Changing the Game

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Short description

This activity highlights how to identify and positively respond to sexism online, which negatively minimises women and girls spaces and equitable participation online.

Aims & Objectives

  • To explore the problem of sexist abuse online, particularly in the gaming community

Material and equipment needed

  • Flipchart paper
  • Markers
  • Other: Handouts, Target group descriptions
Handouts
Target Group Descriptions

Instructions

Step by step explanation

Activity 1: Analysing sexism online (20 min)

  • Show participants the handouts on the annex 1 and ask for their views. Prompt with a few questions, if necessary, for example:
  • How do you think a woman might feel if she received something like this?
  • Do you think this kind of abuse is common?
  • What do you think a woman might feel if she wanted to join a game and saw lots of comments like this directed at other women gamers?
  • Tell participants that abuse against women is extremely common, not only in the online gaming community, but also in other online interactions. You could ask whether anyone has seen examples in their own activity online and whether any female participants have received such abuse.
  • Explain that these are all examples of hate speech online and that hate speech is a violation of human rights. If statements like these were to be directed at women or girls offline, they would often be illegal.

Activity 2: creating anti-sexist campaigns (40 min)

  • Explain that the activity will explore some ways in which the group can address through online campaigning the issue of sexist abuse against women gamers. Participants will design their own ‘mini campaign’. They will work in small groups to explore ways of addressing different target audiences who have some relation to the problem.
  • Show participants the list of ‘target audiences’ (annex 2) and invite them to select one to work on for the activity. Try to make sure there are roughly equal numbers in each group. – Group 1: women gamers – Group 2: those who abuse women gamers, or are likely to abuse them – Group 3: other gamers (those who don’t necessarily engage in abuse, but allow it to happen) – Group 4: policy makers, local or national parliamentary representatives, Ministries, and so on – Group 5: online service and content providers, as website owners and hosts, online community managers – Group 6: the general public, so that they can understand the seriousness of the problem and help to support the Campaign
  • Give each group a piece of flipchart paper and their instruction card.
  • Tell them they have about 20 minutes to think about the specific methods they will use to engage their audience. Remind them that others are working on different audiences: they should try to concentrate on the methods and messages that will be most likely to engage their audience’s attention and make a positive contribution to the campaign. A good campaign brings as many people on board as possible!
  • After about 20 minutes, invite the groups to present their suggestions.
  • Allow some time for questions of clarification and comments.
  • Explain to participants that a real campaign strategy needs more than 15 minutes! Very often, initial suggestions are modified or even rejected in favour of different ideas. A good strategy will be worked on by a number of people often over many months, and may be tested out before it is actually implemented. The debriefing will look at participants’ views on their ‘first draft’ of a strategy
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