Answering the Call of Duty: Everyday encounters with the popular geopolitics of military-themed videogames

Bos, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.01.001

Cited by 49 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Assemblage ethnography avoids reifying this complexity into static representations. It instead analyses the assemblages through generative concepts that explain actual and virtual patterns emerging in constellations of relations, thereby offering glimpses into their agencies (Bos, 2018), political potentials (Sharp, 2018) and processes of becoming (Blanco, Arce, & Fisher, 2015). Assemblagists recognise the agency of non‐humans, and use affects to analyse and intervene in the emergent agencies of their human/non‐human constellations (i.e.…”

Section: Assemblage Ethnographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography

Ghoddousi

Page

2020

Geography Compass

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Section: Assemblage Ethnographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography

Ghoddousi

Page

2020

Geography Compass

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“…Rather, it must be considered as "a larger field of struggle for social power" that emerges from the wider social contexts in which media is produced, circulated and consumed (Rosati, 2007a: 996). There has been a growing interest in exploring how players are not passive consumers of geopolitical texts (Bos, 2018a), acknowledging the situated embodied encounters and practices of playing with geopolitics (Woodyer and Carter, 2020), and a need to attend the "everyday experiences of space and geopolitics that are neither scripted nor found embedded in celluloid or print" (Dittmer andGray, 2010: 1667). Taking Rosati's (2007a: 1000 emphasis in the original) claims that such texts and visual images need to "be understood not simply as an object but as a process as well -as power in circulation", it is incumbent to consider how such geopolitical and militarised representations are circulated and made meaningful beyond and prior to an audience and scholarly encounters with a 'final' text.…”

Section: Popular Geopolitics Videogames and Going 'Beyond The Screen'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Popular geopolitics ‘beyond the screen’: Bringing Modern Warfare to the city

Bos

2020

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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Popular culture – in this case military-themed videogames – has been argued to mould and shape popular understandings of the geopolitics of the ‘war on terror’. To date, most attention has been focused on the geopolitical representations of a ‘final’ popular cultural text or object. Less attention has been paid to how popular understandings of geopolitics and military violence have been constructed and commodified prior to, and ‘beyond the screen’. Empirically, the paper examines the marketing campaign of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Through the use of experiential marketing, I show how the game’s launch night incorporated spectacular displays, performances and consumer interactions to sell the pleasures of virtual war by drawing on geopolitical fears of terrorism and military violence within major Western cities. Firstly, I demonstrate how marketing engaged with and transformed urban spaces extending the popular geopolitics of virtual war. Secondly, the paper reveals how experiential marketing targeted and encouraged connections with and between attendees’ bodies. Thirdly, I demonstrate how such events promote geopolitical encounters which extend beyond the temporal and the spatial confines of the marketing event itself. Ultimately, the paper reveals how urban fears surrounding the global ‘war on terror’ were employed to sell the pleasures and geopolitics of virtual war.

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“…Digital games are therefore media that depict information but at the same time are places where players can actively act and experience [16]. Bos [17] highlighted that research gaps in terms of considering the spaces and practices in which geopolitical experiences occur in everyday life.…”

Section: Digital Games and Their Influence On Political-geographical mentioning

confidence: 99%

Representations and Concepts of Borders in Digital Strategy Games and Their Potential for Political Education in Geography Teaching

2019

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In Germany, 93% of young people between the ages of 10 and 18 play video games daily. Political geography, in particular popular geopolitics, have found that video games can help to establish and develop people’s understanding of geopolitics. Consequently, this affects geography education, providing both challenges and opportunities for teaching. Geography teaching is an integral part of political education as students need to understand how boundaries and territories create spaces with regards to social power and become the object of political conflict. Reflection plays a central role in understanding and deconstructing such spatial constructions. In this article, we examine representations and concepts of borders in digital strategy games and the perception and reflection of these by the players. The results provide an outlook on the potential and the challenges of digital strategy games for political education in geography lessons in secondary schools as well as for teacher training at universities. For this reason, possible approaches for education and training will be outlined on the basis of the results.

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Answering the Call of Duty: Everyday encounters with the popular geopolitics of military-themed videogames

Cited by 49 publications

References 43 publications

Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography

Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography

Popular geopolitics ‘beyond the screen’: Bringing Modern Warfare to the city

Representations and Concepts of Borders in Digital Strategy Games and Their Potential for Political Education in Geography Teaching

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