Bo Ruberg at AOIR Online
Bo Ruberg recently featured as a speaker on AoIR 2021's "Playing at the Polls: Video Games in/as Platforms of Political Participation". In the panel, Bo and their fellow panelists discuss American politicians' increasing use of technological platforms to reach the voting audience.
From the event description:
This panel explores the rise of ludic technologies as both figurative and computational “platforms” for American political participation. As COVID-19 forced many politicians to abandon massive rallies and other in-person engagement into 2020, American politicians turned to video games for alternative means of public outreach, from “Biden Island” in Animal Crossing to Twitch streams with Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders. This panel contextualizes these and other “ludopolitical” phenomena from a variety of perspectives, ranging from digital media studies to queer studies and political economy. We attend to the mass re-politicization of games and question the politics of identity, content moderation, and labour that are downloaded onto policy when party communication becomes strategically playful.
Watch the panel here!