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This paper aims to identify the relationship between video games and neoliberal values. To fulfil this aim, it analyzes the covers of the 20 top-selling video games in the US each year from 2010 2 to 2014 (a total of 80 different games). Video game covers are a type of paratext, i.e., texts that accompany another text to promote it and to guide its reading. Thus, video game covers choose and highlight some of the games' features over others, and by doing that they construct a discourse. In this article, it is argued that regardless of genre, the covers analyzed convey and promote neoliberal values, such as freedom and choice, entrepreneurship, consumption and accumulation of goods, customization, novelty, individualism and meritocracy. This promotion of neoliberal values is combined with an appeal to the concerns of 'risk society'. Thus, the covers of the top-selling video games play on fears linked to the new context created by the economic crisis while at the same time legitimizing the neoliberal ideal of the 'enterprising self' as a model for dealing with it.

Belén Esteban is the most significant example in Spain of a new kind of celebrity that cannot be linked to traditional definitions of talent and work. She is often talked about with contempt, used as a synonym of 'trash TV' and seen as evidence of the loss of meritocratic values in Spain. This article analyses how her celebrity image provides a stage for political struggle that embodies current Spanish tensions regarding class and gender. Belén Esteban's image offers a symbolic battleground upon which the debates about the place and roles of working-class women in Spanish society are acted out. In order to fulfil this aim, this paper analyses two stages upon which these debates are enacted. Firstly, there are the discourses of disgust surrounding her in the Spanish media. Secondly, there are her TV appearances in Sálvame Diario and Sálvame Deluxe, two celebrity gossip programmes in which she works and in which her celebrity image is mainly constructed.

RESUMEN: A causa del rol central de los medios de comunicación en la configuración de la esfera pública contemporánea, las estrategias de comunicación de las instituciones políticas tienden a adaptarse a la lógica mediática. Se detecta un acercamiento progresivo de la comunicación política hacia el entretenimiento y el ejemplo más significativo de esta tendencia es la celebrificación de los políticos, es decir, el uso de elementos de la cultura de la fama para construir la imagen pública de los candidatos. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo desarrollar teóricamente qué significa celebrificar a los candidatos. A partir de las principales aportaciones de los celebrity studies y el marketing político se han identificado tres variables que permiten reconocer y entender la celebrificación. Posteriormente estos tres rasgos se usan para analizar la construcción de la imagen de los candidatos en las Elecciones al Parlamento de Cataluña de 2012.PALABRAS CLAVE: Comunicación política; personalización; mediatización; celebrity studies; politainment.ABSTRACT: The centrality of the media in the contemporary public sphere has led political institutions to adapt their communication strategies to its logic. Politics and entertainment are increasingly converging and one of the most significant examples of this trend is the tendency to turn politicians into celebrities, i.e. using elements of celebrity culture to build candidates' public image. This article aims to develop theoretically what celebrification of a candidate means. Drawing upon the main contributions of celebrity studies and political marketing, we identify three fundamental aspects that become useful to recognise and understand celebrification. Additionally, these three elements are applied to analyse the construction of the candidates' image in the 2012 Catalan Parliamentary Elections.

Spain). Her research focuses on celebrity culture, class and gender studies, governmentality and reality TV. She has published articles in journals such as Convergence, Celebrity Studies, Social Semiotics, Games and Culture and Comunicar and she is the author of the book Telerrealidad, Disciplina e Identidad. Los makeover shows en España [Reality TV, discipline and identity. Makeover shows in Spain] (Ed. UOC, 2013).

An ideological analysis of video games should include both the narrative and ludic dimensions, since there can be frictions between these two dimensions and they can even contradict one another. This article’s main aim is to analyze BioShock Infinite, an illustrative case study of these conflicts. On the one hand, it is a video game that portrays a dystopian narrative, aligning itself with this genre’s critical progressive tradition; on the other hand, its gameplay has an accentuated neoliberal bent. The analysis of BioShock Infinite also helps us to critically discuss certain trends in game design in contemporary mainstream video games that connect with and reinforce neoliberal values.

This article explores ‘downward celebrity migration’, that is, when a celebrity enters a field that is less legitimate than their field of origin. It does so by studying the case of Lucía Etxebarria, a Spanish literary celebrity who participated in a celebrity reality TV show ( Campamento de Verano (‘Summer Camp’)) in 2013. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, this article analyses the ambiguous hierarchical position that Etxebarria occupied in the programme and how she was evaluated according to the specific rules of reality TV: authenticity, ordinariness, performance and submission to the programme’s authority. Etxebarria’s presence in the programme stirred up a heated debate about social, cultural and fame hierarchies, and she became the target of attacks that tried to undermine her symbolic capital through personal humiliation.

This article examines how the news media framed the allegations made in 2016 against Cristiano Ronaldo for evading taxes through offshores, and how audiences discussed this online, in Portugal, where he is originally from, and Spain, where he played football at the time. These countries were amidst an 'austerity culture' justifying welfare cuts, promoting entrepreneurialism as 'success', and presenting neoliberal policies as 'common sense'. Our analysis reveals Ronaldo portrayed as a member of the economic elite criticized for the high earnings of football players and celebrity tax privileges; as an ungrateful immigrant who does not contribute enough to society; and as 'one like us' manoeuvring to evade taxes. The comparative analysis shows audiences had double standards based on their feelings towards the celebrity, and they interpreted this case positively or negatively in relation to the inefficiency of the fiscal and justice systems in Southern Europe.