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"Håll er politik borta från våra spel": Myt och ideologi i Call of Duty Modern Warfare
Södertörn University, School of Culture and Education, Rhetoric.
2020 (Swedish)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesisAlternative title
"Keep your politics out of our games" : Myth and ideology in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (English)
Abstract [en]

Video games have become the highest grossing entertainment industry in the world, earning more than double that of the music and film industry combined. Many of these games contain political messages, intentional or not. Some game developers explicitly claim that the games they make are apolitical, and this thesis examines whether Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is as apolitical as its developers claim. The research is conducted with the aid of Barthes’ work on mythologies and semiology to analyse the various signs present in the game in relation to construction of myths and ideological messaging. This is aided by Bogost’s procedural rhetoric to enable the analysis of gameplay choices as a semiological sign. The main theories are supported by Murray’s writing on immersion and the first-person perspective. The analysis shows that Modern Warfare consistently uses signs and myths that construct an ideological message that coalesce into a mythical image of the special forces soldier as a sort of human but superhuman character that must be given free rein to perform their mission, while also displaying western politicians as incompetent, the threat of terrorism as omnipresent, and Russia as a dangerous threat. Regardless of intent, such a message is undeniably political.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. , p. 40
Keywords [en]
Mythologies, Semiology, Procedural rhetoric, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Video games, Ideology
Keywords [sv]
Mytologier, Semiologi, Procedurisk retorik, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Datorspel, Ideologi
National Category
Media and Communications
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-44030OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-44030DiVA, id: diva2:1528138
Subject / course
Rhetoric
Uppsok
Humanities, Theology
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2021-02-15 Created: 2021-02-12 Last updated: 2021-02-15Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

Erlgren. J (2021) - Håll er politik borta från våra spel. Myt och ideologi i Call of Duty Modern Warfare(534 kB)202 downloads
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File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 534 kBChecksum SHA-512
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Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf