Manifestações online nas redes sociais: uma análise dos protestos #boycottblizzard

Abstract

With the popularization of digital platforms, the available online space provided by these services has been an important part to many manifestations, playing an important part in the spread of ideas in a virtual setting. Platforms, however, can also be the reason why such protests might occur. The digital game company Blizzard Entertainment was the target of a large-scale virtual protest in social media websites, for its decision to punish professional eSports player Ng Wai Chung, after the player, during a live transmission in one of Blizzard’s platforms, showed support to the Hong Kong protests that broke out in 2019. In response,fans of the company manifested against such decision, raising the #BoycottBlizzard hashtag on sites such as Twitter, calling out for a boycott on the company’s products, and accusing Blizzard of silencing its users. This research followed the evolution of the #BoycottBlizzard movement in the social media website Twitter along its duration, observing events that would serve as key moments to the protest. For this analysis, it has utilized the concepts researched by the Platform Studies, problematizing Blizzard’s actions as a platform, and how the company relies on its governance rules. To observe the conversations that took stage in Twitter, it has utilized knowledge sourced from Social Network Analysis, which provides concepts and metrics for the visualization of relations and interactions across social networks.By the means of a chronological analysis of the #BoycottBlizzard protest, since its inception to its decline, the result is a study of this online manifestation, observing the most relevant figures in discussions across Twitter, analysing Blizzard’s actions from the lens of a digital platform.