Affiliation:
1. Birkbeck University of London , UK
2. University of the Arts London , UK
3. University of East Anglia , UK
Abstract
Abstract
Research into online forms of far-right, alt-right, populist, and supremacist politics has raised questions about the extent to which social media enables or constitutes extremist affects and ideologies. Building on this research and through a case study of how a pro-Trump community on Reddit made sense of news events and sought to contest their representation, this paper explores the relationship between games and politics, arguing that digital platforms encourage people to apprehend, interpret, and contest political ideas and information as if engaged in a kind of videogame. We show how the group sought to manipulate platform affordances, waging a kind of Info War rooted in an understanding of politics as a pure space of conflict. We show how social media orients people to politics, phenomenologically, through the logics, structures and narratives of online games and argue that this affects not only online behaviors but more general apprehensions of politics.
Funder
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)