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BuzzFeed, Vox Media may skip SXSW
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POPULAR online media companies BuzzFeed and Vox Media say they may pull out of the SXSW Interactive festival held in Austin, Texas, after the festival canceled two panels related to gaming and online harassment, citing threats of violence.
The tech festival, held annually in March, attracts 33,000-plus attendees from 82 countries and is part of the larger SXSW festival that also includes music, film and educational conferences. The gathering has a looser reputation than bigger tech conferences like the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but it has become bigger and more corporate in recent years.
In a blog posting on Monday, SXSW Interactive Director Hugh Forrest said the festival was canceling two sessions for the 2016 event: “SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community” and “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games” because the panels garnered threats of “on-site violence related to this programing.”
“Maintaining civil and respectful dialogue within the big tent is more important than any particular session,” Forrest wrote.
Both panels are related to the online campaign dubbed “GamerGate” that began last fall, during which women were harassed for criticizing the lack of diversity in the video game industry and women’s portrayal in it. Neither of the panels mentions GamerGate.
The “SavePoint” talk was set to discuss the “current social/political landscape in the gaming community” and the “Level Up” panel included several women who have been subjected to the harassment.
Three executives at BuzzFeed, which has had a major presence at the festival over the past few years, sent a letter to Forrest saying they would “feel compelled” to withdraw BuzzFeed staffers from the panels they are on or moderating if the panels aren’t reinstated.
Vox Media, the company behind popular sites including food-focused Eater and video game blog Polygon, released a statement saying it would not participate in the festival “unless its organizers take this issue seriously and take appropriate steps to correct it.”
SXSW did not respond to a request for comment.
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