Nick Robinson

Videogames, Persuasion and the War on Terror: Escaping or Embedding the Military—Entertainment Complex?:

This article presents a call for political scientists to look seriously at videogames. Beginning with a demonstration of their growing importance, the article then sets out the existing game-related literature which demonstrates their persuasive potential. The importance of games for political studies is illustrated through an in-depth discussion of the link between videogames and the militarisation of politics and society: exploration of the role of the military—entertainment complex, felt in particular through the militarisation of the content of games, suggests that this complex is influencing the militarisation of society. Finally, the article explores some of the ways in which such militarisation is being challenged through the use of games for political activism, centred on protests within game spaces and the development of ‘critical’ games. While the article as a whole concludes that the forces that serve to legitimate the military—entertainment complex are considerably greater than those which challenge it, and that the potential of games for activism is at present relatively limited, this does not mean that they are not worthy of study. Games retain considerable scope for both learning (with games offering vital potential to embed real social critique in players) and as potential sources for political activism, which is only likely to grow in the future.

Have you won the war on terror? Military videogames and the state of American exceptionalism

Videogames matter and they matter for international politics. With popular culture increasingly acknowledged as a valuable site for opening up new ways of interrogating theory, this article argues that important insights for the critical understanding of American exceptionalism can be developed through the study of military videogames. At one level, military videogames illustrate a number of prominent themes within American exceptionalism: they offer the perception that a threatening and hostile environment confronts the USA, thus situating America as an innocent victim, justified in using force in response; they allow exploration of the link between American exceptionalism and debates on the competence of political leadership, and they open up space to analyse the temporal dimension of international relations. Yet videogames also help expose the foundations (what Weber terms ‘the myths’) upon which American exceptionalism is based, here shown to be centred on the importance of the military industrial complex as a source of exceptionalism.

The European Investment Bank: The EU's Neglected Institution*

The European Investment Bank is the largest multilateral lender in the world, facilitating total spending which is equivalent to the total of the EU budget. Its activity thus has a potentially huge effect on EU policy-making, yet research to date has failed to recognize this. This article addresses this, offering detailed empirical analysis and re-evaluating debates on multi-level governance.

Militarism and opposition in the living room: the case of military videogames

This article explores the importance of videogames and their associated promotional media for both militarism and the resulting opposition. It focuses on the games Medal of Honor and Medal of Honor Warfighter – two mainstream, commercially successful military combat games which purport to offer an ‘authentic’ experience of post 9/11 military action to the player – to develop a framework to explore the role of videogames in this area. First, in terms of the military industrial and military entertainment complex, it shows the close association between the game developers and the military, with the military providing consultancy services, access to military hardware and openly celebrating their mutual associations. Second, these associations take on an important spatial dimension with the developers and weapons makers producing promotional materials which literally show both parties ‘enjoying one another’s company’ in the same physical space; games also ‘transport the player’ into the virtual battlefield and allow them to embody the soldier. Finally, gendered militarism is shown in the gameplay and narratives within these games, alongside their associated promotional materials, all of which place significant emphasis on the links between militaristic values and masculinity. In both games, the celebration of militarism was highly controversial, prompting heated debate and active opposition – albeit varying in the two cases – from the military, politicians and players on the appropriateness of using videogames for militaristic entertainment. This suggests that there are limits to society’s acquiescence in militarism and a continuing capacity to critique militaristic popular culture.

Visualizing war? : Towards a visual analysis of videogames and social media

Political scientists are increasingly engaged with the importance of the “visual turn,” asking questions about how we understand what we see and the social and political consequences of that seeing. One of the greatest challenges facing researchers is developing methods that can help us understand visual politics. Much of the literature has fallen into the familiar qualitative versus quantitative methodological binary, with a strong bias in favor of the former, and has consequently been unable to realize the advantages of mixed-methods research. We advance the study of visual politics as well as the literature on bridging the quantitative versus qualitative divide by showing that it is possible to generate quantitative data that is rooted in, and amenable to, qualitative research on visual phenomena. Our approach to conducting mixed-methods research is an alternative to the more common strategy of seeing various research methods as an assortment of tools, as it is directed at developing an organic relationship between qualitative and quantitative methods. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy for research on visual politics by discussing our own efforts to create a dataset for quantifying visual signifiers of militarism.