominance vs equality\n## Stereotyping vs diversity\n## Competitiveness vs cooperativeness\n## Privilege vs empowerment\n# Practical Applications\n# Originality / Value","[{\"question\":\"What is the paper’s main purpose?\",\"answer\":\"To identify and explore gender discursive struggles about social inclusion in an online gaming community in South Africa.\"},{\"question\":\"How do the authors study these discursive struggles?\",\"answer\":\"They use contrapuntal analysis to analyze competing discourses in 200+ messages posted on a gamer discussion board across seven threads initiated by women gamer activists.\"},{\"question\":\"What four struggles are found to animate meanings of gamer relations?\",\"answer\":\"Dominance versus equality, stereotyping versus diversity, competitiveness versus cooperativeness, and privilege versus empowerment.\"},{\"question\":\"What practical recommendations does the paper make?\",\"answer\":\"Game designers should reinforce more accurate and positive stereotypes and foster a less chauvinistic, more representative community; gamers should show greater solidarity to fight for gender equality in online gaming communities.\"}]","Exploring Gender Discursive Struggles About Social Inclusion in an Online Gaming Community | PDF",103]