Gamer Citizens

This book examines the politics of being a gamer in the digital age with an in-depth study of the communities of gamers who populate live-video streaming sites.

This text offers an innovative theoretical and methodological study of gamers in their community. It explores gamers as citizens and asks how gamers are political in view of their activities on stream. Ilya Brookwell examines how gamers live out their daily lives on live-video streams and how they use their associated new platforms and tools, including live-video streams such as Twitch.tv and online web fora, to engage with “live-video politics”. It explores the relationship between gamers, gaming, and streaming, highlighting how gamers develop a notion of self that is fundamentally located in community. Gamers consequently create, inhabit, as well as inherit a political world. With streaming communities offering unique insights into what it means to live in a digital age, the book explores how gamers find hopeful openings, as well as limits, through streaming. The book highlights how gamers can take an active role in politics and democracy in a digital age.

Interesting reading for undergraduate students, postgraduate researchers, and academics of media, cultural and communication studies, video game studies, and digital media studies.

Ilya Brookwell is Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California Riverside, USA. His research centers on video gamers, live-streaming, virtual reality (VR), and online community, particularly as these intersect with politics. His current research focuses on the emergent technologies of VR and asks how we find social immersion in a digital age. His series of published articles includes work on gamer citizens, emojis as civic duty, and virtual reality community.