LO1: Demonstrate knowledge of the professional roles and issues facing community managers.
LO2: Analyse and evaluate the governance choices made by publishers, platforms and related esports stakeholders with respect to their communities.
LO3: Evaluate critically the appropriateness of different approaches to crisis management within a specific esports community.

Assessment 1 – Presentation (Group)

Student must create a response to a chosen crisis. The response should consider the particularities of the community crisis, carefully considering how the response fits the history and ethics of a particular stakeholder (publisher, team, event organisers, etc). This assignment is a group piece designed to be completed by 2 – 4 students.

LO1, LO3

Assessment 2 (Individual)

Students will choose one of several questions surrounding the themes of the module and provide a critical response utilising scholarly sources discussed throughout the module. The questions will surround the themes of community engagement, participatory culture, copyright and working conditions in the industry.

LO2.

In this module students will be given the chance to develop their knowledge and understanding of the challenges faced by community managers working in esports and wider games / digital media. Students will begin by asking what a community is and why they are crucial to esports and digital media. Moving on to look more closely at community management as a professional role, learners will analyse why it is of growing importance in esports, games and digital media.

Students will critically consider the reasons why platforms, games publishers and related esports stakeholders make the decisions they do when interacting with communities. Students will critically engage with the challenges facing community managers by focusing on the following frameworks and themes:
- Inclusivity in online spaces
- Emotional labour
- Intellectual property and copyright
- Participatory culture
- Co-creative relations
- Hooked model
- Conflict resolution
- Working conditions in community management and esports
- What is community within modern esports

Through focusing on these frameworks, students will analyse existing terms of services on platforms such as Twitch, Twitter or Reddit and be encouraged to craft their own responses to specific community crises.

Community managers are often the front face of most esports organisations, teams, publishers and even brands. It’s vital that we understand the challenges faced by community managers working in esports and beyond and how they can capture the potential value their communities hold. At any point these communities can be engulfed by discourse, so avoiding any potential crisis situations that might endanger them is key to the role. You will consider what a community is and why their engagement is crucial to the success of the stakeholder and develop an innovative response to an hypothetical emerging crisis.

Students will be expected to engage in a variety of learning strategies, including but not limited to:

Tutor led formal presentations
Workshops and group-based tutorials
Discussion/debate cantered learning
Participation in group activities, including presentations and discussion panels
Directed reading
Self-directed/independent research

Eyal, N. (2014)¿Hooked how to build habit-forming products.¿London: Portfolio Penguin.

Gillespie, T. (2018)¿Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, London: New York University Press.

Jenkins, H., Ford, S., and Green, J. (2013) Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture¸ New York: New York University Press.

Kerr, A. and Kelleher, J. D. (2015) ‘The Recruitment of Passion and Community in the Service of Capital: Community Managers in the Digital Games Industry’,¿Critical studies in media communication. Abingdon: Routledge, 32(3), pp. 177–192.

Lessig, L. (2004)¿Free culture¿: the nature and future of creativity.¿New York, N.Y: Penguin Press.

Lewis, L. A. (2002)¿The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. Taylor and Francis.¿

Perks, M. E. (2021) ‘Self-Isolated but Not Alone: Community Management Work in the Time of a Pandemic’,¿Leisure sciences. Philadelphia: Routledge, 43(1-2), pp. 177–183.¿

Poell, T. (2021)¿Platforms and cultural production. Cambridge: Polity Press

Taylor, T. L., Boellstorff, T. and Maurer, B. (2018)¿Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Vogl, C. (2016)¿The Art of Community. 1st edition. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Wenger, E. (1999)¿Communities of practice¿: learning, meaning, and identity.¿Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

University Library
IT
Blackboard
Reading list
VLE learning support material to be provided for independent /self-directed learning.
Module handbooks
Open Textbook Library