Presentation: Anti-Semitism in Gaming Communities

Constantin Winkler in front of the conference banner of NYU's Center for the Study of Antisemitism.

Constantin Winkler at Conference “Critical Examinations of New Media and Anti-Semitism” at the Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism (CSA) at New York University

Anti­semitism is spread on gaming platforms – both unconsciously and implicitly, as well as very openly and deliberately. As part of the panel on “Ideology & Extremism”, Constantin Winkler gave an overview of his research on anti­semitic pheno­mena and actors within gaming culture. He drew on the findings of the RadiGaMe research project, which deals with radi­calization on gaming plat­forms and messen­ger ser­vices.

Accordingly, anti­semitism plays a central role on gaming plat­forms for radi­calized actors from a variety of political move­ments: Anti­semitic actors not only use exis­ting plat­forms and their chats to spread anti­semitic statements and narra­tives. They also deve­lop their own antisemitic games, gamifying real antisemitic acts. This is particularly relevant with regard to so-called modding plat­forms, on which users up­load and share their own modi­fications for games and which have been little re­searched to date.