This is part one of a series analyzing the political attitudes of GamerGate, based on an online survey conducted between the 18th and the 22nd of December. The full data tables can be found HERE, and an overview of the results can be found HERE.
The political views and identification of GamerGate supporters continues to generate confusion. Left-leaning writers from a variety of outlets and blogs, including the Daily Kos, The Verge, and The Guardian have sought to characterize GamerGate as a right-wing uprising. However, aggregates political compass data collected from GamerGate supporters in October suggests this may not be entirely correct.
Trying to sort any diverse group into an ideological box will always be problematic, particularly given the unwieldiness of the left-right spectrum. The concepts of "right" and "left" originally emerged in the French revolution, to describe rival factions in the French National Assembly. Members of the National Assembly who supported the King sat to the right of the president, and supporters of the revolution sat to his left. In the 20th century, it morphed into a description for those who support more government intervention in the economy, and those who supported less. It has also been used to describe a myriad of other political divides, such as supporters and opponents of immigration, supporters and opponents of gay marriage and abortion, environmentalists and climate-sceptics, and so on.
The many transformations in the usage of these terms were never without controversy however, and it remains an open question whether seating arrangements in the old French legislature are really the most accurate way of describing political disagreements.
Nevertheless, the concepts of left and right still carry enough weight with journalists, politicians and academics to be worthy of analysis. With that in mind, I designed a short survey to measure the opinions and political identities of GamerGate supporters. 1540 GamerGate supporters from Twitter and the subreddit KotakuInAction responded to the survey.
In the first part of this two-part series, I will look at GamerGate's political identity, and their levels of trust towards the political left and the political right, as well as their changing attitudes towards the media.
1. GamerGate does not identify as right-wing
Contrary to the narrative presented by some left-leaning journalists, GamerGate supporters continue to identify with the political left. The single largest contingent of respondents identified as liberal or left-leaning (28 percent). The second-largest contingent were left-libertarians (24 percent). A further one percent identified as left-authoritarian. Combined, this suggests that 54 percent of GamerGate identifies with some form of left-wing politics.
Centrists were also better represented than right-wingers. In total, 19 percent of respondents identified with either centrism (6 percent) or centrist libertarianism (13 percent). Centrist authoritarians, like left-authoritarians, were poorly represented with 1 percent.
Collectively, right-wingers and conservatives only amounted to 15 percent of respondents. The largest contingent were right-libertarians (10 percent), followed by conservatives (4 percent). Once again, only one percent identified with authoritarianism.
Overall, it looks like GamerGate supporters are considerably more likely to identify with the left or the centre than they are with the right. On the other hand, the results also show a strong identification with libertarianism, which may give us a clue as to the source of the divide between GamerGate and its critics.
2. ….But they’re disillusioned with the left
Despite their continued identification with the liberal and libertarian left, the survey results also show a severe drop in support for the mainstream left. A majority of respondents (67 percent) agreed that they were now more likely to view the left as authoritarian. In addition to this, 34 percent of respondents said that GamerGate made them question their identification with the left, while a further 26 percent said they would now be more likely to consider voting for right-leaning parties and candidates.
There has also been a collapse in trust for left-wing media sources. Eighty-three (83) percent of respondents said that their opinion of left-leaning media sources had declined due to GamerGate, and only one percent said it had improved. Seventy-one (71) percent of respondents also agreed with the statement that "left-wing bias in technology and videogame journalism is a problem."
This is unsurprising. Most left-leaning outlets, including the Huffington Post, Gawker, Vox, Raw Story, Buzzfeed, Vice, The Guardian, and the New Yorker have taken a hostile stance towards GamerGate. By contrast, right-leaning outlets like Breitbart News, the Washington Free Beacon, the Spectator, Truth Revolt, the National Review, the Federalist, and the Daily Caller have been mildly to strongly supportive of the movement.
More interestingly, GamerGate's opinion of publicly-funded media outlets (such as NPR, CBC, and the BBC) also declined. Sixty-three (63) percent of respondents said their trust in publicly-funded outlets had declined, compared to two percent who said it had improved and 35 percent who said it had stayed the same. Despite the fact that these outlets usually have an obligation to remain impartial, GamerGate supporters do not believe they have been treated fairly.
Only right-leaning and libertarian outlets have come out of the controversy with a net increase in trust. Twenty-nine (29) percent of respondents said their opinion of these outlets has improved, compared to 10 percent who said it has declined and 61 percent who said it had stayed the same. Libertarian publications such as Spiked Online and Reason Magazine also received a net increase in support, with 24 percent saying their opinion of these outlets had improved, compared to 9 percent who said it had declined and 66 percent who said it had stayed the same.
3. GamerGate remains out of step with the right on most issues
If the right wish to convert their newfound trust among gamers into support for their wider platform, they have some work to do. On environmental issues, 70 percent of respondents agreed that climate change is man-made, and 69 percent agreed that the growth of extreme weather conditions is linked to global warming. A solid 92 percent of respondents also agreed that the promotion of renewable energy would be a good thing even if climate change were not occurring.
Neo-conservativism fares no better. Seventy-four (74) percent of GamerGate supporters agreed that Edward Snowden is a "patriot, not a traitor", 69 percent believe that military budgets are too bloated, and a solid 92 percent agree that civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism.
Staunch traditionalists will also find little common ground with GamerGate supporters. Large majorities of respondents agreed that both abortion (80 percent) and gay marriage (89 percent) should be legal.
It should also be noted that while 26 percent said GamerGate had made them more likely to vote for right-leaning candidates and parties (a substantial figure given how rare it is for people to suddenly switch their partisan allegiances), a far larger group (61 percent) said they had not done so.
Analysis: Left-vs-Left
Given GamerGate's frequent opposition to left-wing media critics and left-leaning games sites such as Polygon and Kotaku, it is easy to see why journalists believed that the movement was right-wing. The response to this survey, however, indicates a more complicated picture. GamerGate appears to have started as a broadly left-wing movement, but over the past few months their trust in the left (and left-wing journalists in particular) has been significantly shaken. This too, is understandable, given that many of these journalists have accused GamerGate of everything from misogyny to 'dishonest fascism.' In short, while the initial characterization of GamerGate as a right-wing force appears to have been mistaken, it may yet turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Right-wing journalists, by comparison, have seen a moderate increase in support, thanks largely to their sympathetic reporting of the movement. The 26 percent of GamerGate supporters who say they are now more willing to consider right-leaning candidates and parties may seem like a small number, but this obscures the fact that it is very rare to see people change their political allegiances in such a short space of time. When such changes happen on a mass scale, they can significantly alter the political landscape. GamerGate supporters may not have transformed into right-wingers overnight, but they are now far more likely to listen to what the right has to say.
The left, meanwhile, should be aware that it is their own supporters who are under attack. GamerGate sympathizes with the left on almost every major issue. This has not been a left-vs-right battle, but a left-vs-left battle, between somewhat disengaged but generally left-leaning gamers and a highly politicized group of journalists.
Something, it seems, is dividing left-leaning gamers from left-leaning journalists. The precise nature of this division will be the subject of my second piece.
About the author: Allum Bokhari is a political consultant, writer, former Parliamentary intern, and a regular contributor to TechCrunch. You can find him on Twitter at @LibertarianBlue.
[Disclaimer: The opinions and data presented in this article are the author's and do not represent the opinions of GamePolitics or its staff.]
