Gregory Perreault

The GamerGate controversy and journalistic paradigm maintenance

GamerGate is a viral campaign that became an occasion, particularly from August 2014 to January 2015, to both question journalistic ethics and badger women involved in game development and gaming criticism. Gaming journalists thus found themselves managing a debate on two fronts: defending the probity of gaming journalism and remediating attacks on women. This study explores how gaming journalists undertook paradigm maintenance in the midst of the controversy. This was analyzed through interviews with gaming journalists as well as a discourse analysis of the texts responding to GamerGate that were produced by their publications. Although gaming journalists operate within a form of lifestyle journalism, the journalists repaired their paradigm by linking their work to traditional journalism and emphasizing a paternal role.

The first lady of social media: The visual rhetoric of Michelle Obama’s Twitter images

ABSTRACT While American first ladies have long used media to craft their image, Michelle Obama is the first contemporary first lady to use social media to promote her public persona. We use the lens of symbolic convergence theory to explore the fantasy themes incumbent in images shared through Michelle Obama’s Twitter account. Since first ladies have long been perceived as representing the American “everywoman,” understanding the fantasies built into the social media image of the first lady extends knowledge about the perception of American women more broadly. Our findings indicate that Michelle Obama’s Twitter images are strategic in that they reflect the visual themes that the media traditionally use in their coverage of first ladies. Specifically, Michelle Obama’s social media messaging portrays her as an activist mother—who espouses noncontroversial causes such as education and children’s health—and a nonpartisan figure with deep familial ties.

Depictions of Female Protagonists in Digital Games: A Narrative Analysis of 2013 DICE Award-Winning Digital Games

Digital games historically hold a spotty record on gender depictions. The lack of depth in female characters has long been the norm; however, an increasing number of female protagonists are headlining games. This study used narrative theory to examine depictions of four female protagonists in four 2013 Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain Award-Winning Digital Games: The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, and Beyond: Two Souls. Studying these media depictions provides context for how women’s stories are recorded in society. Stereotype subversions largely occur within familiar game narratives, and the female protagonists were still largely limited and defined by male figures in the games.

Mobile Journalism as Lifestyle Journalism?: Field Theory in the integration of mobile in the newsroom and mobile journalist role conception

Mobile journalism is one of the fastest areas of growth in the modern journalism industry. Yet mobile journalists find themselves in a place of tension, between print, broadcast, and digital journalism and between traditional journalism and lifestyle journalism. Using the lens of field theory, the present study conducted an online survey of mobile journalists (N = 39) from six countries representing four continents on how they conceive of their journalistic role, and how their work is perceived within the newsroom. Participants were journalists in television, print, magazine, and digital local and national newsrooms. The present study sought to understand how mobile journalists see mobile production as a part of their journalistic role, and what field theory dimensions influence mobile production in their newsrooms. While prior research has established a growing prevalence of lifestyle journalism, the present study finds that the growth of mobile journalism represents the development of lifestyle journalism norms, such as content driven by the audience, within even traditional journalism.

Politicians, Photographers, and a Pope

Pope Francis’s 2015 visit to Cuba provided a unique opportunity for a comparative study of state-controlled and independent media systems. This study, grounded in the interpretivist tradition, uses symbolic convergence theory and fantasy theme analysis to explore how visuals created by United States-based AP Images, United Kingdom-based Reuters, and Cuba-based Prensa Latina reveal the underlying rhetorical visions, ideologies, and priorities of each culture’s media system. More specifically, state-controlled and independent media depicted the Pope’s visit differently in the degree of personalization shown, the social actors who were depicted, the purpose of the visit, how the Pope was shown in relation to others, and the location where the action occurred. Each media system highlighted its news values and priorities through these differences. Additionally, the images revealed two master narratives: Cuba as a model of Catholicism and the Pope as a model of hierarchy and conformity.

Making a Mormon?: Peacemaking in U.S. Press Coverage of the Mormon Baptism for the Dead

ABSTRACT In the Mormon doctrine of posthumous baptism, people can be invited into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) community through baptism even after their death. When it was reported that the LDS had baptized Jewish Holocaust victims, this caused an uproar in the American Jewish community. The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Victims deemed the Mormon practice disrespectful and inappropriate. This study analyzes the news coverage of the negotiations between the group and the Mormon church. While such negotiations would typically be ripe for conflict-privileging coverage, news coverage of these negotiations actually emphasized peacemaking. Using the lens of narrative theory, this study found that, in reporting on negotiations between American Jews and Mormons, the press attempted to mend relations rather than emphasize conflict.

Religion & Popular Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach

time. The main thrust of the volume is that religion continues to matter in British politics, even in an ostensibly secular era. The book is an extraordinarily useful compendium of data analyses and is correspondingly light on theoretical development. Clements uses a wide variety of data sources and is able to conduct relative simple data analyses over time and more sophisticated multivariate analyses of recent surveys. Thus Clements is able to tease out the unique effects of religion, over and above regionalism or social class, in more recent eras. The data analyses, while sophisticated and persuasive, are accessible to non-specialists. The book is written in a refreshingly colloquial style, which makes it a pleasure to read. Although Religion and Public Opinion in Britain breaks no new theoretical ground, it will be extremely useful to other scholars who seek to understand the dynamics and stability in British public opinion. Of course, it is easy for a reviewer to suggest useful additions or elaborations. In particular, one wishes that Clements had devoted some attention to questions of immigration and Islamophobia. Even so, his treatment of the effects of religious belief, affiliation, and behaviour on British public opinion will provide a firm basis from which other scholars may extend and elaborate his fascinating findings.

Teaching Religion and Media: Syllabi and Pedagogy

This study explores the pedagogy of Religion and Media. The topic has garnered growing attention in recent years (Stout, 2012) and the sheer array of classes is a testament to its status as a lively growing topic. This study takes a nonnormative, exploratory approach to uncover four key categorical approaches to how the topic of religion and media is taught in universities. The methodology included a textual analysis of 48 syllabi and interviews with professors who teach religion and media.

Review of: eGods: Faith versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming, by W. S. Bainbridge

The current demographics of video game play appear jarring for those who grew up in the age of Pong and Breakout. According to current statistics from the Entertainment Software Association, 58% of Americans play video games, and more are playing every day. This is not just a millennial phenomenon. The average age of a game player is 30 years old, and 45% of all video game players are women. An increasing amount of video game play is done on mobile devices—smartphones and tablets provide equal opportunity for shooting at pigs with Angry Birds. This is a far different picture than the traditional picture of geeky, teenage males hovering in a zombie-like trance for hours in front of a television screen. Bainbridge introduces us into this new world of video game play, logging more than 2,400 hours of play in his research on the religion in video game worlds. The religion in these games is important not just because an increasing number of people play them, but because through a digital avatar, the player experiences the religion. This occurs through the narrative architecture written into a game (Jenkins, 2002). Bainbridge rightly notes that the “real-ness” of the religion—most are created by game designers—does not detract from the meaning making that can occur through the digital space. So while establishment religious institutions are shrinking in America, it is worth looking at popular culture phenomena like video games and asking whether something is happening there that is not happening, for example in Mainline Protestant parishes. That is a question Bainbridge interrogates to extensive degree. He substantiates his argument by also exploring the 2000 General Social Survey (GSS), which demonstrates a connection between more frequent video game play and less frequent church attendance. Bainbridge does not go so far as to claim that video games will supplant religion, but he does argue that “many of religion’s historical functions have already been taken over by other institutions of society, in the process of secularization, and games will play a role in the further erosion of faith” (p. 24). Much of his research is spent in massively multiplayer online worlds such as Star Wars Galaxies and Dungeons and Dragons Online, but he also sampled some solo-player games such as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Forsaken World. The book is structured according to