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Recent increases in the number of women becoming involved in video game culture have been met with dissent by males, producing a tense atmosphere online and offline. These tensions reached a peak when video games journalist Ryan Perez attacked female video game celebrity Felicia Day over Twitter in June 2012, questioning the value of her work and calling her a 'glorified booth babe'. The Incident quickly became notorious, and Perez was subsequently fired from his writing role with the gamer community site Destructoid. In order to gain an understanding of women's status in video game communities, we analyse the Twitter Incident in historical context and with reference to feminist and technology theory. The Twitter Incident may have functioned either as an act of catharsis or a watershed; Perez's punishment might have released tensions regarding misogyny, or signalled a change in attitude towards women in game culture. Continued mistreatment of women in the game community and industry implies that the Incident functioned as an act of catharsis. However, the notoriety that was raised and criticism Perez received has marked an increase in awareness of misogyny in video game communities and culture.

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Governments making childhood vaccination more mandatory is controversial, and can be met with pushback from the public. Hence such policies may be accompanied by some form of communication to manufacture consent for either vaccination, mandatory vaccination policies, or both. This paper engages in case studies of two countries which recently made vaccination more mandatory and accompanied this policy change with concerted communication campaigns. It examines the French and Australian governments’ new mandatory vaccination regimes, the communication strategies undertaken to manufacture consent for them, and the complex ways these policies interact. The analytical focus is the content of the websites at the center of the communications campaigns, “Vaccination-Info-Service” and “Get the Facts,” as well as relevant academic articles, government press releases, documents and reports, and key informant interviews conducted in both countries. We report three key findings. First, we demonstrate how both countries’ governance strategies intertwine persuasion with coercion in complex ways. Second, we examine how each country’s website reflects local constructions of under-vaccination, especially regarding social groups and motivations. Third, we consider their vastly different communication styles and how these reflect alternative ways of constructing the public as well as differences in the use of communication expertise in the websites’ production. These factors produce different tactics regarding manufacturing consent for vaccination and for vaccine mandates. We conclude that manufacturing consent for vaccination is a laudable exercise, but find that the involvement of numerous actors and institutions results in various interests, objectives, and conceptions of what drives audience reception, resulting in divergent strategies. This is particularly the case when it comes to manufacturing consent for vaccine mandates themselves; a more complex task that relies on strong understandings of community, knowledge, and effective channels of state power.

Toxicity in online multiplayer games has long been an issue, and game developers implement various strategies such as reputation systems to curb such behaviour. Although Foucault’s notion of discipline seems an ideal lens through which to analyse such reputation systems, as of yet there has been little work on the subject. This article addresses the reputation system implemented in 2018 by Blizzard, who created an endorsement system in the team-based multiplayer shooter Overwatch. This successfully encouraged positive player behaviour by implementing rewards, rather than only punishments. In this article, we examine the endorsement system as an example of Foucault’s discipline, one that is particularly relevant to game design because it uses incentives as well as deterrents. We argue that the endorsement system is particularly effective as a form of discipline because it includes players as part of the process, by actively constructing subjects (gamers) to fit a pre-defined mould.