Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 Associate Professor of Communication Sciences – Allameh Tabataba'i University
2 Phd of Allameh Tabataba'i University
Abstract
By becoming media’s role in understanding and formation of people and societies from themselves and their sphere bolder day by day, and because of video games’ role in this context as a very influencing medium, understanding theme-conveying methods of this interactive medium and knowing how these methods are employed in various political and cultural contexts gets special importance. This research tries to analyse these themes in a specific segment of video games i.e. “War on Terror” games in tactical shooter genre with the help of critical viewpoint of postcolonial studies. This research set to find what themes these war on terror games convey to user by analyzing four tactical shooter games named “Splinter Cell: Blacklist”, “Battlefiled 3”, “Medal of Honor: Warfighter”, and “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare”. This task will be done by employing thematic analysis method for video games.
Critical discovery and expression of themes in these games explains that they are used in the strategic communication of US beyond pure entertainment. These games try to intensify the binary opposition arose from neocolonialism, define the Middle Eastern Muslim human as the Other of the western civilization, consolidate superiority of West to East, and humiliate Eastern human through presentation of a strategic narrative of War on Terror in an oriental framework, and also urge to a preemptive war with Eastern human by defining him as an imminent threat for Western civilization.
Keywords
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