Areas of concern from a quick once-over:
1) "Rather, I mostly worked off of Alexa.com‘s Global Rankings, which is an estimate of the relative popularity of websites across the internet."
Alexa does no such thing. From their website:
"Alexa's traffic estimates are based on data from our global traffic panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of over 25,000 different browser extensions. In addition, we gather much of our traffic data from direct sources in the form of sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script on their site and certify their metrics. However, site owners can always choose to keep their certified metrics private."
2) "I chose not to consider Google search rankings when measuring popularity, because they’re significantly determined by relevance."
Search rankings are not scientific. They're barely a good indicator of popularity or of relevance. They're a great indicator of google algorithm, though.
3) "The drawback to using Alexa rankings is that this metric isn’t useful for analyzing platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, etc., and so I couldn’t directly analyze social media content with this approach."
No, the drawback of Alexa is that it requires a website to opt in creating a non-random sampling. This also excludes certain websites and works based upon who opt-in.
4) "It had to be from a website with an Alexa Global Ranking lower than 11,000. This number is essentially arbitrary, preferred over 10,000 so that I could include Gamasutra, since it’s perhaps the top game developer-focused publication."
The author settled on 10,000, noticed Gamasutra was absent, so expanded their number to include the site. This biased the selection of websites based upon author bias. As a researcher, you pick a number, stick to it, and note the exclusion. You don't say "Oh, this isn't a good enough number for my conclusion. Let me expand it."
5) "Given how unanimous the results were, however, it’s reasonable to think that popular opinion wasn’t very far off from the opinions that these writers were expressing."
Actually, it's unreasonable and unscientific to state so. Not all people in the population have access to these websites to write. Not all people would write about it. Not all people know about it. This is an overgeneralization of conclusion before the test has even been run.
It's like saying "Well, I went to a nursing home. It's reasonable to say the ages of the people here represent all nursing homes in the US." No. No it's not.
6) "This was not a comprehensive study. In fact, my decision for when to stop gathering data was fairly arbitrary: I stopped once it was getting hard to find new stuff to add. It’s likely that there are more English-speaking websites in Alexa’s top 11,000 sites that had covered GamerGate, but to do a comprehensive analysis of all of 11,000 of those websites would have been far beyond the scope of this little research project."
This was not a study at all. It's an opinion piece peppered with sources. You could even call it a research piece, but that's as far as you can say. There was research done, but it's biased by the author's conclusion that has been reached before the work was done as evidenced by the expansion of the Alexa number to include specific websites.
7) "And that’s it. Breitbart, the Escapist, and three random writers are all of the pro-GG voices that were high-profile enough to be included. Together they make about 3% of the publications cataloged for this study. Practically every other publication depicted GamerGate as being inseparable from online harassment and misogyny."
And why was that? This goes unexamined.
8) "As I said in the Methodology section, one of my core assumptions is that the most visible coverage of GamerGate had a greater impact on “what most people think” than GamerGate’s social media presence did. Let’s take a look at some more metrics so that we can at least get a rough idea for how solid this assumption might be."
This sets up for some sort of statistical analysis. No statistical analysis is done. It says it will look to estimate the population. It doesn't. It just selects specific sources that confirm the conclusion and waves its hands. Jazz style, no less.
9) "For most people, GamerGate seemed to get more disgusting the more they learned about it."
Most people or most people who looked into the situation? These two are very different from each other. Also, there's no look into bias of the presenter of the information. The information is assumed in good faith.
10) "Jenn Frank would later quit games journalism due to the increased attacks that she received for writing the above story."
From my understanding, she later decided to kick back up. That is not mentioned here.
11) "When celebrity Felicia Day wrote about how scary the current environment was, she was immediately targeted and doxxed. When game developer Brianna Wu posted a few memes on Twitter making fun of GamerGate, that was enough to attract terrifyingly specific death threats. It was a consistent pattern of women saying, “I’m scared of GamerGate,” followed by a response from GamerGate saying, “Yeah, you should be scared!”"
The usual problem persists here. The author does not provide information that this was something done by GamerGate, but assumes that it is is because of the backdrop. Furthermore, assumes Day and Wu present information in good faith.
12) "These days, people mostly tend to remember the two or three highest-profile GamerGate victims"
Who are these "people"? This vague classification is used over and over again without real espousing. It's presented as researched fact source-free.
13) "There was also a significant amount of anxiety coming from the fact that the game industry’s overwhelming silence on GamerGate suggested that perhaps one’s own colleagues and bosses secretly supported the movement. "
Significance is a statistical matter in research, but no statistics are provided here. No source is provided anywhere in this statement. There's a preceding quote from an anonymous source, but that is one person experiencing anxiety. This leads to questions of this person's natural predisposition on anxiety.
If one is to claim there is significance (read: difference from the normal population) then they should present the data to back that up. Not claim it with a quote and shuffle along.
14) "Former NFL star Chris Kluwe’s angry response to GamerGate “Why #Gamergaters Piss Me The F*** Off” was widely shared and cited by several publications, presumably because his article captured the community’s outrage against GamerGate."
Note here that the author sourced Medium which is outside the bounds of the research itself. The beginning said it would cut out blogs and other social media-related sources. Then it used them.
15) "Before October, the predominant expectation seemed to be that GamerGate would eventually die out like a passing storm. "
No source on this. There's a lot of this as a problem. There's assertions of something being without an actual evidenced source.
16) "As soon as people became convinced that GamerGate was evil, many of them lost all respect for those who supported its cause."
I don't think I need to point out the problem here.
17) "Why Does GamerGate Think Everyone Likes Them?"
In the many months I spent in the GamerGate hashtag, nobody ever said that they're liked or loved by everyone. This is a straw man. GamerGate is well aware of its image to the outside world. After all, the author is helping to craft it by publishing poorly-done "research" where the author reached a conclusion well before the first word was written.
18) "the Escapist contributed to this belief by publishing an interview with an obscure game developer who claimed that more than 75% of game developers support GamerGate, while dismissing the industry’s viral petition against GamerGate as being misleading. "
So source A is just an obscure person who is in the industry by report, but source B is an online petition is reputable because the author says so.
19) "First of all, I work at Microsoft. I can’t speak for the entire company, but there’s no way that number is anywhere close to true. "
And I know people who work there as well and they say they won't touch GG with a 10 foot pole because it's explosive. Different people will have different anecdotes.
Note that this paragraph is entirely this person's perception of the events in question. How they BELIEVE something is happening. Its crux is on the experience and interpretation the author provides. Nothing more.
At many points, the author abandoned any and all attempt at data-driven work and just says "Look at this source. They say bad things, so it must be bad!"
Another piece of work by another piece of work.
And back into the shadows the piggy goes.