MMM

It seems that I tend to realize the relevance of the ongoing module for my personal field own interest, the interaction media and politics always in retrospective, when I go over my notes. Or, as this time, somebody suggested to me how I could translate the module’s material - narrativity, interactivity, and performance in relation to digital games to political communication.
So only towards the approaching paper deadline I realized that there is an enormous potential for political communication in digital games, and finally had found an interesting and fun-to-write paper topic (that made up for the lack of sleep): the use of narrative interactivity in ideological and political video games in order to stimulate public participation, be it generating public support or to inspire critical thinking. As it happens so often when you finally find a missing link, suddenly many concepts that existed before just a big question mark in my head came together and made sense: narrativity appears to be a way to foster identification of the reader/user with a certain issue, interactivity seems to work in the same direction but in addition also enhances the user's immersion in a narrative and strengthens his feeling of identification. And the concepts of performance and agency take user participation and engagement with the digital environment to yet another level: while agency does not quite equal authorship, it allows for a creative modelling of the pre-authored narrative structures and can thus be used as a highly useful and effective tool for stimulating critical thought by functioning as a sandbox for political experimentation. Especially online games are very useful tools for conveying democratic messages as the internet is a fundamentally democratically-structured medium itself (of course, unequal access to the net in this respect is an essential problem that has to be solved). The "modding" culture (i.e. the modification of games for different purposes) for example can serve as a corrective to any propagandistic game that is issued. One of my favourites is Velvet Strike (a website where you can download anti-war graffiti for use in the online ego-shooter Counter Strike). But still the issue of propagandistic games definitely poses a problem that would be an interesting and important field for further research. While modding can be a corrective, I am doubtful as to whether it can serve the public interest sufficiently. Of course, it is a highly normative question what is propaganda and what not, as it is thin ice to walk on when classifying one thing as “bad” propaganda and the other as “good” persuasion. But exactly this problematic makes for an interesting field for further research.

For now, I want to finish this module’s blog with a link to a political online-game on the last German elections, Bundesdance. Here, everybody can construct his or her own meaning. Go (con)figure!