Mapping a hybrid phenomenon in the digital world: The Greek professional gaming scene through Social Network Analysis (SNA)


Published: Jul 26, 2024
Keywords:
professional gaming, esports, SNA, video games, gender identity
Stavroula Dargonaki
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8863-5256
Abstract

The consumption of video game content as a commercial spectacle, namely professional gaming, is a complex cultural, social and economic activity that seems to be growing in popularity. The application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) allowed for a graphical representation of the Greek professional gaming scene, specifying its size and the different actors operating within it, and highlighting the crucial role of the content producers themselves. It also revealed the rapid commercialisation of professional gaming and the fact that it is a highly gendered space, where different gendered identities are excluded or marginalised.

Article Details
  • Section
  • Articles
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
Author Biography
Stavroula Dargonaki

Independent scholar, PhD in Communication, Media and Culture

References
Butler, J. (2009). Αναταραχή φύλου. Ο φεμινισμός και η ανατροπή της ταυτότητας (μτφρ. Γ. Καράμπελας). Εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια. (Το πρωτότυπο έργο εκδόθηκε το έτος 1990).
Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2002). Αυτοκρατορία (μτφρ.: Ν. Καλαϊτζής). Εκδόσεις SCRIPTA.
Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports (2021). Σχέδιο νόμου: «Αθλητικός εθελοντισμός, αθλητισμός αναψυχής και άθληση για όλους, πνευματικός αθλητισμός, ηλεκτρονικός αθλητισμός (e-sports), εργασιακός αθλητισμός και λοιπές τροποποιήσεις της αθλητικής νομοθεσίας». http://www.opengov.gr/cultureathl/?p=8717
Katsigera, Α. (2015, March 16). Ελληνική ακαδημία για gamers. Η Καθημερινή. https://www.kathimerini.gr/807556/article/texnologia/games/ellhnikh-akadhmia-gia-gamers
Petridis Papailia, P., & Petridis, P. (2015). Digital ethnography. Kallipos, Open Academic Editions. https://hdl.handle.net/11419/6117
Skarpelos, Y. (2019). Τα αβέβαια σημεία. Εκδόσεις Τόπος.
Tilly, C. & Tarrow, S. (2017). Πολιτικές ταυτότητες: Πώς λειτουργούν; (μτφρ.: Σ. Ι. Σεφεριάδης). Ελληνική Επιθεώρηση Πολιτικής Επιστήμης, 27(1), σελ. 43-70. doi: 10.12681/hpsa.14672
Adamic, L. A., Buyukkokten, O. & Adar, E. (2003). A Social network caught in the web. First Monday, 8(6). doi: 10.5210/fm.v8i6.1057. http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_6/adamic/index.html
Backstrom, L., Marco, R., Ugander, J. & Vigna, S. (2012). Four degrees of separation (pp.45-55). Paper presented at the 4th Annual Web Science Conference, Evanston. June 22-24, 2012. http://www.leonidzhukov.net/hse/2015/sna/papers/websci12-fourdegrees.pdf
Baker, W. E. & Faulkner, R. R. (1991). Role as resource in the Hollywood Film Industry. American Journal of Sociology, 97(2), pp. 279-309. doi: 10.1086/229780.
Baum, J., Shipilov, A. V. & Rowley, T. J. (2003). Where do small worlds come from?. Industrial and Corporate Change, 12(4), pp. 697-725. doi: 10.1093/icc/12.4.697.
Beasley, B. & Stanley, T. C. (2002). Shirts vs. skins: Clothing as an indicator of gender role stereotyping in video games. Mass Communication and Society, 5(3), pp. 279-293. doi: 10.1207/S15327825MCS0503_3.
Becker, H. S. (1974). Art as collective action. American Sociological Review, 39(6), pp. 767-776. doi: 10.2307/2094151.
Becker, H. S. (1982). Art worlds. University of California Press.
Bertozzi, E. (2008). “You play like a girl!”: Cross-gender competition and the uneven playing field. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 14(4), pp. 473-487. doi: 10.1177/1354856508094667
Bonacich, P. (2007). Some unique properties of eigenvector centrality. Social Networks, 29(4), pp. 555-564. doi: 10.1016/j.socnet.2007.04.002.
Borgatti, S. P., Mehra, A., Brass, D. J. & Labianca, G. (2009). Network analysis in the social sciences. Science, 323(5916), pp. 892-895. doi: 10.1126/science.1165821.
Borowy, M. & Dal, Y. J. (2013). Pioneering esport: The experience economy and the marketing of early 1980s arcade gaming contests. International Journal of Communication, 7, pp. 2254-2274. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/2296
Brown, R. M., Hall, L. R. & Holtzer, R. (1997). Gender and video game performance. Sex Roles, 36(11-12), pp. 793-812.
Brunner, C., Bennett, D. & Margaret, H. (1998). Girl games and technological desire. In J. Castell & H. Jenkins (Ed.), From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and computer games (pp. 72-88). The MIT Press.
Burrel, J. (2009). The field site as a network: A strategy for locating ethnographic research. Field Methods, 21(2), pp. 181-199. doi:10.1177/1525822X08329699.
Dietz, T. L. (1998). An examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games: Implications for gender socialization and aggressive behavior. Sex Roles, 38(5-6), pp. 425- 442.
Dodge, Μ. (2005). The role of maps in virtual research methods. In C. Hine (Ed.), Virtual methods. Issues in social research on the internet (pp. 113-142). Berg Publishers.
Dovey, J. & Kennedy, Η. W. (2006). Game cultures: Computer games as new media. Open University Press.
Dyer-Witheford, N. & de Peuter, N. (2009). Games of Empire: Global capitalism and video games. London: University of Minnesota Press.
Easley, D. & Kleinberg, J. (2010). Networks, crowds, and markets: Reasoning about a highly connected world. Cambridge University Press.
Gladwell, M. (2002). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Back Bay Books.
Greenfield, P. M. (1994). Video games as cultural artifacts. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 15(1), pp. 3-12.
Hamilton, W., Garretson, O. & Kerne, A. (2014). Streaming on Twitch: Fostering participatory communities of play within live mixed media, 1315-1324. Paper presented at the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Toronto. April 26 - May 01, 2014. doi: 10.1145/2556288.2557048. https://ecologylab.net/research/publications/streamingOnTwitch.pdf
Huntemanna, N. (2015). No more excuses: Using Twitter to challenge the symbolic annihilation of women in games. Feminist Media Studies, 15(1), pp. 164-167. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2015.987432.
Jackson, M. O. (2008). Social and economic networks. Princeton University Press.
Jin, D. Y. (2010). Korea’s online game empire. The MIT Press.
Johnson, M. R. & Woodcock, J. (2017). “It’s like the gold rush”: The lives and careers of professional video game streamers on Twitch.tv. Information, Communication and Society, 22(3), pp. 336-351. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1386229.
Kiesler, S., Sproull, L. & Eccles, J. (1985). Poolhalls, chips and war games: Women in the culture of computing. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 9(4), pp. 451-462. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.1985.tb00895.x.
Lee, Μ. (2015). Fostering connectivity: A Social Network Analysis of entrepreneurs in creative industries. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21(2), pp. 139-152. doi: 10.1080/10286632.2014.891021.
Miller, L., Chaika, M. & Groppe, L. (1996). Girls’ preferences in software design: Insights from a focus group. Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century, 4(2), pp. 27-36. http://www.helsinki.fi/science/optek/1996/n2/miller.txt
Mislove, A., Massimiliano, M., Gummadi, K. P., Druschel, P. & Bhattacharjee, B. (2007). Measurement and analysis of online social networks (pp. 29-42). Paper presented at the 7th Conference on Internet Measurement, San Diego. October 24-26, 2007. http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2007/papers/imc170.pdf
Norris, K. O. (2004). Gender stereotypes, aggression, and computer games: An online survey of women. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 7(6), pp. 714–727. doi: 10.1089/cpb.2004.7.714.
Rambusch, J., Jakobsson, P. & Purgman, D. (2007). Exploring e-sports: A case study of game play in Counter-Strike (pp. 157-164). Paper presented at the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play, Tokyo. Sep 24-28, 2007. http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/exploring-e-sports-a-case-study-of-gameplay-in-counter-strike/
Rieder, B. (2013). Studying Facebook via data extraction: The Netvizz application (pp. 346-355). Paper presented at the WebSci '13: the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference, Paris. May 02-04, 2013. http://thepoliticsofsystems.net/permafiles/rieder_websci.pdf
Scott, S. (2019). Fake geek girls: Fandom, gender, and the convergence culture Industry. New York: New York University Press.
Shaw, A. (2011). Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality and gamer identity. New Media and Society, 14(1), pp. 28-44. doi: 10.1177/1461444811410394.
Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. Penguin Group.
Socialblade (2023a). Top 100 subscribed YouTube channels. https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/100/mostsubscribed
Socialblade (2023b). Top 100 YouTubers in Greece sorted by subscribers https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/country/gr/mostsubscribed
Sveningsson, M. (2012). “Pity there’s so few girls!”. Attitudes to female participation in a Swedish gaming context. In J. Fromme & A. Unger (Eds.), Computer games and new Media cultures: A Handbook of digital game studies (pp. 425-441). Springer.
Taylor, N. (2011). Play globally, act locally: The standardization of pro Halo 3 gaming. International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology, 3(1), pp. 228- 242. http://genderandset.open.ac.uk/index.php/genderandset/article/view/130
Taylor, N., Jenson, J. & de Castell, S. (2009). Cheerleaders/booth babes/Halo hoes: Pro-gaming, gender and jobs for the boys. Digital Creativity, 20(4), pp. 239-252. doi: 10.1080/14626260903290323.
Taylor, T. L. (2012). Raising the stakes: E-sports and the professionalization of Computer gaming. MIT Press.
Taylor, T. L. (2018). Watch me play. Twitch and the rise of game live streaming, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Uzzi, B. & Spiro, J. (2005). Collaboration and creativity: The small world problem. American Journal of Sociology, 111(2), pp. 447-504. doi: 10.1086/432782.
Vanderhoef, J. (2013). Casual threats: The feminization of casual video games. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, 1(2). http://adanewmedia.org/issues/issue-archives/issue2/
Wajcman, J. (2000). Reflections on gender and technology studies: In what state is the art?. Social Studies of Science, 30(3), pp. 447-464.
Wasserman, S & Faust, Κ. (1994). Social Network Analysis: Methods and applications. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Watts, D. J. & Strogatz, S. H. (1998). Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks. Nature, 393(6684), pp. 440-442. https://www.nature.com/articles/30918
Williams, D., Martins, N., Consalvo, M. & Ivory, J. D. (2009). The virtual census: Representations of gender, race and age in video games. New Media and Society, 11(5), pp. 815-834. doi: 10.1177/1461444809105354.
Woo, B., Rennie, J. & Poyntz, S. R. (2015). Scene thinking. Cultural Studies, 29(3), pp. 285-297. doi: 10.1080/09502386.2014.937950.