When we jump on a gaming platform or on social media, do you ever think - who owns the space? Well, who thinks they “own” the space determines how other people are treated in that space. As it stands, most digital spaces are perceived to belong to white (and sometimes Asian, males). A 2018 Amnesty International Troll Patrol study found that Black women were 84% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets. The 2019 International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Game Developer Satisfaction report - think of this as an overview of the game dev field… the survey revealed that only 2% of survey respondents identified as Black and 81% identified as white; suggesting a large overrepresentation of people identifying as white, and a slight overrepresentation of people identifying as Indigenous and as Asian when compared to census data that year. The same report revealed that 71% of respondents were male with 24% identifying as female, and 3% identified as non-binary. Nearly 80% of all respondents identified as heterosexual.
We build our world with our filter on it. So when we look at this data. We have to ask… who owns the digital space right now? Who’s driving our perception of the world online? Who is setting norms? Even as communities of color build spaces for themselves online, they still function within a white normative, heterosexual expectation which again can lead to harassment like that which was revealed in the Amnesty International report on Twitter.
In this episode, we sat down with Dr. Kishonna Gray, author and assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois - Chicago, to discuss her fascinating research on intersectional tech.
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I'm a former teacher and former college athlete, currently working to make life more equitable for all people. My mission is to get parents to partner with their child's teacher.
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