Design Project Paper

I would like to dismantle institutional racism. But that’s a little much for a 4 to 7 page paper, so let me try to focus on a single instance of institutional racism that might be a good target for digital activism. Racism is alive and well here at UW Madison. We’ve seen how active it is from the experiences students of color are sharing via the hashtag #theRealUW. We can also see plainly the results of UW Madison’s institutional racism in the demographics of the student body. The 2014 US Census found that Wisconsin, a whiter than average state, is 6.6% African American, and 6.5% Hispanic or Latino. According to the office of the Registrar, in the Fall 2013-2014 semester, UW Madison was only 2.7% African American and 4% Hispanic American. If there were no institutional racism at the university, we would expect students of all demographic groups to have an equal shot at attending, and so we would expect that the figures for each group to at least roughly match those of the US Census for the state (better yet, the numbers would be higher than the state’s demographics, as UW schools draw students from around the country). But the present numbers for African American and Hispanic students indicate the presence of an institutionalized bias against such students. As a part of a larger effort to dismantle institutional racism, then, let’s work against that bias and see if we can get the university to enroll greater numbers of African American and Hispanic students, numbers at least roughly equal to the demographics of the state.

Seems reasonable, right? So how do we get it done?

First of all, let’s be clear that we cannot expect this to be an easy process. I want to assume the best about our university administrators. I want to assume that they are well-intentioned (mostly white) people who would like to see greater diversity at UW Madison but are unsure of how to proceed. Perhaps they all feel that they have no power over the situation, each thinking that someone else must act first before they can make any meaningful contribution. Perhaps admissions officers would say that they want to admit a more diverse student body but don’t have enough qualified candidates, a statement that ignores the admissions office’s role in perpetuating institutional racism while pushing blame for the problem onto other institutions, like state high schools. Or perhaps they would respond as Chancellor Blank has, by suggesting the solution the UW’s racism is to host yet another “information sharing” session, rather than to take any direct action to change university policy. In any case, a bureaucracy full of (mostly) well-meaning white people is the very definition of institutional racism, and so we cannot expect change to come easy. In order to see real change, we will have to apply pressure on UW Madison in the form of some kind of social action. But what is the best strategy for applying that pressure?

If we follow Stewart, Smith, and Denton’s approach, we will need to form a social movement. To accomplish this, we will need to rabble rouse for a while until an inspirational leader comes along and is able to act as moderator between protesters and the institution. Because this will likely be a long struggle, that leader will also help us form a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to accomplish greater diversity at UW Madison. That organization may eventually either fade out of relevance or become co opted by UW Madison, but in the meantime it will serve the purpose of organizing rallies, protests, and meetings with government officials, legislators, and UW administrators--all with the purpose of raising awareness about racial disparity in the student population here.

This approach has its benefits: it communicates well with UW Madison administration and can accomplish deals and compromises. It also is able to leverage news media and other resources to place pressure on the administration if those deals and compromises don’t pan out. And it is well designed to survive the long battle that will be required in order to make real changes in the admissions policies of the university.

In this instance, however, the social movement approach is not well matched to the goals of protest. What we are after here is a relatively small change. We want roughly 1,500 more African American and 1,000 Latinx students added to the UW Madison student body. While this is a change I expect administration to resist, it is not a change I expect too many people to rally behind. Few white students will see this as an issue to get excited about, and many students of color will see this goal as a too-small part of a much larger problem. While they may like to see this change take place, they will likely have other priorities. And so, without widespread support, we may never be able to get the numbers together to form a social movement. The demographics here are self-sustaining. Without more diverse students, we don’t have enough bodies to advocate for more a more diverse student body.

But we might be able to drum up interest and attention in this issue using some of the activities David Graeber describes. Perhaps a direct action campaign would put this issue in the minds of students and administrators and would then create a base of support for a social movement like the ones described by Stewart, Smith, and Denton. A small group of committed protesters could stage lock-downs and street festivals, for example. Street festivals in particular might be a good tactic here, as I can see many students who would not otherwise be interested in politics signing up to party for social justice. Stewart, Smith, and Denton would describe such work as the nascent phase of a social movement, but for Graeber, such actions have their own value. They form the identities of the protesters, which might be a good goal in this case. Radicalizing otherwise apolitical college students adds bodies to the cause.

As effective as the street party may be in drawing white bodies to support greater campus diversity, Graeber’s direct action methods do have some obvious limits here. In particular, these methods tend to be those used by groups of predominantly white activists, activists who feel more comfortable directly resisting police than protestors of color might. White activists risk less in taking direct action. Further, any large-scale protest of UW Madison students is by default going to be majority white, and such protests enact the very problem we are seeking to address. Creating an environment full of partying white people is not a rhetorical strategy well-suited to our present goal.

Perhaps then it would be best to emulate the movements Manuel Castells discusses. These movements begin online and then move to occupy civic spaces. #BlackLivesMatter is one such movement, and it would seem that #theRealUW is moving in a similar direction. Perhaps we could join our cause to #theRealUW by tweeting about the demographic discrepancies we have discovered. We could even maybe land a meeting with admissions officials to discuss our findings and then tweet about the results of that meeting, using the hashtag. In fact, with only a few actors, we could approach many, many administrators with our simple request for greater diversity and tweet on the hashtag about all the red-tape and excuses they offer in response. We have already seen local television and newspapers cover #theRealUW, so perhaps we would be able to build on that coverage and draw greater attention to this problem, thereby placing greater pressure on admins to actually respond to our requests for equity and action.

While I do think this is the best strategy I’ve discussed so far, and the most appropriate to both the cause and the digital age we live in, I need to be clear that I am a white graduate student who is in no real position to suggest any strategies to #theRealUW participants. To co opt their movement for the goals I’ve described for the purposes of this paper would be all kinds of offensive. Students of color do not need me stepping in to set their agenda or to push their movement in a particular direction. That said, if students of color wanted to take #theRealUW and use it as a platform to report on a campaign of direct address to university admins, I do think it could be effective, even though their goals may be different (or broader) than the goals I’ve outlined in this paper.

One last approach I’ll discuss here is that of “clicktivism” as described by Halupka. While clicktivism as such is a noncommittal, easily reproducible interaction with a political “Object,” someone has to generate the Objects clicktivists interact with. Sites like MoveOn.org and Avvaz (see Kavada) specialize in generating such content. This isn’t clicktivism per se but it is a necessary precursor, and represents a valid strategy for political engagement. We could produce social media posts and memes and profile pictures like the ones Halupka discusses. These “political Objects” could then be used by students who feel our cause is correct and want to support it without having to commit or risk too much.

As a thought experiment, let’s imagine a bunch of memes where we crop out the image of a student from a campus photo and replace it with a grey silhouette and a question mark, accompanied by the words “How many white faces do you see?” We can post these pictures online and around campus with brief notes about demographic disparity and a call for students to look around their classrooms and count white bodies vs non-white bodies. Let’s say these memes generate attention and are shared widely among UW students, and that many UW students change their FB profile pictures to grey silhouettes with question marks.

While this form of protest does not create as dramatic a scene as Graeber’s direct action campaigns or Stewart, Smith, and Denton’s social movements, it does have the advantage that, as a low-risk action, it can attract greater numbers of participants from around campus. Many white students might be willing to become clicktivists for our cause even if they might not want to show up for a protest IRL. This form of protest also avoids the problems I brought up earlier about enrolling lots of white bodies in a street protest. Here, even though the majority of protesters would be white, their white bodies are not on display en masse. The downside of this form of protest is that, because it represents very little commitment on the part of participants, administrators are not likely to perceive it as any real threat to business as usual unless it enrolls a massive number of participants.

These approaches all have their merits and limitations. They all engage others in the issue we’ve identified. They all raise support and put pressure on university administrators in one way or another. None are likely to produce the results we want, which is a simple acknowledgement of the problem, a clear commitment from admissions administrators to make specific changes, and a system of transparency and accountability through which students can monitor the work of administrators as they progress or fail to progress toward their commitments.

I think it’s fair to say that the problem I’ve identified is a real problem, and that the solution I’ve called for is reasonable. I’m not calling for quotas or reparations (which I would also support). I’m just saying that if the UW serves the state, then it ought to represent the state. That is all. The fact that none of these strategies for social action perfectly addresses this issue speaks to A) the difficulty of confronting institutional racism on any front, B) the need to address larger issues of institutional racism in order to make any progress (e.g., if we can replace the administrators with reasonable numbers of people of color, then maybe we’ll see some results), and C) the fact that calls for small changes are not well suited to social action campaigns, which are better at pointing out larger social ills and calling for more pressing, dramatic changes (e.g., #BlackLivesMatters wants to eliminate institutional racism from the entire US police force and #theRealUW wants to eliminate institutional and interpersonal racism from the university).

These reflections leave me with a number of questions. We have heard that direct action and movements like Occupy (and I suppose this applies to clicktivism, too) do well at forming the identities of the protesters. But what of the identities of the resistance? How do we reach them? Should we even care? The goals of social movements and direct action campaigns tend to be large, sweeping goals. What if we want them to make small changes to improve conditions on campus or elsewhere? What can we do about that? Institutional racism presents us with a situation of “racism without racists,” in which groups of well-meaning whites enact white supremacy without being able to identify their own personal responsibility. In this situation, to whom does one address one’s rhetorical appeals? Who can be persuaded when racism is everywhere but none of us white people are capable of thinking ourselves racist? And must that happen (that realization that, yes, we whites are the system of oppression) happen first before any real change can take place? If so, will changing the identities of protesters be enough? And will protesting itself be enough? I find it unlikely that any white UW students will realize themselves as complicit with institutional racism in any of the situations I described above. So then, what? Do we just wait for the coming national demographic shift away from whiteness to finally push white people out of the center?

What is it that we can do--right now--to make the environments we are in more diverse and inclusive?

Readings for 4/5

Gladwell argues that digital activism cannot produce the kind of social change that traditional activism can because social change requires bodies in public. People have to take on high levels of commitment and risk to join a traditional activist movement, and so they are only likely to join if they have a “strong link,” or a close friend, in the movement. Social media works via “weak links,” and can only generate low levels of commitment and risk. He tells a story of a white wall street guy who lost his phone and then had the Internet hunt down the black girl who had it. Whitey Wall Street Guy then used the media attention generated by his Internet connections to pressure the police into arresting the girl. Gladwell suggests that weak links are good for small actions like this and that strong links are required for larger changes.

Halupka tells us that “clicktivism” gets a bad rap, often from people who don’t even give a good definition of the phenomenon. So H develops a heuristic with the help of a couple concepts: Cause and Object. By Cause, H means the “factors which guide a decision to act,” and by Object, she means, simply “online content” (120-121). Clicktivism, then, “should be understood as  a  response  to,  and  engagement  with,  an  established  political  Object” (121).

How do you tell if an Object is a political Object? This gets a bit tricky, as it depends on where the Object is located online. The same Object could be political in one place and not political in another.

For H, clicktivism is always:

-Situated online

-impulsive gesture

-Noncommittal

-Does not draw upon specialized knowledge

-easily replicated

-engages a political object

-an action performed

Clicking “social buttons” such as the Facebook “like” button counts if one is “liking” a political Object. Importantly, writing a political FB post is *not* clicktivism, but the creation of a political Object, which others can interact with.

Questions:
So it seems that Halupka is responding directly to Gladwell and others. G says social media won't make any real changes. H says that it is a valid political act and that there are more ways to be political online than just clicking. We might take up this debate in class: Can social media make important social changes? If so, does it have to involve more than "clicktivism" as Halupka defines it, or is clicktivism enough?

Halupka's piece also seems to speak to Kavada's piece about Avaaz. H makes a distinction between clicktivism (what Avaaz's users do) and the creation of political Objects (what Avaaz's managers do). I don't think H says that one is better than another, but reading these two articles together seems to suggest that the authoring of Objects is the necessary driver of clicktivism. We might think about the relationship between authoring content and sharing or liking it. Does one represent a higher level of commitment and civic engagement than the other? Is one more likely to produce social change than the other? Or is sharing a post to your wall more or less the same as authoring the statement yourself in terms of its commitment, engagement, and impact?

Annotated bibliography

Potts, Amanda. “‘Love You Guys (No Homo)’: How gamers and fans play with sexuality, gender, and Minecraft on YouTube.” Critical Discourse Studies. (2015) 12.2. 163-186.

Potts analyses the discourse of professional youtubers who post Minecraft “Let’s Play” videos. She pays particular attention to the ways that male sexual identity gets constructed through the discourse of these videos, finding that “camp-inflected performances by some of YouTube’s most subscribed gamers can stimulate progressive conversations about sexuality and gender performativity in very large communities of (largely adolescent, male) fans” (164).

She looks at 63 videos and 217,916 comments on the channel of Sjin, a youtuber on the “Yogcast” network who identifies as straight but makes frequent homosexual innuendos. In the comments on his videos, subscribers quickly challenge pejorative uses of terms like “fag” and “gay.” Therefore, “consumption of YouTube videos in which influential gamers demonstrate disregard for hegemonic discourses and normed roles can positively influence the discourses of adolescent audiences.” (184).

Glas, Rene. “Vicarious play: Engaging the viewer in Let’s Play videos” Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication (2015) 5.1. 81-86. Print.

Glas defines “Let’s Play” videos as those that “feature captured play sessions of digital games with added, often humorous commentary by the player(s) through audio or a picture-in-picture frame showing the video’s creator(s) whilst playing the game” (81). She draws on the film theory notion of “homunculus” to suggest that the overstated reactions of the youtubers and their in-game antics work together to create both “ludic immersion and non-ludic engagement,” which together constitute “an experience of vicarious play” (84).

Chess, Shira and Adrienne Shaw. “A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 59.1. 2015, pp. 208-220.

Chess and Shaw tell the story of how their fishbowl on feminism and video games at Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) was used by gamergaters to theorize a conspiracy connecting government funding, academic work, and progressive changes in games and gaming culture. They analyze gamergate discourse through the lens of academic work on conspiracy theorizing. They also read their own work through the lens of the gamergate theorists and find that the opacity of academic discourse A) is not friendly to outsiders and B) lends itself well to conspiracy theorizing: “The focus that has been made on academic practice [by gamergaters]—specifically our work and the work of other individuals involved with DiGRA—is disheartening. It has become apparent how quickly academia can be misunderstood, and more specifically how feminist academic research can be misappropriated for non-feminist purposes” (217).

To support their arguments, Chess and Shaw refer frequently to videos by youtuber “Sargon of Akkad,” who posted videos espousing their connection to a vast anti-male and anti-gamer conspiracy.

How They Talk to One Another

Potts and Glass both present different takes on the “Let’s Play” genre, and both find it rhetorical in different ways.

For Potts, youtubers can use the Let’s Play genre to persuade their subscribers to think differently about gender and sexual orientation. In particular, the off-handed, jesting homosexual innuendo of a particular youtuber perhaps contributed to the progressive attitudes of his subscribers on issues of gender and sexual orientation. Pott’s case might be a little weak in the sense that millennials tend to be more progressive on these issues anyway, and if anything Sjin’s innuendos seem to represent only a slight move to the left of pejorative uses of terms like “fag” (i.e., homosexuality not as a put-down, but as a crass joke). Even so, her idea that sexual and gender identity are worked out in the discourse surrounding Let’s Play videos strikes me as useful and correct. She clearly demonstrates these identity negotiations at work both in the videos and in the comments attached to them. It is not hard to conclude that all sorts of features of identity get worked out in these communities, whether it be, for example, racial or ethnic identity or the meaning of the label “gamer.”

For Glas, the Let’s Play genre is persuasive primarily through its formal features, which result in a high level of viewer engagement. The combination of seeing gameplay and the youtuber’s reactions to their own gameplay creates a feeling of “vicarious play,” or a sense that the viewer is playing the game and experiencing its features though the play of the youtuber. This is an example (I think) of what Burke would call “identification,” as the viewer and youtuber are consubstantial in their enjoyment of the game and their reactions to it. It seems to me that Glas’ analysis complements Potts’ inasmuch as a high level of engagement can provide opportunities for other forms of persuasion, like the kind Potts describes. In this way, identification can lead to negotiations and renegotiations of identity.

Chess and Shaw present on an entirely different topic: gamergate and the appropriation of their own academic work by anti-feminist conspiracy theorists. Their paper primarily address gamergate, conspiracy theory, and the opacity of academic discourse. Collectively, however, these three sources give context to the analysis of a particular video, “Let's Play: Depression Quest #GamerGate #NotYourShield” by youtuber Sargon of Akkad. Sargon of Akkad’s videos are cited directly by Chess and Shaw as examples of gamergate conspiracy thinking, and his videos cite their work directly as well. His videos are normally talk-heavy, anti-feminist conspiracy theory, but for this video in particular he shifts genres to offer a Let’s Play of Depression Quest, the same game that launched gamergate.

Glas and Potts give insight into the persuasive qualities of the genre. Chess and Shaw give social context for the youtuber Sargon of Akkad. Altogether, they give me the tools I need to think about the interactions among the arguments of gamergate, the persuasive qualities of Depression Quest, the generic features of the Let’s Play, and Sargon of Akkad’s own use of all these in his video.

Castells

Castells argues that while states hold a monopoly on coercion, communications technologies can engage in persuasion, which is ultimately more powerful. The Internet has given rise to a new form of communication he calls “mass self-communication” which means every actor in the communication chain is acting autonomously. This lateral power sharing enabled by the Internet enables a new kind of social movement: “the more interactive and self-configurable communication is, the less hierarchical is the organization and the more participatory is the movement. This is why the networked social movements of the digital age represent a new species of social movement” (15).

Castells also offers a definition of social movement that would lead us to exclude movements like White Aryan Resistance, for example (or at least to significantly qualify their inclusion) : “Where do social movements come from? And how are they formed? Their roots are in the fundamental injustice of all societies, relentlessly confronted by human aspirations of justice.” (12). Social movements arise from the lived experience of oppression. I prefer this to SS&D’s more inclusive definition, even though it makes it harder to talk about groups who use the tools of social movements for the purposes of defending or extending their already existing power and privilege.

After describing movements like Indignadas in Spain and Occupy in the US, Castells analyzes these new movements, finding that they share some common features. The movements are born online but manifest in civic spaces. In his words they “become a movement by occupying the urban space” (222).

Then he says this about space and autonomy that I want to quote in full because I don’t understand it well enough yet to paraphrase:

“The space of the movement is always made of an interaction between the space of flows on the Internet and wireless communication networks, and the space of places of the occupied sites and of symbolic buildings targeted by protest actions. This hybrid of cyberspace and urban space constitutes a third space that I call the space of autonomy. This is because autonomy can only be insured by the capacity to organize in the free space of communication networks, but at d1e same time can only be exercised as a transformative force by challenging the disciplinary institutional order by reclaiming the space of the city for its citizens. Autonomy without defiance becomes withdrawal. Defiance without a permanent basis for autonomy in the space of flows is tantamount to discontinuous activism. The space of autonomy is the new spatial form of networked social movements” (222)

These new movements are spontaneous and viral. They move their participants from outrage to hope. They are self-reflexive and non-violent. They don’t have fixed demands but instead encompass multiple demands for freedom and autonomy. And they at least sometimes aim not at a legal or institutional transformation, but a change in the values of their society.

These movements require the internet but are not completely defined by their use of technology. Social media is a necessary but not sufficient condition for this type of social movement.

Questions:

I think the paragraph I quoted above offers an interesting addition to our last discussion about space vs. place and whether or not online “spaces” are literal spaces or figurative ones. Here we have online space interacting with physical space and creating a third space called autonomy. I don’t quite get how it works, but it seems like a productive point to discuss.

I’m particularly fond of Castells definition of social movements as originating in the injustice of all societies. We could compare/contrast that with SSD’s definition, and with the work we read about anarchist activists.

It seems like autonomy and “individuation” (discussed on 230-231) are important parts of Castells theoretical framework. I don’t understand these very well and would be interested in hearing the class discuss them.

Notes from class 2/15

Four ways in which the internet is spacial (there are probably more):

1. There is a materiality to the Internet that we don't normally have full access to. (servers, etc)

2. The internet intersects with our physical spaces in various ways through our various devices.

3. The internet intersects with our psychological sense of space (and our engagement with our embodied sense of space) in various ways (like feeling like we are "in" the world of a video game or being distracted from the world around us when we are "in" our phones).

4. The internet creates networks of social relations between bodies across physical space that we call social spaces (individuals' facebook feeds as spaces in this sense, or boardgamegeek, or black twitter, or etc).

Rhetorical Analysis #2: Gamergate

Depending on who you talk to, “gamergate” can mean very different things. For some, the term describes a movement advocating for ethical standards in games journalism. For others, it represents a protest against narrow and derogatory representations of the “gamer” identity. For still others, gamergate names a group of misogynists making personal threats of violence toward women in the games industry. Gamergate may well be all these things at once. In this post, I will not attempt to arrive at a comprehensive definition of gamergate, nor will I attempt to describe the movement in a way that would satisfy all of its supporters. Instead I will focus on the history of gamergate in order to show how it has served a specific rhetorical purpose for a small, anonymous group of what I will call “male supremacy activists,” or social actors who seek to defend male privilege against perceived threats. By remaining loosely defined and open to the enrollment of diverse participants, gamergate has provided a public front for these male supremacy activists. While they covertly carry out a campaign of harassment targeting women in the games industry, gamergate rebuts the group’s critics, effectively obstructing the process of creating a public outcry against the harassment.

The pattern goes like this: a woman in the games industry is targeted for harassment, games journalists speak out to defend her, and then they are met by gamergaters, who accuse the journalists of corruption and advancing an agenda of political correctness. The fact that these accusations sometimes land rather close to their mark strengthens support for gamergate and further obscures the abuse of women. When gamergate is called misogynistic and supportive of a campaign of harassment, pundits in the movement claim no association with those bad actors, condemn the harassment, and then accuse journalists of attempting to dodge questions of their own ethical misconduct. Then another group of voices accuse the journalists of appropriating the identity of women and minorities to shield themselves from criticism. In this way, the male supremacy activists are able to abuse women and then derail any public outcry against the abuse into a debate about journalistic ethics. This is a rhetorical strategy of dissimulation and digression--a strategy of noise--and it has proven to be effective in serving the group’s needs.

Gamergate began in a rather messy breakup between developer Zoe Quinn and her then boyfriend Eron Gjoni. In August of 2014, Gjoni wrote a lengthy blog post in which he revealed private correspondence between himself and Quinn, documenting her admission of infidelity with five different partners during their relationship. He then cracked a joke about the fast food chain Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Gjoni shared the post with users of 4Chan, who responded by starting an internet relay chat (IRC) called “Burgers and Fries.” The full text of that IRC has been made public (summarized here, though be warned it is not a pleasant read), and it leaves little doubt about the rampant misogyny of that forum. Users expressed their desire to harm Quinn and then celebrated her “doxing” (i.e., the making of all her private information public) by sharing nude photos of her with her friends and family and encouraging one another to torment Quinn until she killed herself. Then Quinn started to receive rape and death threats.

Later the same month, Anita Sarkeesian posted an installment of her youtube series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games in which she described a pattern of sexist depictions of women in games by major publishers. Sarkeesian was also doxed and made the target of rape and death threats. When she was scheduled to speak at a conference or university, coordinators of these events received bomb threats or threats of mass shootings. Other women in the games industry received similar treatment, and so did many who publicly supported them.

The group also plotted a larger, more public-facing campaign targeting Quinn and Nathan Grayson, a games journalist who was named in Gjoni’s post. They accused Grayson of trading favorable coverage of Quinn’s game, Depression Quest, for sex. Thought these accusations were found to be baseless, they caused quite a stir at Kotaku, the website that was Grayson’s full time employer, and the controversy rippled out into the larger games journalism community.

In the ensuing discussions online, many voices took sides either with Quinn and other women targeted by the male supremacy activists or with what was perceived to be a still nascent consumer advocacy movement pushing for integrity in games journalism. That this movement was invented as an extension of harassment activities by a violently misogynistic collective was not evident (or not of concern) to most who joined up with them. Instead, newcomers to the movement saw it as an opportunity to push back against the encroachment of left-wing politics in games culture. On twitter, Adam Baldwin coined the hashtag #gamergate, which was then taken up as the name for this movement. Baldwin later described gamergate as a “sorely needed” discussion about the “evil” of political correctness.

Toward the end of August, several games journalist coordinated the publishing of think pieces about the end of “gamer” culture. For example, Leigh Alexander’s piece for Gamasutra targeted games developers directly with her title “‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over.” Alexander references the harassment of Quinn and Sarkeesian and suggests that developers look beyond the demographic of “angry young men.” The games market, she argued, now included a much wider group than “young white dudes with disposable income.”

Meant to push back against gamergate and the anonymous harassment of women in gaming, these think pieces at least partially backfired. Instead of rallying mass support to women in games, they effectively drew still more voices to support gamergate. Many readers were offended by the articles, feeling that they were an attack on all video game fans, and they resented the implication that they were all misogynists. A group of female and minority gamers, organized under the hashtag #notyourshield, expressed their support for gamergate and called out games journalists for shielding themselves from criticism by hiding behind arguments for inclusivity (see this video or this post).

At this stage, gamergate had enrolled many different participants, all of whom understood the goals and purpose of the movement differently. Depending on who you talked to, gamergate was about ethical reform in games journalism, or about pushing back against the PC police, or about standing up for the identity of “gamer” against games journalists who were making blanket derogatory statements. It was also -- if only for a relatively small portion of those now involved -- a convenient cover for an ongoing campaign of harassment and abuse. Had Burgers and Fries participants never launched a public campaign to extend their harassment efforts, it would have been a simple matter for games journalists and other observers to see the abuse for what it was, to call it out, and to rally support for women in the games industry. With the launch of the public campaign, these misogynists started a chain of events that served to confuse public conversation about the abuse. By targeting games journalists --  the very actors who were in a position to best call out the harassment -- as the object of scandal, the abusers were able to ensure that public conversation would immediately rebut accusations of misogyny with counter-accusations of ethical misconduct, political correctness, and then appropriation of minority identity.

To say that gamergate originated and still operates as a smokescreen for the abuse of women is not to say that every actor in the movement participates in or condones that abuse. In fact, many gamergate participants openly oppose the harassment of women and support women in the games industry. Even so -- and wittingly or not -- the movement as a whole still serves the purpose for which it was created: the continued harassment of women.

In gamergate we have a subject that represents not just one but several distinct instances of activism with overlapping goals and interests. The angle on the movement I’ve explored in this paper examines gamergate as a collection of these instances, which together serve a useful function for male supremacy activists in games culture. In particular, I’ve attempted to show how a public-facing movement, open to a variety of participants, served as a strategy of dissimulation and distraction for covert harassment and abuse. We could, perhaps, abstract from this analysis to say something like: “Sometimes online activists use public forums like youtube and twitter to provide cover and/or support for their campaigns involving the doxing and threats of specific targets.” While true (and applicable to other circumstances such as the work of Anonymous and other groups), this abstracted statement overlooks that fact that what such activities mean and what they accomplish vary radically from one context to another. Here they mean that the online abuse of women continues uninterrupted while discussions surrounding the abuse are lost in an also important but ultimately irrelevant conversation about journalistic ethics. Whatever it may represent for digital activism generally, gamergate in all its specificity is a troubling distraction from which games journalists must untangle themselves if they are to come to the aid of women in gaming. Likely the only way forward is for journalists to both give into the demand of gamergaters for greater accountability and professional ethics (a much needed reform in any case) and then to begin anew their conversation about the abuse of women in games.

Readings for 3/15

Endres and Senda-Cook offer a framework for interpreting how place affects protest.

They examine place as rhetorical artifact (place is not just a location of an argument, it makes an argument), as material rhetoric (places are both material and symbolic), as embodied rhetoric (bodies exist in relation to places), as ephemeral rhetoric (both protests and places are temporary), and as experiential rhetoric (place is defined by lived experiences, therefore participant observation is a good method to study it).

E&S-C also look at places as having “pre-existing meaning” like the national mall in DC, which is often used as a site of protest because it has been often used as a site of protest. Places are also subject to “temporary reconstruction” by protestors who can briefly redefine the meaning of a space with their protest. “Repeated reconstructions” of this kind can alter the meaning of a place in a more lasting way. They then analyze two Step It Up events in Salt Lake City with their rubric.

Mountford looks at the rhetorical space of the pulpit through literature, history, and ethnography. She contrasts Father Maple's "ship/fortress" pulpit in Moby Dick with the natural settings of women preachers in the works of Eliot, Morrison, and Davis. M finds that “as a rhetorical space, the pulpit has been 1) associated culturally with male authority for two millennia, and 2) traditionally designed to physically separate the congregation and the Minister” (51).

She pulls from history an interesting anecdote about suffragists burning down pulpits in England. “it is clear that for the suffragists who participated in the bombings, gender hierarchies were being enforced from and/or represented by the pulpit.”

M then interviews women in seminary about their relation to the pulpit. One respondent refers to it as a "shield" and suggests that it separates her from the congregation, effectively determining the form and content of her preaching.

She also examines the history of the pulpit as a means to reinforce "the myth of the preacher as messenger from God, chosen and set apart from the people” (59)

So why did the women novelists place their women preachers outside? To raise the question of women's place in sacred traditions and to distance these characters from the authoritarian and masculine rhetoric of the pulpit.

Questions:

Given our emphasis on digital activism, it seems natural for us to talk about "space" and "place" as they relate to online activity. Is Facebook (for example) a "place" with "pre-existing meaning" that can be "temporarily reconstructed"? Is it an instance of "embodied rhetoric" in that bodies exist in relation to Facebook (or whatever platform)? Are online spaces gendered in the way that some sacred spaces are? 

Are "space" and "place" ever anything more than metaphors when we talk about online activism? Like, does the physical location of the online activist matter? Can it be rhetorical? Perhaps through GPS and "checking in" at locations? Or perhaps in video? Or in other ways? How do physical locations show up in ways that matter in this work?

Readings for 3/8

Ekman studies the YouTube presence of five different neo-Nazi groups in Sweden. He watched 223 videos and then did Critical Discourse Analysis on them. He broke the videos into six different categories:

• marches and meetings,
• verbal or physical confrontations with opponents or the police,
• direct action campaigns (for example a video of members handing out fliers, set to techno music)
• hiking and farm work
• martial arts and sports
• interviews
• humor
• news

Ekman finds that each type of video serves a slightly different purpose. He made a handy chart of these, which I'll post below for future reference.

All together, the videos serve helped the groups in their efforts at “achieving and increasing public visibility," and helped them “mobilise and strengthen activists and sympathisers” (94, 95). They also helped the groups “showcase a diversity of practices and identities, seeking to modify the common historical perception of right-wing politics." The videos are themselves are a type of “political action” or “propaganda” (95), and they “utilise aesthetic elements to access experiences and emotions within the audience” (96).

Kavada studies the online activist organization Avaaz, a project of the same folks who did Moveon.org. Avaaz operates primarily through an email list in 14 languages and has well over 9 million subscribers. Kavada is primarily concerned with how the organization manages its online image through its use of four different platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, and its homepage. Kadava says she analyzed 400 comments with Grounded Theory and found that most of the comments across the four platforms were directed toward Avaaz itself, with the exception of Facebook comments, which were often directed toward the poster's own social network, inviting their friends to join up. YouTube had the most controversy or "flaming" in its comments. Kavada also makes use of the distinction between "surface" and "site," suggesting that the surface of Avaaz is one controlled by its organizers, while the movement as a whole operates as a site where participants construct a shared identity around activist campaigns. Kavada does give a bit of space to critics of such activism--who call it "slactivism" and who suggest that such organizations lower the bar for participation and do not effectively mobilize their users to take part in offline actions.

Project
As I start my second rhetorical analysis I find Ekman rather helpful. I intend to look at gamergate as a hate campaign and hope to use the paper to make a distinction I find lacking in these conversations so far: a distinction between progressive activism, conservative activism, and hate campaigns. Ekman's example shows that the dividing line between conservative activism and hate campaign is rather blurry, and one type of action can easily blend into the other.

Kavada's insights are less directly applicable to this next paper; however I appreciated her core questions about the "affordances" of various platforms. While some of her findings may be more readily evident now (since we are more accustomed to Facebook tagging and YouTube trolls) her strategy is still valuable in studying new platforms as they emerge. In fact "gamergate" is a hate campaign that took place over more than one platform (IRC channel, twitter, popular press, online games journalism, and the "blogosphere") so thinking about the affordances of all those platforms may be instructive for me as well.

Questions:
Hmm. Questions. Maybe we should watch a Neo-Nazi Swede Farming Video and see what we think. Does it help us expand our notions of what a Nazi can be? Is there some point to it that we are missing?

I think we will probably want to discuss the merits of slactivism. And we might want to discuss its merits or demerits in terms of the various online platforms we experience it on now. MySpace has drifted away, but some of the other platforms are still around. And new ones as well.

Is there a significant difference between tweeting with a relevant hashtag and covering your profile pick with the colors of support for a cause? Is signing online petitions any different?

Are bodies implicated in these actions in any way? In anyway comparable to street demonstrations? Are they ever at risk in online activism?

Ekman's thing for future reference:

Direct Action

Graeber’s chapters outline his ethnography of anarchist movements and their direct action campaigns. In chapter 7 he covers meetings, where actions are planned and debated. Decisions by these groups are made by consensus, and the ideal is that the groups will create a radically inclusive and democratic space. However, they still manage to be mostly white, frequently male-dominated spaces that do not live up to their ideals. Chapter 8 describes five different types of actions. Direct actions include (but are not limited to): marches and rallies, picket lines, street parties, blockades and lockdowns, and Black Bloc actions. Graeber gives first person accounts of each of these types of action, some of which are really gripping to read. In chapter 9, Graeber discusses representation of direct action by media and by police. He finds that police violence is enabled by a media that reports it as a justified response. In chapter 10, Graeber gets theoretical and posits police as representatives of state violence and Anarchists as motivated by imagination. 

There’s so much to dig into here that I can’t really go into it all. For now suffice to say I appreciated Graeber’s approach. Ethnography proved, in my opinion, to lead to a descriptive rather than a prescriptive definition of the subject. I suppose we can still debate whether direct action is an example of activism or whether these Anarchists are a SM or whether we’ve got a completely different third term in “direct action.” In any case, it was an engaging read and I feel that I got to know these movements better as a result.

Why these chapters? Why this order? I’m not entirely sure. There seems to be a natural progression from 7 to 9. Almost chronological: meetings precede action which precedes representation of that action. And then 10 is the conclusion of the book so G does some reflecting, makes some connections to terror, and wraps up. I think the subject matter and the order are dictated by his subject and the genre of the academic book. He took part in this culture and its actions, so he ordered his chapters the way the subculture would order its own behavior.

Hmm. Questions. I’m really curious to hear what everyone things. Did you like the descriptions of the actions? How about that Black Bloc stuff, huh? I think we could chat quite a bit along those lines. 

I’m also curious to know what people make of his take on police and Anarchism. Are the police “bureaucrats with guns?” Is there any value to the movement he describes and/or to its actions? What about the problems with consensus? What does that say about the movement and its ideals?

We should probably talk too about the difference between SSD and G: their methods, their ways of knowing and defining and arriving at definitions. What does each approach offer that the other does not?

And we might want to take up the question of where/whether G’s work fits into SSD’s framework and vice versa.

Persuasion and Social Movements 3, 4, and 6

In these chapters, SSD outline a set of six "essential functions" and then five "stages" of social movements, which serve to further constrict their scope of study.

A Social Movement, for SSD, must 1) transform perceptions of reality by engaging in work to advance their own view of past, present, and future. They must 2) alter the self-perceptions of protesters, granting self-esteem to members and allowing them to self-identify and self-label instead of remaining subject to the identity and labels applied to them by others. Movements must 3) legitimize themselves, primarily by forming organizations. They must 4) prescribe courses of action for members to take in order to advance the movement's goals. They must also 5) mobilize members to take those actions, and 6) sustain the movement.

SSD's "stages" in the lifecycle of a movement are: genesis, social unrest, enthusiastic motivation, maintenance, and termination.

In genesis, a select few "prophets" (like Bob Dylan apparently?) and "intellectuals" see problems that others do not see. In social unrest, these few visionaries are joined by increasing numbers, perhaps enough to create a presence in media. In enthusiastic motivation, charismatic leaders "push aside" the intellectuals and prophets to take over the movement, forming organizations and pitting them against institutions. In maintenance, there is much less social disturbance as organizations seek to fund-raise and self-preserve rather than continue to agitate. In termination, the movement is dead, perhaps dissipating completely, or else being absorbed into an institution or becoming an institution of its own.

I know we are supposed to read generously, so let me say that I'm sure this book has an important place in the history of this conversation, very much as Jack Goody and Ian Watt have an important place in the history of Literacy studies. I assume they legitimized social movements as an object of rhetorical study. They made the argument that protestors and activists make arguments, which seems self-evident now, but perhaps was not then. So we can thank them for giving us access to social movements at all, even if we don't like their definitions or discover little value in their analysis.

Now to be clear: I don't like their definition, and I discover little value in their analysis.

"Social Movement" here is constricted to a very specific series of events which require very specific types of actors (prophet, intellectual, charismatic leader, SMO, etc). Anything that does not include those actors or follow that series of events (the progression from unrest into organization maintenance and obsolescence) is by definition beyond the scope of their study. Which means their analysis can account for only those objects within their scope and therefore can arrive at only those conclusions permitted by the objects accounted for. Let me say that another way:

SSD drew a box in the sand and said that all the beaches in the world were just like the sand in their box. And when you approach them to say "Look, there is a different kind of beach over there," they reply: "No, no. I'm sorry. A beach is what is in this box. Nothing more."

What is the use of that?

But, leaving aside the problems inherent in box drawing, there are serious problems with how they have chosen to draw their box. They have no tool to distinguish between social movements and hate groups, or -- if hate groups are to be considered social movements -- then between hate groups and other types of social movements. They have no way to mark the difference between groups that respond to actual oppression and those that respond to only perceived oppression, or even to the inconvenience they experience in having to share power with previously disempowered groups. They have failed to extend the lines of their box to include movements that see the failings of previous generations and are working to avoid charismatic leaders and counter-productive organizations. They have also drawn their box to privilege people like Bob Dylan while erasing many less empowered people who actually experience oppression on a daily basis. Wouldn't they have been a better source to name as the origin of social movements? Like, gee, maybe social movements begin in the lived experience of the oppressed.

I would like to see a reboot, rather than another new edition of this book, one that starts from the experience of oppressed people and asks not "What is a Social Movement?" but "How do oppressed people move society for their own liberation?" Then, instead of presenting an ever-more constricting definition of their object of study, they can follow all the many different actions of oppressed people, which sometimes do result in SMOs, and other times not, but always these "movements of society" work to resist power and improve the lives of the underserved.

So I guess that's my question for this week: How do oppressed people move society for their own liberation? What kinds of strategies do they employ these days? Are there methods that help them avoid the "stages" to obsolescence that SSD describe? Does technology help their efforts in any way?

And I'll try better this week not to talk so much. The only thing worse than three old white guys thinking they can define social movements is one middle aged white guy blabbing on and on about how he's got their number.

EDIT: Heidi, who, again, is way smarter about all this than me, read my post and suggested some links for us.

In this video, Felonious Monk explains how new social movements like Occupy and #BlackLivesMatter function without "leaders" or a "platform."

In this NPR interview, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter Patrisse Cullors calls the movement "leader-full" rather than a "leaderless." And NPR comments:

Writing for VICE, Toure observes: "There is no individual who is the face of BLM, which means there's no one to kill or embarrass in an attempt to silence BLM." Further:

Patrisse said she cofounded BLM in part because of the killing of her brother when he was in police custody. She said she felt the need to do something and saw no political organization doing the work that needed to be done. Patrisse saw the void in black leadership that emerged after the assassinations of the 60s and like a true millennial she stood up to construct an organization and fill that space. BLM has not tried to resurrect that old leadership infrastructure. Instead, it has adapted to the times and built something new that is pushing America to take black life seriously.

And in a long read for The Root, Danielle Belton quotes Jitu Brown on the values and organization of BLM:

We don’t need spokespeople; we need a space where folks can have their dreams and their visions realized...Charismatic leadership has its place. People want to be inspired, they want to look up to that figure, but that model of leadership also lends itself to corruption. It also lends itself to if something happens to that individual the work not continuing because people were following that individual instead of following their core values. So I think it’s important that we recognize that inside all of us, there are great leaders. I believe that with all my heart. Every person has divine purpose, but there are no divine people. There’s nobody here that brings more than anyone else.

Rhetorical Analysis #1: Depression Quest

Games, as a narrative medium, have at least two qualities not shared by other storytelling platforms: player agency and what Ian Bogost calls “procedural rhetoric.” Player agency refers to the fact that games involve some degree of choice on the player’s part, a quality not usually shared by media. Think, for example, of the difference between reading through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and playing through Charlie Hoey’s The Great Gatsby for NES. Though the book (arguably) provides a richer narrative experience, the game offers players control over the fate of the protagonist. Even in this simple platformer, which includes a “pre-baked” narrative, players still choose where and when to move, which objects to collect, and which minor characters to speak with. Further, it is player skill and decision making that determines whether or not the game’s pre-baked narrative ever fully resolves. In essence, as players work their way through The Great Gatsby for NES, they craft a second layer of the game’s story, a layer personalized by their choices within the game’s constraints.

Such constraints are what Bogost refers to when he speaks of procedural rhetoric, his term for “the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interaction” (ix). This term is broad enough to include such rule-based representations--or procedures--as laws, religious rituals, corporate policies, and, of course, games of every kind. All of these procedures are rhetorical in the way they both enable and constrain human agency. Bogost’s first example of this rhetoric is a videogame called Tenure, in which players are placed in the role of a teacher and must make choices about how to educate students and handle behavioral issues. Tenure’s systems link players’ in-classroom choices to results in other areas of their avatar’s lives. For example, the choice to be lenient with a tardy student can lead to praise from the principle, which can then lead to more difficult interactions in the faculty break room. In this way, Tenure “argues that educational practice is deeply intertwined with personal and professional politics” (2). Tenure makes this argument through the choices it presents to players and through the consequences of those choices, consequences that are determined by the game’s ruleset.

By giving players a limited decision space (e.g., How will you navigate Nick through Gatsby’s party? or What will you do with this tardy student?) and then dictating the results of player decisions, games are able to craft interactive narratives and meaningful experiences for their players. Just as great poems are always in some way about language (i.e., they use language really well), great narrative games are always in some way about agency. They structure, comment on, and make meaning from player agency, and, by doing so, they also reflect the design team’s beliefs--not only about the subject matter of the game and its relation to the real world (as in Bogost’s example)--but also about human agency and how it works.

Consider Depression Quest, a branching narrative game built in the Twine platform, in which players take on the role of a “mid-twenties human being” suffering from depression. Like many Twine games, Depression Quest offers players passages of fiction in the second person followed by a list of choices about what their character will do next. In this case, the game’s fiction describes realistic scenes from the life of a depressed human, and the choices reflect those that might be available to said human. The central innovation of Depression Quest--and the quality that comments most strongly on depression and human agency--lies in the way the game makes obvious to the player the constraints it is placing on players’ decision space. Unlike most games, Depression Quest shows players both the choices that are available to them and the choices that are not, thus focusing player attention directly on the question of agency, particularly the uncomfortably constrained agency of a person living with depression.

To examine how Depression Quest achieves this effect, let’s take a look at a critical moment in the game, one in which players decide whether or not to call a therapist and make an appointment. The choices available to players are these:

1: Just call already - it can't hurt to check it out.

2: Call after wrestling with it for a few minutes longer.

3: Don't call. This is way too much for you to be able to deal with right now.

The two blue lines are functioning links and therefore represent real choices that the player has. The red line is not a functioning link and so represents a choice that the player does not have. Every single decision set in Depression Quest begins with one or more of these red, crossed out, numbered non-options. In every case, they read like the kind of choices a person might make if they were not depressed (or like the kind of advice someone who is not depressed might give to someone who is). By always presenting players with non-options before actual options, Depression Quest is able to make players perceive limits to their agency. In this particular instance, the perception of limited agency is only superficial; that is, the game was never going to give players the first option. However, it does happen that the perceived limits are actual; that is, the game does sometimes remove viable options from players, depending on their previous choices.

For example, if players choose to call the therapist, and then make a further choice to at least drive to the therapist’s office (even if they just sit in their car, too anxious to go in), their choices in a subsequent scene will appear this way:

1: Hop out of bed and start getting ready for work. You'll be late, but it's better than not going in at all.

2: Head into work. At least you can leave early if it gets too unbearable.

3: Call your boss to tell him you're sick and won't be in today.

They have one standard non-option, and two real options. If, on the other hand, players choose not to call the therapist (or do call but decide not to drive to the office the next day), then the same set of choices may appear this way:

1: Hop out of bed and start getting ready for work. You'll be late, but it's better than not going in at all.

2: Head into work. At least you can leave early if it gets too unbearable.

3: Call your boss to tell him you're sick and won't be in today.

There is the same standard non-option topping the list, but now the first real option is also red and crossed out, its link nonfunctional. With only one option, players have no choice at all, no agency in this scene. If players didn’t make it at least to the therapist’s parking lot, they can only call in sick to work and accept the further consequences of that action.

Link removal (superficial or actual) is a procedure that comments obviously and directly on agency even on a player’s first playthrough. Some of Depression Quest’s other procedures are more subtle, requiring multiple plays to discover. Some choices a player makes will result in the introduction or suppression of whole passages of text. For example, if players do not choose to share their feelings with an old friend early on in the game, they will never arrive at the screen which might offer them the option of calling a therapist. In other passages, the game presents several seemingly different options that all lead to the same result. For example, if players make a series of depression-increasing choices, they will arrive at a screen where their girlfriend suggests breaking up. Players may have more or fewer options on this screen, depending on the exact combination of their previous choices, but all these options funnel players into different versions of the same result: the end of that relationship and an even more severe bout of depression.

This, then, is the game’s primary statement about depression: that, as it worsens, it robs sufferers of their ability to make choices. Depression, for this game, is a state of diminished, and ever-diminishing, agency. At the same time, Depression Quest still ties its outcome directly to player choices. Players’ in-game depression gets more severe based on decisions they’ve made that the game treats as depression worsening, and, conversely, in-game depression improves based on choices the game treats as depression alleviating. Baked into the game’s procedures is the notion that behaviors like owning a cat, seeing a therapist, taking anti-depressants, and being honest about your feelings result in an increase of agency. Likewise, the game suggests that netflix binges, self isolation, and the avoidance of personal and professional responsibilities result in a decrease of agency. This encoding of consequences reveals what Mark Longaker and Jeffrey Walker would call one of the game’s “ideological presuppositions,” or the “systems of ideas that get invoked” by a text (189). Even while Depression Quest structures itself around the notion that depression removes agency, it also presupposes that depression can be helped if depressed people make the right choices. Together, these two apparently conflicting ideas -- that depression takes away choices but can be helped by choices -- create a complex statement about depression and agency that we might read like this: If you make healthy choices, you can manage your depression; however, because depression is what it is, you might not have access to enough agency to make those healthy choices. This is the devilish thing about depression: that you always know what you ought to do to get well, but you are not always well enough to do it.

Agency in Depression Quest is a complex phenomenon. An individual’s decisions can lead to a restriction or expansion of their future options. Agency, then, is self-constraining and self-expanding in ways that problematize casual notions of free will. To those who would suggest that human fate is self-made, that humans are self-defining beings, Depression Quest counters that advantages and disadvantages in agency compound over time. People who enjoy relative freedom of choice do so because they were previously enabled to make agency expanding decisions while people who do not enjoy such freedom were not previously enabled in this way. In this case, we are not self-made so much as agency-determined, and agency is itself acts as an agent, a force not entirely within our control, seemingly structured and constrained by something beyond the force of our will. That is, we are not entirely in control of our own agency, nor the degree to which we can exercise it. We, like our avatar in Depression Quest, make choices from the limited set that life hands us. And what life giveth, life can also taketh away.

*

The problem of how to craft meaningful, playable narratives is a complex one and has been discussed at length by designers and critics alike. What I hope I’ve shown here is that Depression Quest has something to offer that discussion in the way it makes human agency a central thematic concern. Games, more than any other medium, are well positioned to explore and comment on questions of agency. Unfortunately, I don’t have space here to fully develop the connection between the features of Depression Quest I’ve explored here and similar features in other narrative games.

Another point that I do not have room to consider is the cultural response to Depression Quest, which was famously at the epicenter of Gamergate. Most of this response is beside the point of my paper, but I find interesting the gap between the designers’ intended effect and the intense criticism the game and its designer have received. I thought that analysing a playthrough video of the game would be interesting, especially if it was performed by a gamergater. How do the themes of agency I’ve pointed to here show up in a particular lived experience of the game by someone who comes to it through a cloud of controversy? Do those themes show up? Do they really shape and structure the agency of the gamergater youtuber? Do they somehow reflect other forces that constrain that youtuber’s agency? It would be an interesting case study.

I’m curious about narrative games because I want to teach a course in which we write games that express the kind of procedural rhetoric that Bogost describes. I need to come up with models that will give me a way to help students craft playable narratives in which readers are drawn to reflect on the themes and problems that their game addresses. I would love to dig deeper into Depression Quest. I would also love to look around at other models.

Works Cited

Longaker, Mark and Jeffrey Walker. Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers. New York: Longman, 2011. Print.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007.

Quinn, Zoe, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler. Depression Quest. Web.

Hoey, Charlie. The Great Gatsby for NES. Web.