Trudeau Liberals funding study into 'extremism' among gamers

The Department of Public Safety announced a partnership with a United Kingdom-based think tank to investigate into how video games affect extremism.

The project will see a federal investment of $317,000 given to the Extremism and Gaming Research Network, a partner of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.

“The research done by Royal United Services Institute and the Extremism and Gaming Research Network will help strengthen Canada's resilience, and increase our capacity to identify and prevent radicalization to violence,” said Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc in the March 13 press release. “Supporting initiatives like this is key to keeping Canadians safe.”

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A background document detailed how the project plans to “analyze data across multiple gaming and gaming-adjacent platforms to investigate if the community formation occurring alongside gameplay has the potential to provide an environment that can be conducive to radicalization and to violent extremism.”

It explains how the government contractors will assess “data across multiple gamer identity types, geographies, and languages, and to compare similarities and differences” by collecting information from “multiple sources, including public chats and metadata on these platforms and from a survey circulated amongst gamers across different locations.”

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The researchers will also take aim at “multiple platforms,” naming Discord, Twitch, Reddit, Steam, Roblox and Minecraft as specific examples, “to identify whether there is potential for harmful socialization in these spaces and how these are formulated through cultural and communicative understanding.”

Given the Trudeau Liberals' involvement in the project, the research will be conducted “through a gender lens” using the much-maligned “Gender-based Analysis Plus model, to include analysis of gender and other equity concerns where possible.”

Authorities in the United States have also been investigating the links between gaming and extremism, with a report from The Guardian detailing how gaming companies and other platforms have been cooperating with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. That report also referred to Roblox, Reddit and Discord by name.

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“From neo-Nazis and far-right groups to Islamic State, those seeking to instigate hate and violence for their ideological ends are finding new platforms to do so as traditional social media platforms crack down on their content,” reads the objectives portion of Extremism and Gaming Research Network's website.

“New platforms, including the chat application Discord, live-streaming sites such as Twitch, online games like Fortnite and gaming platforms like Steam, are rife with extremist content and recruiters. Games themselves are not the problem, but socialization inside gaming-related spaces reveals real and pressing difficulties.”

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Curiously lacking from the organization's website are any mentions of far-left groups, which have been responsible for numerous instances of violence in Canada and around the world.

“[W]e seek to improve understanding through an intersectional gender lens of how identities and communities form and intersect in gaming spaces, to better protect gamers from exploitation by those spreading targeted hate-based discrimination and extremism,” said a joint statement from Dr. Jessica White and Galen Lamphere-Englund, Project Leads, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.

“Our project partners look forward to strengthening Canada’s resilience by contributing to violence prevention strategies, especially tailored for gaming spaces.”