At the 2022 European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) conference, which took place in Aarhus between October 19 and 22, Jan Houška and Daniel Nielsen presented their papers in the same session, named Players’ and Developers’ Discourses. Within 25 thematic sections, ECREA brings together scholars from media studies, communication research, or journalism studies to discuss their ongoing work and obtain feedback from academics outside of their immediate fields and national or university circles. ECREA 2022 also provided opportunities for networking with other scholars and PhD students thanks to a rich variety of social events outside of the classrooms.

In sequential order, Daniel Nielsen presented a paper called The Thankless Job of Moderation on Reddit: Power Struggles and Inadequate Affordances based on his published study in Baltic Screen Media Review. Using the data from his semi-structured interviews with moderators, Daniel demonstrated that they have to work within limiting space of Reddit’s technical affordances and under risk of backlash from gaming community or actors who hold social capital. Next, Jan Houška presented a paper called The Czech Game Industry from an International Perspective: Qualitative Analysis of Expatriate Developers from Eastern Europe. Based on his repeated semi-structured interviews with game developers from the region, Jan argued that while his respondents enjoyed better salary and benefits or friendly culture of local game companies, they also encountered issues such as conservatism or English language barrier both within Czech game companies and in the wider Czech society.