Equitable forms of participation on a gaming-adjacent platform: The platformization of a youth center

Abstract

To connect with youth online, a non-profit organization in Finland is organizing a youth center on a server on the gaming-adjacent social platform, Discord. We focus on the infrastructuralized platform and study ethnographically how the labor of moderation and technical competencies that platforms require on the part of the youth workers. We want to better understand the technical conditions by which youth workers have to navigate equity in platformized communities. How does the platform and connected infrastructure determine what forms of communication and interaction are and are not permitted and when and to whom? The results indicate that the employment of opening hours and the presence of youth workers who actively moderate the server during those opening hours, seem to create a safe space for a diversity of youth. The moderation, largely invisible and frictionless, becomes an intricate part of the infrastructuralized platform and the socialization on the platform. This infrastructuralized moderation requires technical, pedagogical and psychological knowledge, competence and resources.