Playing the News?

I am fascinated by Ian Bogost’s blog and his Persuasive Games studio. Bogost takes video games beyond the realm of pure entertainment. He argues that video games can play a number of important roles, even *gasp* helping us learn.

Bogost is also breaking new ground in the journalism world by producing games for mainstream news sites like the New York Times and CNN. The use of games and interactivity in journalism is particularly fascinating given the ongoing debate over the future of the field. Many critics wonder whether the awkward shift into the online world might be watering down journalistic principles and integrity.

When it comes to the news value journalistic video games, I think the jury is still out. I played Points of Entry: An Immigration Challenge since I am very interested in immigration issues. I love the idea of any kind of news that engages the audience and gives them a real grasp of the issues. I’m just not sure that that’s what is happening here.
The instructions tell you to “Compete to award Green Cards under the Merit-Based Evaluation System included in legislation recently debated in Congress.” You hand out green cards based on education, work experience, TOEFL scores, etc. The game intends to educate the public on the immigration requirements included in the legislation, and to highlight the arbitrary decisions that determine the futures of people with almost identical backgrounds. At least I think that’s what we were supposed to get out of it. I was getting a little too caught up in the game to really notice what I was supposed to be learning.

This is my main critique, along with the lack of accompanying facts and context. I believe there might be a place for these kinds of games in the future. For the time being though, they are hard to contextualize. I found myself torn between trying to beat the game and trying to learn- not sure which one I was “supposed” to do. The instructions told me to proceed as quickly as possible while the information-acquisition part of my brain wanted to slow down and think about the information I was being presented with. I think this dilemma highlights the deepest irony of such interactive features. Video games may be the least interactive of all forms of news. Yes, they allow us to push buttons and move avatars, but are our minds opening up or closing while we do so?

The easily recognizable video game format triggers an assumption that we will be given a set of rules and our success comes from operating as best we can inside those rules. I would argue that this mental state does not spark the most creative thinking.

The video game mode might have a self-reflexive value for an issue like immigration. The game could work if the point is not to learn about an issue but to simulate an experience- for example the frustration and futility of confronting immigration bureaucracy. It could be possible to connect on an emotional level to the issue without having necessarily internalized the facts. I’m not sure if this is what this game was going for.

Maybe I’ve just played a little too much Tetris in my lifetime and can’t shake the association with video games as mind-numbing kiddy crack. Maybe the kids these days are playing much more creative and interactive video games than I did? Maybe it won’t be as hard for them to make the mental jump to video-game-as-a–source-of-news? I’m not opposed to the idea- in fact I really hope it succeeds. I'm just concerned that media outlets might start providing entertainment at the expense of well-reasoned analysis.

My first foray into the political blogosphere

I like politics. I grew up close enough to our nation’s capitol that a certain level of political interest was a given. I visited the supreme court on field trips as a kid. I accepted an intimate knowledge of our legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government like I accepted the grayish mush lumped on our cafeteria trays. It never occurred to me to question it. To this day I heartily enjoy a good policy debate—and yet, for some reason, I don’t read political blogs.

I obviously don't harbor a fear of the internet since check the internet regularly for almost all of my information needs, down to the the most inane celebrity gossip. I’m not sure why I’ve never gotten into reading political blogs. I think maybe I took to heart something I once read about how the blogosphere is polarizing the country into deeply entrenched self-reinforcing camps of people who talk only amongst themselves and will never carry forward a reasoned debate on the issues. That, or maybe I just prefer to read about Lindsey Lohan’s latest screw-up.

For this assignment, I read Wonkette, a prominent liberal blog, and Wizbang, a prominent conservative blog to get a better sense of how political blogs might be contributing to the national debate.

I liked how the two blogs were designed. Text was snappy and at the same time gave you the broader context of the issue. The layout of both sites was image-rich and well-executed, with plenty of links and videos. When it came to content though….

Well, here is my highly unscientific comparison:

Wonkette

Founded by Ana Marie Cox, Wonkette now boasts a team of editors updating multiple times a day. According to Wikipedia, the blog is “known for its sharp, sarcastic, intelligent voice, and for its mixture of heady political discourse with repeated references to gin and anal sex.”

While I didn’t find any articles on either gin or anal sex, I did see a wide breadth of coverage on just the first two pages- from gay marriage, health care, and the Obama administration’s stance on torture, to Glenn Beck's frog murdering ways. Mostly, this blog is intended to humorously expose the people behind the news stories and to bring prominent conservative figures down a notch.

Calling itself a “DC gossip” site, Wonkette takes the types of sarcasm-laden conversations that might happen over workplace coolers and puts it all out there online. The site is important in providing a venue for informal commentary on the issues of the day.

It does, however, take informality to the extreme. Choice descriptions like “Soulless demented fish-carcass” are definitely not going to pop up very often in the mainstream media. While I am about as far to the left as you can get, I wasn’t sure about how I felt about the tone. The writing style definitely made me laugh but it would be off putting to anyone who is not already a self-identified liberal. In fact Wonkette writers are downright mean to anyone who isn’t already a liberal—not in a cute Rachel Maddow way, but in a kid-who-was-picked-on-and-now-becomes-the-biggest-bully-on-the-playground kind of way.

Wizbang

Wizbang, one of the most popular conservative blogs, is no more civil in it’s dialogue. Blanket insults aimed at “frou-frou intellectuals” like myself (i.e. liberals) deter me from wanting to read any further down the page.

The point of this blog is also to highlight news developments and provide commentary on issues of particular concern to conservatives. Some of the recent topics covered on the blog include taxes, FCC regulation, Iraq, and the “unbelievable indoctrination of children to the cult of Obama”

This blog seems less obsessed with breaking news, and more adamant on hitting over and over again the well-worn pet causes of the conservative base. Many of the topics featured in the blog are ongoing in nature, or in a few cases, downright ancient (for example, the story trying to prove there really were WMDs in Iraq. REALLY?!?!)

My biggest takeaway from this excercise was the surprising similarities between the two blogs. Aside from the general snarky tone, it seems like the primary purpose of both blogs is to discredit public figures. Neither site seems to offer too much in the way of actual solutions or constructive analysis.

So, after reading two of the most popular political blogs, I'm still torn on the idea. On the one hand, reading political blogs is a good way to to get a highlight reel of the most noteworthy news items and to stay informed. The personalized, often sarcastic commentary is the sugar to help the medicine go down and the concise, user-friendly format is great for those of us with ADD. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much you can actually learn from these types of blogs. With such narrowly defined audiences, it is unlikely that these blogs are attracting many converts.

At least, if they insist on preaching to the choir, they are giving the choir a good laugh.

Slate's Big Money Makes Learning About the Financial Crisis Fun Again

Not that financial crisis coverage needs to be fun--just accessible. Economic conditions, at least the way they are generally reported (as numbers and letters on a stock ticker) can be difficult for us lay people to visualise. The reporting is often too jargony for me to wrap my liberal-arts-educated head around. This is why it is so important that financial and economic news sites, such as Slate's The Big Money, use video content to supplement their coverage of the financial crisis. Right now, financial news isn't a niche market. It's something that everyone needs to be exposed to--and more importantly to understand.

The video below is a great example of how adding visual element can really bring the point home. This video interviews the creators of a new documentary, American Casino, along with clips from the film. People often speak apocalyptically about the financial crisis, and there is nothing more apocalyptic than a plague. We watch as a plague of mosquitos (and their accompanying diseases) emerges from the abandoned swimming pools of foreclosed mansions.

A Ken doll floating ominously in a sludge-darkened pool, breeding mosquitos, is an image we won't soon forget. It's an apt metaphor for the fallen American dream, corrupted innocence, and toxic ambitions (or something like that). The point being, we've always known there was something sick about the unchecked accumulation of wealth-- seeing the remains of this lifestyle choked by nature and festering as the literal (as well as symbolic) source of disease, adds a whole new dimension to our thinking. This segment not only works well as a trailer, enticing us to watch the whole documentary, but it piques our interest in the general topic, and helps us contextualize the more traditional economic reporting found in The Big Money.