When Frustrations Turn Into a Firestorm: Communicative Constitution of a Collectively Forceful Voice

This study explores the emergence and solidification of a collectively forceful voice within a video game community, focusing on the firestorm backlash against Blizzard Entertainment’s announcement of the mobile game Diablo Immortal. Using communicative constitutive organizational (CCO) thinking and the concept of ventriloquism, we analyze 60 hours of Reddit interactions to unpack the communicative dynamics of collective voice formation. We identify three key practices-othering, silencing, and legitimizing-that enable players to align their diverse voices into a coherent and impactful opposition, which constituted the firestorm. Our findings illuminate how collective action on social online platforms becomes amplified and provide a lens for understanding the formation of online resistance. This research contributes to literature on online communities and organizational communication, highlighting how spontaneous digital discourses mobilize powerful collective voices.