Abstract
dc:description.abstractWith the rising popularity of esports, it is more important than ever to examine this male dominated sport along gendered lines. In competitive video game spaces, women are targets of harassment and toxic speech more often than men, leading to the need for coping strategies. This thesis looked at collegiate esports teams to see if men and women felt similarly about team culture and inclusion while playing on these teams. The hypotheses of this study predicted correlations between variables related to team culture, inclusion, and coping strategies along gendered lines. Results indicated that all players used gender masking the least of the all the coping strategies, women report using avoidance as a coping strategy more than men, team culture was positively correlated with inclusion, and that women feel less included on their esports teams than men. A discussion along with future directions followed and largely advocated for the separation of esports teams by gender to alleviate institutional access disadvantages that women have when playing competitive video games.
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- MACOM
- Level thesis:degree_level
- masters
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- Communication
- Department dc:contributor.department
- Communication
- Grantor dc:publisher
- Virginia Tech
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2024
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Lane, Taylor Catherine
- Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
-
- Duncan, Megan A.
- Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
-
- Horning, Michael A.
- Tedesco, John C.
Subjects
dc:subject × 2Rights
dc:rights- Statement dc:rights
-
- In Copyright
- Licence dc:rights.uri
- Language dc:language.iso
- en
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Dc Identifier Other
- vt_gsexam:40809
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/119490