Arab and American computer war games: The influence of a global technology on discourse
2006; Routledge; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17405900600591362
ISSN1740-5912
Autores Tópico(s)Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
ResumoAbstract This paper compares two computer war games, US-produced and Arab-produced, which represent the conflict in Lebanon. It asks whether the format exerts an influence over the content of the games. The paper gives the historical background to the actual activities of the US and Hizbollah in the region and then looks at the representations of social actors, settings, and action in the games. We ask how these games relate to the real world events they recontextualize. We ask how they frame these events in terms of a 'special operations' discourse of war that has its origins in the US, yet do so with specific inflections that reflect the interests of the context in which they were produced. We show that different political interests are reflected in the content of the games, but that the global power of the format of the computer war game exerts its influence across this divide. Such formats are not neutral containers for politically different content, but themselves carry values and an ideological message about conflict resolution. Keywords: computer gamesmultimodalitynew mediaterrorismformats Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavid Machin Co-editor of the journal Social Semiotics, and is author of the books Ethnographic Research for Media Studies and The Anglo-American Media Connection with Jeremy Tunstall. He has recently written a series of papers on globalization and localization of media products, such as 'Language Style and Lifestyle: The Case of a Global Magazine' in Media Culture and Society (2005) with Theo Van Leeuwen. Usama Suleiman He is Assistant Editor for Journal of Language and Politics from Benjamins. His interests are on Arab and Palestinian political discourses.
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