The Playful Citizen

Abstract

In the last decade, digital media technologies and developments have given rise to exciting new forms of ludic, or playful, engagements of citizens in cultural and societal issues. From the Occupy movement to playful city-making to the gameful designs of the Obama 2008 and Trump 2016 presidential campaigns, and the rise of citizen science and ecological games, this book shows how play is a key theoretical, methodological, and practical principle for comprehending such new forms of civic engagement in a mediatized culture. The Playful Citizen explores how and through what media we are becoming more playful as citizens and how this manifests itself in our ways of doing, living, and thinking. We offer a pluralistic answer to such questions by bringing together scholars from different fields such as game and play studies, social sciences, and media and culture studies.

Playing Politics: How Sabarimala Played Out on TikTok

“…Memes, GIFs, lip-synced videos, parodies, and so on, that critique contemporary political events are an integral part of our social media experience. Glas et al (2019) posit that play, media, and technology exist in a triadic relationship with each other, when the media technologies we use become more playful and are spaces where acts of citizenship take place. Play is no longer restricted to the playground but enters previously nonplayful domains, with the enactment of citizenship acquiring a ludic character.…”

“…Mobile phones and their explicitly playful interfaces embed playfulness in the mundane, and wherever we take them (Hjorth, 2018). This enables a politics on the move wherein political expression takes on a fleeting, casual character similar to games like Candy Crush that one would play while commuting (Gekker, 2019). They inaugurate a form of political participation that Gekker terms "casual politicking" which is characterized by ease of access, lack of ideological commitment and short-cycle repetitive patterns of use (Gekker, 2019, p. 402).…”

“…Yet such jokes can propagate and legitimize racist or homophobic speech in wider communities (Lewis, 2019;Tuters et al, 2018) Clearly, the intertwining of play, media, and citizenship poses certain challenges too. One, play is autotelic in nature: the prime purpose of play is the activity itself (Gekker, 2019;Sicart, 2018). Consequently, it does not lend itself to concrete ideologies or sustained engagement.…”

“…Just as in trolling, revelry in "fun" and funny require unpacking as they are established on a bedrock of gender and caste-based exclusion and privilege (Phillips, 2019). As discussed, questions of inclusivity are averted by the autotelic nature of play wherein the end-goal is often the activity itself and an indulgence in its sensational qualities: the humorous content and the visual and aural gratification provided by the interface (Gekker, 2019) The exclusion and privilege that underlies the Mary Sweety spoofs require an examination of the extra-platform forces amplified by technology (O'Neill et al, 2016). The playful, irreverent parodying visible in TikTok videos build on Kerala's vibrant culture of mimicry as an art form ever since the 1980s (George, 2019).…”

“…Rather, we believe the problematic presented here demands a ludic disposition and concomitant literacies that fully exploit the transformative, resistant potential of play. Users' proficiency in using TikTok is only a part of ludo-literacy; Glas et al (2019) posit that we should move toward critical and creative literacy. Through their use of the platform, users should unpack the meaning-making activity underway in games or game-like political activities and re-work them.…”