Migrating Through the Web: Interactive Practices About Migration, Flight and Exile (Media Studies)

How to study a media object on the web that is at the same time a documentary, a reportage, and a game which combines both fiction and non-fiction elements? Nicole Braida digs into the discursive and material structures and infrastructures of serious games, text-adventures, newsgames, interactive maps, and data visualizations, in which refugees and migrants become the subject of humanitarian discourse. Although the goal is to arouse empathy towards migrants, these »interactive practices« distinguish who is vulnerable and who is not. It supports the idea of a »migratory crisis«, which, the author argues, is actually the symptom of a deeper crisis of the humanitarian system itself.

Nicole Braida (PhD) works at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz as a postdoctoral fellow. She obtained her doctorate at the same University and as a candidate in the DFG-funded research collective »Configurations of Film« at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. She has studied film and media in Italy, Germany, and Belgium. Her research focuses on interactive media, serious games, maps, data visualization, and the transformation of film culture.