The Department of Information Science presents

Yubo Kou

College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University

Join us in-person for this hybrid talk.

Refreshments will be served in the INFO building directly following the talk.

Abstract

Toxic behaviors such as flaming and trolling are prevalent online, and multiplayer online games (MOGs) are particularly notorious for player toxicity. However, too often the problem of player toxicity is blamed on a few bad apples. Informed by this logic, player moderation systems in MOGs are proficient at catching and punishing those they consider as toxic players, who are usually claimed to be a small percentage of the whole player base. And game research has paid much attention to individuals’ motivations for toxic behavior.

The logic, however, is a flawed one. Drawing from a multi-year ethnographic project on toxicity in League of Legends, a team-based competitive game, this talk will discuss the emotional, social, cultural and institutional conditions of toxicity. The goals of this talk are to present a situated view of toxicity, to reflect on the limitations of existing governance approaches, and to explore what could be done in better ways.

Bio

Yubo Kou is an assistant professor from the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. He received a PhD degree in informatics from the University of California, Irvine in 2016. His research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, social computing and video games. His most recent interests are toxic behaviors and governance in contexts of online games, virtual worlds and social media. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and appears primarily at CHI, CSCW and CHI PLAY.