November 7, 2022 • 29 mins
Dr. Joan Donavan, research director of Harvard’s Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics & Public Policy and coauthor of the new book Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, charts how the impact of GamerGate is still shaping our political landscape today.
Check out Dr. Donavan’s book MEME WARS: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/meme-wars-9781635578638/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So it felt like all of the different topics we're
going to be exploring on Internet Hate Machine kind of
all intersected last week with the finalization of Elon Musk
taking over Twitter, the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul
by a man armed with a hammer, and of course
Elon Musk using his newly purchased social media platform to
spread baseless conspiracy theories about the attack. Now, according to
(00:25):
Paul Pelosi's alleged attackers own writings online, it was gamer
Gate that he credited was providing a gateway into extremism
and conspiracy theories. And you know, I started this podcast
to explore the ways that the Internet can have a
big impact on our social and political landscape, and honestly,
sometimes I kind of hate being right about it because
(00:47):
online movements like gamer Gate are still harming our political
landscape today. And Dr Joan Donovan, research director at the
Harvard Kennedy Shortenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy,
co author of the book Memoirs, is not surprised. Dr Donovan,
thank you so much for being here. So were you
surprised to find out that Paul Pelosi's attacker credited gamer
(01:10):
Gate as being a political turning point for him. Unfortunately,
in this world that I work in, I very rarely
am surprised. So why this is important, of course, is
that there are moments in our Internet history that many
people consider landmark moments. For on the right, they call
(01:33):
it getting red pilled, right, And so the red pill
is a UM reference to the matrix. You can either
take the blue pill and live your life as if
nothing is going on. You take the red pill and
you can see the world for what it is. And
there were many things going on during gamer Gate, UM,
particularly violent misogyny, anti black racism, homophobia, transphobia. So within
(02:01):
gamer Gate, there were many ways in which someone could
have become red pilled or awoke into this world where
they think they're finally seeing reality for the first time. UM.
And this is intensely problematic generally because the way in
which this starts usually is by digging into more and
(02:25):
more media online. So you move away from mainstream media,
you think the mainstream media is there simply to lie
to you, and you start to go into these different
rabbit holes trying to understand, well, then how do I
get how do I make sense of this world? Conspiracies
tend to fill that void. The difference with gamer Gate, though,
(02:47):
is that this was um a real, a real set
of events that we're happening and unfolding in this moment
where it wasn't just that we were seeing um, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic,
inciting content moving around online. It was also starting to
(03:10):
show up in people's real lives and we saw the
violence of swatting and the harassments and um even intimidating
people at their workplaces, in their homes or at conferences.
And so it was a very different time as well.
(03:32):
And this maybe will be the last point I'll say
on this, is it during gamer Gate people learned these
trolls and these misogynists, uh, these racists, all these ILKs
of of people learned how to coordinate with one another.
So it goes back even before gamer Gate and different
(03:55):
campaigns that most famously probably is your slipsh Knowing, which
I know that you've covered as well, UM, where black
feminists were able to figure out very early on that
they were being impersonated on Twitter, uh, and we're able
to show what those accounts meant, um and what what
(04:17):
they were up to, and how easy it is to
manipulate the system, are the design of social media in
order to produce this targeted harassment, And so I wouldn't
be surprised, although I don't have any evidence of it yet,
that moments like that as well, that are highly participatory,
that have these instantaneous feelings of reward and camaraderie for
(04:42):
getting someone to shape you know, shut down their account,
getting them to block you, whatnot, is definitely something that
we see many unfortunately many of the folks that end
up being part of these movements over the long term, uh,
participate in early on. Yeah, it's interesting that you bring
(05:03):
that up on this series. We're starting with HB. R. Richards,
you know, dongle Gate, and you know, this this thing
that I think a lot of people, even people who
were pretty online might have seen as like a blip,
but to me really marks something interesting, an interesting shift
around exactly what you were talking about. This the reward
(05:23):
of feeling like, oh, we got this person to you know,
shut up online or to get or to lose their
job or to you know, you know, shut down their
accounts or block people like that, having a sort of
instantaneous reward for folks and that being like a participatory
thing that people would want to take part in. Yeah,
(05:44):
and that's I think that actually speaks to the changing
nature of political participation. Uh. You know, when we first
started to think about the Internet as a political space, blogs,
everybody had a blog, they had a political opinion then.
And you start to see, slowly, beginning with the so
called Arab Spring, people are using the Internet to get coordinated,
(06:08):
and they're doing it to get coordinated in public space.
And I think what the far right does really, uh,
what the far right really adds to this set of
tactics is they have these hybrid sets of tactics where
they do a lot of online organizing and the point
is to upset or defame someone online. And it's it's
(06:34):
for them, almost just as effective as you know, showing
up at the mayor's house and protesting in front of
his house until he resigns. Right. For them, the winds
are a lot the goals, and the winds tend to
be a lot smaller, but they also tend to be
quite a bit more personally painful for people who become
(06:56):
targets of this kind of harassment and h When it
comes to what we've seen in the social media of
the man who attacked Mr. Pelosi is is that he
had really following, followed along with a lot of the
more mainstream Internet conspiracy theories. Uh, it's not the case
(07:20):
that he's in things that are it's well, you know this,
there's like the internet, and and there's the internet where
there's things that are popular that nobody has ever heard of.
But he seems to be in that popular vein of
conspiracy and he's following along, which denotes to me that
(07:41):
he was part of a community that he was, you know,
listening to other people and following along, thinking he was
doing his own research. Um, but ultimately he was being
fed all of these lies and and the way that
these things start to plug together around election denialism and
(08:01):
in the subversion of the US democratic process. Um, if
you truly do believe that all else has been tried
and failed, the only recourse people feel that they have
is violence and um. Reading some of the pronouncements of
(08:22):
this man where he says, you know, he wanted to
break Nancy Pelosi's kneecaps so that she would be a
reminder to politicians that you can't just lie, and that
it's that kind of delusional belief in one's own power. Uh.
(08:42):
That makes people move from the wires to the weeds,
and this what is perceived as a very lone wolf
kind of way. But um, that's not to say that
this person hadn't been supported in part of communities online
before he ended up taking these last steps. I would
(09:03):
imagine that for a lot of people, the idea that
this movement online of guys who were big mad about
ethics and gaming journalism in scare quotes would then be
related to this like political attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband.
Do you think we're gonna start seeing more people making
that connection of those two of those two things being related. Well,
(09:26):
what's interesting I think is um a few things, which
is that we are getting a lot of different vantage
points from which to tell the history of gamer Gate.
You can tell the story through the tactics of resistance
uh in our book, um, or you could tell the
story from the vantage point of how mass media covered it.
(09:49):
In our book, we really wanted to understand the relationship
between Steve Bannon and Milo U and Opolis and the
way in which Milo A. Rich only had come out
and thought Gamergate was dumb and he misread the audience.
He missed it, and so he had to do Amia
Cupola and come back and say, yes, this is about
(10:12):
ethics and gaming journalism. And because he had the platform
of bright Bart, it gave that movement the belief in
their own legitimacy. Because that's what media really does, is
it makes people feel legitimate and recognized and seen. That's
why all movements strive to have media coverage. Um and
(10:35):
so in meanmore is, as we were trying to tell
that story, it was really important that we looked at
and tried to show how some of those tactics that
Milo is part of organizing, that we're being organized on
four Chan, then get filtered through someone like Steve Bannon,
(10:56):
who is the bridge between these online populist movements and
the President of the United States and the Republican Party.
And and you see this dramatic shift in how Trump
uses his own social media how you know, um white
House media and media properties as you as used once.
(11:21):
These um uh folks who are learning from that very
online contingent of people are learning how to take those
tactics and move them into mainstream politics. I mean, there's
really nothing fundamentally that different from what was happening during
(11:42):
game or gate to when Trump is pointing at CNN
and calling it fake news. Right, It's it's almost the
same narrative. It's really about ethics and mainstream journalism, right.
And I think one as we start to think through, well,
what are people asking for from media? Does mainstream media
(12:06):
have a responsibility to tell the truth? If it does,
then what is this partisan media that we're paying a
lot of attention to do we allow news organizations that
are partisan to call themselves news? It becomes much more
complicated question once we realize that the tactics that seemed
(12:26):
jokey and small and part of low culture then become
mainstream political tactics. And uh. And there's a lot to
be said though for studying the resistance to that and
figuring out, well, how did people get through game or GIT?
How did feminists come out the other side? Um? Which
(12:48):
I know some of your some of your own research
and podcasting has done. Uh. But there is a disconnect
here between that style of existence that tends to happen
within communities. There's no real connection between that in any
(13:08):
political party type of way. Right, You don't see um,
the same kind of sutures like you do on the right,
between the internet world and the party. Uh So there
is some work to think about related to the gamer
Gate tactics becoming mainstream political tactics. There's a lot of
(13:34):
work to think through, well what is the resistance to
that look like? And are there politicians that are willing
to take up the charge and make sure that those
resistance tactics get the same kind of value and attention
as all of the bad the baddies, you know, it's
(13:56):
all the bad guys online. That's such an interest in
point that I didn't even really think about because you know,
Bannon clearly had a lot of takeaways about how those
tactics could be used to build political power on the right,
and we don't similarly have a kind of infrastructure that
then asks well, how did feminists and black women online,
(14:19):
you know, like resist to this? How did they How
did they lean into the power of community to to
strengthen their own online spaces even when in people with
institutional power really didn't help them. And so we don't
really have that same level of interest I guess in
how we then support that same kind of resistance that
(14:40):
there is on the right. Yeah, I mean it's a
tricky it's a tricky thing. I've talked in the past
with Ruhab Benjamin about this and about tactical UH disclosures
because you don't want what you don't want happening. Is
many much mainstream attention to the tech picks that are
working when they're working, because usually when we're talking about
(15:04):
community UH safety, we're talking about instances where community members
have figured out an insideline to get things done, either
to get corporations to change their minds about something I'm
thinking here about the the organizing um of color of
change around blood money and getting PayPal and other payment
(15:27):
services to stop paying white supremacists. UM. Those tactics they
feel very ephemeral because I think, you know, they've been
I mean, they've been um historicized by academics, but they
haven't been taken up as serious policy by politicians. So
(15:51):
when I would say that when we talk about institutional support,
you know, academics can take it far, but really what
we need is that layered or that muscle between those
resistance tactics translated into policy so that we can change
(16:12):
the design and not just try to change, you know,
one by one the bad actors in the work that
he and I do. So much of the work that
we're doing is like focused on individual bad actors or
(16:32):
individual and it just feels like playing whack a mole.
And it is, you know, it's what we're doing, but
it never feels like enough. It feels like even if
we were doing even if we were worked doing this
work at the capacity that we you know, like working
at seven, it wouldn't be enough. We need we need
infrastructure change, We need deeper, more meaningful changes, because you know,
(16:56):
banning deep platforming a bad actor here and there is great,
but it's not going to have that like lasting change. Yeah,
and I you know, that's where we end up at
the end of our book. Really is this idea that
the design has to be much more intentional. You know,
if you think about Musk buying Twitter, Twitter is the
(17:19):
most influential news distribution system in the world. Now, it
was never designed purposefully to transmit the news, right, and
so Musk, who's now anti media, is in charge of it,
and you know, you have to wonder where he's going
to go with that. But it's certainly not going to
(17:42):
be into you know, adding to the integrity of information online, right, um.
And so you know, I do think that there are
great academics out there that do that work of of
working with movement. I'm thinking here of my my dear
friend that you see or buying Roger Crowe, who work
(18:02):
with movements and try to do research based upon the
questions that they have. I do think it's really important,
especially today, to keep our eyes on these the innovation
and the kind of entrepreneurship of the far right, um,
(18:23):
because of how important they are for culture in terms
of shaping the culture, especially around certain issues that we
cannot fail on. We cannot fail on fighting anti black racism, transphobia,
especially these days. Um. You know, we have to fight
(18:46):
for public health because the state's not going to do it.
And so you know, I often think about it is
this paradoxical process where I'm always trying to understand the
broader system implications for it. But I'm never going to
make the mistake of thinking that pro social movements use
the same technology the same way than anti democratic ones
(19:10):
do or white supremacists do. It might fundamentally be the
same technology, but they bring to it different sets of values,
different sets skill sets even uh, and make that platform
or that media do something that other groups aren't able
to or haven't really thought of yet. And that's why
(19:32):
I think it's up to us to try to build
more of a whole of society approach. We want to
be working with technologists, we want to be working with
UM librarians and educators, we want to be working with
activists UM because we need to reshape the information ecosystem.
(19:55):
And you know, it's a pretty dark day for a
lot of people who formed really lasting and important friendships
and social solidarities on Twitter, because if you can't trust
the platform, it's going to be harder and harder to
trust each other. And so it's going to be really
(20:16):
important going forward that people find alternative spaces to have
these broader, bigger picture conversations, especially UM people that live
in diasporas that need to build global solidarities. UM. But it's,
as I've been thinking about it, you know, it's in
(20:41):
some ways, Musk is undoing the last decade of hard
work of a lot of people, not just the people
who work at Twitter, but a lot of people who
have made these networks and friendships and organizations along the way. UM.
Which is not to say that we have to throw
that all away instant enviously, But I do think it
gives us more of a mission driven focus on getting
(21:07):
the infrastructure in place and um thinking about well, how
could that infrastructure then be weaponized against us like it
was during events like game or game. Yeah. I I've
heard you speak and write really eloquently about the that
the deep need to build a public interest internet and
(21:29):
internet that has really meant conserved the people. But I
also happen to know that you're a little bit of
like a pessimist, that you aren't necessarily super Uh. Well,
you tell me, how do you feel about that? I mean,
you know, I I'm not Yeah, I'm not one to
(21:50):
suggest that this is the whole of it, which is
that if we get the technology right, all of a sudden,
you know, what ails us in our society is somehow
going to be fixed. UM. But I do know what
it's like to live without the Internet. I am old
enough to remember things were different, uh, and the scale
(22:13):
was smaller and the achievements were smaller. Um. And so
there's been a lot of forward social progress UM and
a lot of accountability that has been uh you know,
spread around as a result of social media UM. And
(22:33):
we've seen new voices rise and fall, and that I
think that's what I love about the Internet is the
ability to meet and coordinate with people that are not
like me, or people that are like me but are
so far away from where I am that I never
would have had the opportunity to meet them otherwise. And
you know, you're talking to a punker that like booked
(22:55):
their first tour on a o LL you know, like
a l hardcore music chat room, right, Like that's where
I come from. And so yeah, I think that there
are things that are exciting, different possibilities that are exciting. Um.
And each you know, group finds its platform in those
(23:15):
platforms evolve. Um. And maybe it is the case that
you know, when I was finding my identity of my people,
my platform was the record player, right in the sense
that like punk was still holding onto this you know,
analog technology. Um. And but it created this whole culture
(23:39):
of trading and and listening and making tapes for other people.
It doesn't feel the same with Spotify. It almost feels
like you're cheating when you're like, oh, yeah, I'll put
you together a little mixtapep hear and ship it. Right.
It just doesn't have the same time commitment, I think.
(24:00):
But that's not to say that that's my experience, but
that's not to say that that's the same experience of
a young person who's like making videos and and expressing themselves.
And those are the things that I think we're gonna
lose if we don't step up to protect the health
of the Internet now, and if we don't ask for
(24:22):
layers of public infrastructure to ensure that one man with
you know, billions of dollars can't take away something that
has value for tens of millions or hundreds of millions
UM as well. I think conversely, thinking about information in
(24:45):
the public interest, the history of our journalism had to
go through a process like this, you know, where journalists
really had to think about how do we professionalize, how
do we uh create information nation that is objective? UM.
We don't always like that style of journalism, especially if
(25:07):
it gets to both sides e especially if one side
is lying. Um. But there's a method there and a
commitment to ethics, and we don't have any of that
at the backbone of our Internet. When it comes to
these few companies that have really committed a smash and
grab on our economy, and taken with it many of
(25:31):
the many of much of the funding for our truth
selling institutions. So you know, I'm I'm I'm a little
bit optimistic about what we should build and how do
we do it, and how do we make sure that
it's serving the widest possible group. And I think that
we do need to deal with some of our antitrust
(25:51):
laws to get there and break up some of these
companies that have bought and bought in everything. Um, but pessimistically, yeah,
like I you know, the people that hate us aren't
going away. They're not going away. They're not going to
go away just because we build the most perfect technology.
(26:12):
They're not going to go away if we build you know,
gates around our properties either. It's just you know, at
some point we have to reckon with each other. And
and um, my commitment to life is always about dignity.
You know, how do we make sure people live with
dignity and that they live lives with you know, certain
(26:35):
civil rights and and I do believe that the right
to communication should be free. And I do think that
the right to communication is critical, But I don't think
that means you should be able to you know, politically
oppress people, or that you should have access to broadcasting
(26:56):
to eighty million people lies and disinformation, or hate, harassment
and incitement. But I do you know, I I think
I hold paradoxical opinions that maybe aren't completely reconcilable. Yeah,
I mean, I just said that this is a non
sec order. But I have to tell you when you
(27:17):
were talking about the vibe of you know, records and
making mix tapes, I was in a relationship with someone
that I did not know was a big jam band fan.
And then when we moved in together, I found all
these boxes under the bed and I was like, what's
in these boxes? And he was like, oh, yeah, I've
been for ten years. I would go to parking lots
(27:38):
where Grateful Dead concerts were happening, and I would trade
and buy and sell bootlegs, and that's this. This is
a box of most bootlegs. And I was like, what
the hell, I mean, we are losing I know, yeah,
and it's it's happening in different ways. I mean, yeah.
I was just in Poland and I went to a
(28:00):
party where, um, many of the people were in the
crowd enjoying the music and the DJs, but they were
making TikTok videos in the crowd, and I was just like,
why are all these people videotaping themselves right while there's
a performer happening, right, and and but it's like, you know,
maybe that's just how they feel expression, right and community
(28:23):
and and uh. But I also don't want us to
lose the capacity to realize that our all of our
humanities are connected, you know, in a very cheesy kind
of like, well, at the end of the day, we
all go to live together. Um, but you know, I
(28:45):
think that there are lines that need to be drawn,
of course with with that kind of rhetoric, but yeah,
like I think the role I would love for the
Internet to play in people's lives is one of creativity,
one of bringing people together of um, you know, not
so much just entertainment, but of building and collaborating together.
(29:09):
That's a beautiful vision. Dr Donovan, thank you so much
for being here. Internet Hate Machine is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
check out our website cool zone media dot com, or
find us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
So it felt like all of the different topics we're
going to be exploring on Internet Hate Machine kind of
all intersected last week with the finalization of Elon Musk
taking over Twitter, the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul
by a man armed with a hammer, and of course
Elon Musk using his newly purchased social media platform to
spread baseless conspiracy theories about the attack. Now, according to
(00:25):
Paul Pelosi's alleged attackers own writings online, it was gamer
Gate that he credited was providing a gateway into extremism
and conspiracy theories. And you know, I started this podcast
to explore the ways that the Internet can have a
big impact on our social and political landscape, and honestly,
sometimes I kind of hate being right about it because
(00:47):
online movements like gamer Gate are still harming our political
landscape today. And Dr Joan Donovan, research director at the
Harvard Kennedy Shortenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy,
co author of the book Memoirs, is not surprised. Dr Donovan,
thank you so much for being here. So were you
surprised to find out that Paul Pelosi's attacker credited gamer
(01:10):
Gate as being a political turning point for him. Unfortunately,
in this world that I work in, I very rarely
am surprised. So why this is important, of course, is
that there are moments in our Internet history that many
people consider landmark moments. For on the right, they call
(01:33):
it getting red pilled, right, And so the red pill
is a UM reference to the matrix. You can either
take the blue pill and live your life as if
nothing is going on. You take the red pill and
you can see the world for what it is. And
there were many things going on during gamer Gate, UM,
particularly violent misogyny, anti black racism, homophobia, transphobia. So within
(02:01):
gamer Gate, there were many ways in which someone could
have become red pilled or awoke into this world where
they think they're finally seeing reality for the first time. UM.
And this is intensely problematic generally because the way in
which this starts usually is by digging into more and
(02:25):
more media online. So you move away from mainstream media,
you think the mainstream media is there simply to lie
to you, and you start to go into these different
rabbit holes trying to understand, well, then how do I
get how do I make sense of this world? Conspiracies
tend to fill that void. The difference with gamer Gate, though,
(02:47):
is that this was um a real, a real set
of events that we're happening and unfolding in this moment
where it wasn't just that we were seeing um, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic,
inciting content moving around online. It was also starting to
(03:10):
show up in people's real lives and we saw the
violence of swatting and the harassments and um even intimidating
people at their workplaces, in their homes or at conferences.
And so it was a very different time as well.
(03:32):
And this maybe will be the last point I'll say
on this, is it during gamer Gate people learned these
trolls and these misogynists, uh, these racists, all these ILKs
of of people learned how to coordinate with one another.
So it goes back even before gamer Gate and different
(03:55):
campaigns that most famously probably is your slipsh Knowing, which
I know that you've covered as well, UM, where black
feminists were able to figure out very early on that
they were being impersonated on Twitter, uh, and we're able
to show what those accounts meant, um and what what
(04:17):
they were up to, and how easy it is to
manipulate the system, are the design of social media in
order to produce this targeted harassment, And so I wouldn't
be surprised, although I don't have any evidence of it yet,
that moments like that as well, that are highly participatory,
that have these instantaneous feelings of reward and camaraderie for
(04:42):
getting someone to shape you know, shut down their account,
getting them to block you, whatnot, is definitely something that
we see many unfortunately many of the folks that end
up being part of these movements over the long term, uh,
participate in early on. Yeah, it's interesting that you bring
(05:03):
that up on this series. We're starting with HB. R. Richards,
you know, dongle Gate, and you know, this this thing
that I think a lot of people, even people who
were pretty online might have seen as like a blip,
but to me really marks something interesting, an interesting shift
around exactly what you were talking about. This the reward
(05:23):
of feeling like, oh, we got this person to you know,
shut up online or to get or to lose their
job or to you know, you know, shut down their
accounts or block people like that, having a sort of
instantaneous reward for folks and that being like a participatory
thing that people would want to take part in. Yeah,
(05:44):
and that's I think that actually speaks to the changing
nature of political participation. Uh. You know, when we first
started to think about the Internet as a political space, blogs,
everybody had a blog, they had a political opinion then.
And you start to see, slowly, beginning with the so
called Arab Spring, people are using the Internet to get coordinated,
(06:08):
and they're doing it to get coordinated in public space.
And I think what the far right does really, uh,
what the far right really adds to this set of
tactics is they have these hybrid sets of tactics where
they do a lot of online organizing and the point
is to upset or defame someone online. And it's it's
(06:34):
for them, almost just as effective as you know, showing
up at the mayor's house and protesting in front of
his house until he resigns. Right. For them, the winds
are a lot the goals, and the winds tend to
be a lot smaller, but they also tend to be
quite a bit more personally painful for people who become
(06:56):
targets of this kind of harassment and h When it
comes to what we've seen in the social media of
the man who attacked Mr. Pelosi is is that he
had really following, followed along with a lot of the
more mainstream Internet conspiracy theories. Uh, it's not the case
(07:20):
that he's in things that are it's well, you know this,
there's like the internet, and and there's the internet where
there's things that are popular that nobody has ever heard of.
But he seems to be in that popular vein of
conspiracy and he's following along, which denotes to me that
(07:41):
he was part of a community that he was, you know,
listening to other people and following along, thinking he was
doing his own research. Um, but ultimately he was being
fed all of these lies and and the way that
these things start to plug together around election denialism and
(08:01):
in the subversion of the US democratic process. Um, if
you truly do believe that all else has been tried
and failed, the only recourse people feel that they have
is violence and um. Reading some of the pronouncements of
(08:22):
this man where he says, you know, he wanted to
break Nancy Pelosi's kneecaps so that she would be a
reminder to politicians that you can't just lie, and that
it's that kind of delusional belief in one's own power. Uh.
(08:42):
That makes people move from the wires to the weeds,
and this what is perceived as a very lone wolf
kind of way. But um, that's not to say that
this person hadn't been supported in part of communities online
before he ended up taking these last steps. I would
(09:03):
imagine that for a lot of people, the idea that
this movement online of guys who were big mad about
ethics and gaming journalism in scare quotes would then be
related to this like political attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband.
Do you think we're gonna start seeing more people making
that connection of those two of those two things being related. Well,
(09:26):
what's interesting I think is um a few things, which
is that we are getting a lot of different vantage
points from which to tell the history of gamer Gate.
You can tell the story through the tactics of resistance
uh in our book, um, or you could tell the
story from the vantage point of how mass media covered it.
(09:49):
In our book, we really wanted to understand the relationship
between Steve Bannon and Milo U and Opolis and the
way in which Milo A. Rich only had come out
and thought Gamergate was dumb and he misread the audience.
He missed it, and so he had to do Amia
Cupola and come back and say, yes, this is about
(10:12):
ethics and gaming journalism. And because he had the platform
of bright Bart, it gave that movement the belief in
their own legitimacy. Because that's what media really does, is
it makes people feel legitimate and recognized and seen. That's
why all movements strive to have media coverage. Um and
(10:35):
so in meanmore is, as we were trying to tell
that story, it was really important that we looked at
and tried to show how some of those tactics that
Milo is part of organizing, that we're being organized on
four Chan, then get filtered through someone like Steve Bannon,
(10:56):
who is the bridge between these online populist movements and
the President of the United States and the Republican Party.
And and you see this dramatic shift in how Trump
uses his own social media how you know, um white
House media and media properties as you as used once.
(11:21):
These um uh folks who are learning from that very
online contingent of people are learning how to take those
tactics and move them into mainstream politics. I mean, there's
really nothing fundamentally that different from what was happening during
(11:42):
game or gate to when Trump is pointing at CNN
and calling it fake news. Right, It's it's almost the
same narrative. It's really about ethics and mainstream journalism, right.
And I think one as we start to think through, well,
what are people asking for from media? Does mainstream media
(12:06):
have a responsibility to tell the truth? If it does,
then what is this partisan media that we're paying a
lot of attention to do we allow news organizations that
are partisan to call themselves news? It becomes much more
complicated question once we realize that the tactics that seemed
(12:26):
jokey and small and part of low culture then become
mainstream political tactics. And uh. And there's a lot to
be said though for studying the resistance to that and
figuring out, well, how did people get through game or GIT?
How did feminists come out the other side? Um? Which
(12:48):
I know some of your some of your own research
and podcasting has done. Uh. But there is a disconnect
here between that style of existence that tends to happen
within communities. There's no real connection between that in any
(13:08):
political party type of way. Right, You don't see um,
the same kind of sutures like you do on the right,
between the internet world and the party. Uh So there
is some work to think about related to the gamer
Gate tactics becoming mainstream political tactics. There's a lot of
(13:34):
work to think through, well what is the resistance to
that look like? And are there politicians that are willing
to take up the charge and make sure that those
resistance tactics get the same kind of value and attention
as all of the bad the baddies, you know, it's
(13:56):
all the bad guys online. That's such an interest in
point that I didn't even really think about because you know,
Bannon clearly had a lot of takeaways about how those
tactics could be used to build political power on the right,
and we don't similarly have a kind of infrastructure that
then asks well, how did feminists and black women online,
(14:19):
you know, like resist to this? How did they How
did they lean into the power of community to to
strengthen their own online spaces even when in people with
institutional power really didn't help them. And so we don't
really have that same level of interest I guess in
how we then support that same kind of resistance that
(14:40):
there is on the right. Yeah, I mean it's a
tricky it's a tricky thing. I've talked in the past
with Ruhab Benjamin about this and about tactical UH disclosures
because you don't want what you don't want happening. Is
many much mainstream attention to the tech picks that are
working when they're working, because usually when we're talking about
(15:04):
community UH safety, we're talking about instances where community members
have figured out an insideline to get things done, either
to get corporations to change their minds about something I'm
thinking here about the the organizing um of color of
change around blood money and getting PayPal and other payment
(15:27):
services to stop paying white supremacists. UM. Those tactics they
feel very ephemeral because I think, you know, they've been
I mean, they've been um historicized by academics, but they
haven't been taken up as serious policy by politicians. So
(15:51):
when I would say that when we talk about institutional support,
you know, academics can take it far, but really what
we need is that layered or that muscle between those
resistance tactics translated into policy so that we can change
(16:12):
the design and not just try to change, you know,
one by one the bad actors in the work that
he and I do. So much of the work that
we're doing is like focused on individual bad actors or
(16:32):
individual and it just feels like playing whack a mole.
And it is, you know, it's what we're doing, but
it never feels like enough. It feels like even if
we were doing even if we were worked doing this
work at the capacity that we you know, like working
at seven, it wouldn't be enough. We need we need
infrastructure change, We need deeper, more meaningful changes, because you know,
(16:56):
banning deep platforming a bad actor here and there is great,
but it's not going to have that like lasting change. Yeah,
and I you know, that's where we end up at
the end of our book. Really is this idea that
the design has to be much more intentional. You know,
if you think about Musk buying Twitter, Twitter is the
(17:19):
most influential news distribution system in the world. Now, it
was never designed purposefully to transmit the news, right, and
so Musk, who's now anti media, is in charge of it,
and you know, you have to wonder where he's going
to go with that. But it's certainly not going to
(17:42):
be into you know, adding to the integrity of information online, right, um.
And so you know, I do think that there are
great academics out there that do that work of of
working with movement. I'm thinking here of my my dear
friend that you see or buying Roger Crowe, who work
(18:02):
with movements and try to do research based upon the
questions that they have. I do think it's really important,
especially today, to keep our eyes on these the innovation
and the kind of entrepreneurship of the far right, um,
(18:23):
because of how important they are for culture in terms
of shaping the culture, especially around certain issues that we
cannot fail on. We cannot fail on fighting anti black racism, transphobia,
especially these days. Um. You know, we have to fight
(18:46):
for public health because the state's not going to do it.
And so you know, I often think about it is
this paradoxical process where I'm always trying to understand the
broader system implications for it. But I'm never going to
make the mistake of thinking that pro social movements use
the same technology the same way than anti democratic ones
(19:10):
do or white supremacists do. It might fundamentally be the
same technology, but they bring to it different sets of values,
different sets skill sets even uh, and make that platform
or that media do something that other groups aren't able
to or haven't really thought of yet. And that's why
(19:32):
I think it's up to us to try to build
more of a whole of society approach. We want to
be working with technologists, we want to be working with
UM librarians and educators, we want to be working with
activists UM because we need to reshape the information ecosystem.
(19:55):
And you know, it's a pretty dark day for a
lot of people who formed really lasting and important friendships
and social solidarities on Twitter, because if you can't trust
the platform, it's going to be harder and harder to
trust each other. And so it's going to be really
(20:16):
important going forward that people find alternative spaces to have
these broader, bigger picture conversations, especially UM people that live
in diasporas that need to build global solidarities. UM. But it's,
as I've been thinking about it, you know, it's in
(20:41):
some ways, Musk is undoing the last decade of hard
work of a lot of people, not just the people
who work at Twitter, but a lot of people who
have made these networks and friendships and organizations along the way. UM.
Which is not to say that we have to throw
that all away instant enviously, But I do think it
gives us more of a mission driven focus on getting
(21:07):
the infrastructure in place and um thinking about well, how
could that infrastructure then be weaponized against us like it
was during events like game or game. Yeah. I I've
heard you speak and write really eloquently about the that
the deep need to build a public interest internet and
(21:29):
internet that has really meant conserved the people. But I
also happen to know that you're a little bit of
like a pessimist, that you aren't necessarily super Uh. Well,
you tell me, how do you feel about that? I mean,
you know, I I'm not Yeah, I'm not one to
(21:50):
suggest that this is the whole of it, which is
that if we get the technology right, all of a sudden,
you know, what ails us in our society is somehow
going to be fixed. UM. But I do know what
it's like to live without the Internet. I am old
enough to remember things were different, uh, and the scale
(22:13):
was smaller and the achievements were smaller. Um. And so
there's been a lot of forward social progress UM and
a lot of accountability that has been uh you know,
spread around as a result of social media UM. And
(22:33):
we've seen new voices rise and fall, and that I
think that's what I love about the Internet is the
ability to meet and coordinate with people that are not
like me, or people that are like me but are
so far away from where I am that I never
would have had the opportunity to meet them otherwise. And
you know, you're talking to a punker that like booked
(22:55):
their first tour on a o LL you know, like
a l hardcore music chat room, right, Like that's where
I come from. And so yeah, I think that there
are things that are exciting, different possibilities that are exciting. Um.
And each you know, group finds its platform in those
(23:15):
platforms evolve. Um. And maybe it is the case that
you know, when I was finding my identity of my people,
my platform was the record player, right in the sense
that like punk was still holding onto this you know,
analog technology. Um. And but it created this whole culture
(23:39):
of trading and and listening and making tapes for other people.
It doesn't feel the same with Spotify. It almost feels
like you're cheating when you're like, oh, yeah, I'll put
you together a little mixtapep hear and ship it. Right.
It just doesn't have the same time commitment, I think.
(24:00):
But that's not to say that that's my experience, but
that's not to say that that's the same experience of
a young person who's like making videos and and expressing themselves.
And those are the things that I think we're gonna
lose if we don't step up to protect the health
of the Internet now, and if we don't ask for
(24:22):
layers of public infrastructure to ensure that one man with
you know, billions of dollars can't take away something that
has value for tens of millions or hundreds of millions
UM as well. I think conversely, thinking about information in
(24:45):
the public interest, the history of our journalism had to
go through a process like this, you know, where journalists
really had to think about how do we professionalize, how
do we uh create information nation that is objective? UM.
We don't always like that style of journalism, especially if
(25:07):
it gets to both sides e especially if one side
is lying. Um. But there's a method there and a
commitment to ethics, and we don't have any of that
at the backbone of our Internet. When it comes to
these few companies that have really committed a smash and
grab on our economy, and taken with it many of
(25:31):
the many of much of the funding for our truth
selling institutions. So you know, I'm I'm I'm a little
bit optimistic about what we should build and how do
we do it, and how do we make sure that
it's serving the widest possible group. And I think that
we do need to deal with some of our antitrust
(25:51):
laws to get there and break up some of these
companies that have bought and bought in everything. Um, but pessimistically, yeah,
like I you know, the people that hate us aren't
going away. They're not going away. They're not going to
go away just because we build the most perfect technology.
(26:12):
They're not going to go away if we build you know,
gates around our properties either. It's just you know, at
some point we have to reckon with each other. And
and um, my commitment to life is always about dignity.
You know, how do we make sure people live with
dignity and that they live lives with you know, certain
(26:35):
civil rights and and I do believe that the right
to communication should be free. And I do think that
the right to communication is critical, But I don't think
that means you should be able to you know, politically
oppress people, or that you should have access to broadcasting
(26:56):
to eighty million people lies and disinformation, or hate, harassment
and incitement. But I do you know, I I think
I hold paradoxical opinions that maybe aren't completely reconcilable. Yeah,
I mean, I just said that this is a non
sec order. But I have to tell you when you
(27:17):
were talking about the vibe of you know, records and
making mix tapes, I was in a relationship with someone
that I did not know was a big jam band fan.
And then when we moved in together, I found all
these boxes under the bed and I was like, what's
in these boxes? And he was like, oh, yeah, I've
been for ten years. I would go to parking lots
(27:38):
where Grateful Dead concerts were happening, and I would trade
and buy and sell bootlegs, and that's this. This is
a box of most bootlegs. And I was like, what
the hell, I mean, we are losing I know, yeah,
and it's it's happening in different ways. I mean, yeah.
I was just in Poland and I went to a
(28:00):
party where, um, many of the people were in the
crowd enjoying the music and the DJs, but they were
making TikTok videos in the crowd, and I was just like,
why are all these people videotaping themselves right while there's
a performer happening, right, and and but it's like, you know,
maybe that's just how they feel expression, right and community
(28:23):
and and uh. But I also don't want us to
lose the capacity to realize that our all of our
humanities are connected, you know, in a very cheesy kind
of like, well, at the end of the day, we
all go to live together. Um, but you know, I
(28:45):
think that there are lines that need to be drawn,
of course with with that kind of rhetoric, but yeah,
like I think the role I would love for the
Internet to play in people's lives is one of creativity,
one of bringing people together of um, you know, not
so much just entertainment, but of building and collaborating together.
(29:09):
That's a beautiful vision. Dr Donovan, thank you so much
for being here. Internet Hate Machine is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
check out our website cool zone media dot com, or
find us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Bridget Todd
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