Ian Bogost
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816699117
- eISBN:
- 9781452952406
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816699117.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
More than half a century later, it’s still not clear what place videogames have in culture. Some would celebrate them as heir apparent to cinema’s throne, the art-form of the twenty-first century. ...
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More than half a century later, it’s still not clear what place videogames have in culture. Some would celebrate them as heir apparent to cinema’s throne, the art-form of the twenty-first century. But this seems unlikely, and not just because games remain a niche interest despite the fact that so many people play them, but also because the twenty-first century is an era of media fragmentation, of tweets and Instagrams and animated GIFs and memes, but one still built around traditional media forms: text, image, and moving image. Maybe it’s because games are as much like appliances—toasters or rice cookers, say—as they are like art and media. We operate games, we use them like we use soaps and rice cookers. But yet, also use them like we use cinema and literature. It’s time to embrace both halves of games, the art and the appliance, by treating each game as the weird, unholy confluence of culture and apparatus that it really is.Less
More than half a century later, it’s still not clear what place videogames have in culture. Some would celebrate them as heir apparent to cinema’s throne, the art-form of the twenty-first century. But this seems unlikely, and not just because games remain a niche interest despite the fact that so many people play them, but also because the twenty-first century is an era of media fragmentation, of tweets and Instagrams and animated GIFs and memes, but one still built around traditional media forms: text, image, and moving image. Maybe it’s because games are as much like appliances—toasters or rice cookers, say—as they are like art and media. We operate games, we use them like we use soaps and rice cookers. But yet, also use them like we use cinema and literature. It’s time to embrace both halves of games, the art and the appliance, by treating each game as the weird, unholy confluence of culture and apparatus that it really is.
Julia Partheymüller
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198792130
- eISBN:
- 9780191834295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198792130.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
It is widely believed that the news media have a strong influence on defining what are the most important problems facing the country during election campaigns. Yet, recent research has pointed to ...
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It is widely believed that the news media have a strong influence on defining what are the most important problems facing the country during election campaigns. Yet, recent research has pointed to several factors that may limit the mass media’s agenda-setting power. Linking news media content to rolling cross-section survey data, the chapter examines the role of three such limiting factors in the context of the 2009 and the 2013 German federal elections: (1) rapid memory decay on the part of voters, (2) advertising by the political parties, and (3) the fragmentation of the media landscape. The results show that the mass media may serve as a powerful agenda setter, but also demonstrate that the media’s influence is strictly limited by voters’ cognitive capacities and the structure of the campaign information environment.Less
It is widely believed that the news media have a strong influence on defining what are the most important problems facing the country during election campaigns. Yet, recent research has pointed to several factors that may limit the mass media’s agenda-setting power. Linking news media content to rolling cross-section survey data, the chapter examines the role of three such limiting factors in the context of the 2009 and the 2013 German federal elections: (1) rapid memory decay on the part of voters, (2) advertising by the political parties, and (3) the fragmentation of the media landscape. The results show that the mass media may serve as a powerful agenda setter, but also demonstrate that the media’s influence is strictly limited by voters’ cognitive capacities and the structure of the campaign information environment.
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- October 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190913083
- eISBN:
- 9780190055332
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190913083.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter describes the regulatory, political, and technological changes in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s that set the stage for the television satire and outrage programming of the ...
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This chapter describes the regulatory, political, and technological changes in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s that set the stage for the television satire and outrage programming of the early 2000s. It summarizes the story of the deregulation of the American media industry and argues that the resulting increased demand for profits from television news eroded the journalistic mission. It also explains the roots of political polarization in the United States, from social and cultural shifts to changes in the party nominating processes and to the increased role of soft (and dark) money in elections. The chapter chronicles the history of the cable television industry and how the proliferation of channels in the 1980s upended the economics of media, erasing the concept of the “mass audience” in favor of smaller niche audiences defined by psychographics and sociodemographics.Less
This chapter describes the regulatory, political, and technological changes in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s that set the stage for the television satire and outrage programming of the early 2000s. It summarizes the story of the deregulation of the American media industry and argues that the resulting increased demand for profits from television news eroded the journalistic mission. It also explains the roots of political polarization in the United States, from social and cultural shifts to changes in the party nominating processes and to the increased role of soft (and dark) money in elections. The chapter chronicles the history of the cable television industry and how the proliferation of channels in the 1980s upended the economics of media, erasing the concept of the “mass audience” in favor of smaller niche audiences defined by psychographics and sociodemographics.
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- October 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190913083
- eISBN:
- 9780190055332
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190913083.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This book explores the aesthetics, underlying logics, and histories of two seemingly distinct genres—liberal political satire and conservative opinion talk—making the case that they should be thought ...
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This book explores the aesthetics, underlying logics, and histories of two seemingly distinct genres—liberal political satire and conservative opinion talk—making the case that they should be thought of as the logical extensions of the psychology of the left and right, respectively. One genre is guided by ambiguity, play, deliberation, and openness, while the other is guided by certainty, vigilance, instinct, and boundaries. While the audiences for Sean Hannity and John Oliver come from opposing political ideologies, both are high in political interest, knowledge, and engagement, and both lack faith in some of the United States’ core democratic institutions. This book illustrates how the roles these two genres play for their viewers are strikingly similar: galvanizing the opinion of the left or the right, mobilizing citizens around certain causes, and expressing a frustration with traditional news coverage while offering alternative sources of information and meaning. However, the book proposes that these genres differ in a crucial way: in their capacity to be exploited by special interests and political elites. The book concludes that due to the symbiotic relationship between conservative outrage and the psychological and physiological characteristics of the right, conservative outrage is uniquely positioned as a mechanism for successful elite propaganda and mobilization—in a way that liberal satire is not.Less
This book explores the aesthetics, underlying logics, and histories of two seemingly distinct genres—liberal political satire and conservative opinion talk—making the case that they should be thought of as the logical extensions of the psychology of the left and right, respectively. One genre is guided by ambiguity, play, deliberation, and openness, while the other is guided by certainty, vigilance, instinct, and boundaries. While the audiences for Sean Hannity and John Oliver come from opposing political ideologies, both are high in political interest, knowledge, and engagement, and both lack faith in some of the United States’ core democratic institutions. This book illustrates how the roles these two genres play for their viewers are strikingly similar: galvanizing the opinion of the left or the right, mobilizing citizens around certain causes, and expressing a frustration with traditional news coverage while offering alternative sources of information and meaning. However, the book proposes that these genres differ in a crucial way: in their capacity to be exploited by special interests and political elites. The book concludes that due to the symbiotic relationship between conservative outrage and the psychological and physiological characteristics of the right, conservative outrage is uniquely positioned as a mechanism for successful elite propaganda and mobilization—in a way that liberal satire is not.
