Management and Organizational Studies Publications
Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2012
First Page
1
Last Page
11
Abstract
This paper considers the video game industry and how it is represented through social media blogs and tweets. It aims to disentangle the polyphony of voices communicating through different stories about what it means to work in the gaming industry. The multiple voices found within the blogs and tweets weave a complex and contested narrative about the carnivalesque way in which video games are made, poignantly illustrating the good, the bad, and the ugly. Using the work of the Russian literary theorist and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin (1984, 1993), and particularly his notions of monologic and dialogic stories and narratives (McKenna, 2010), the paper seeks to understand what these voices are communicating within the anecdotes, stories and descriptions contained in blogs and tweets. It uses components of literary theory associated with Bakhtin (1984, 1993) to connect the monological dimension of what is communicated (the micro-level world of the blogger) with the dialogical dimension (the industry, socio-political, ideological and other voices) which are communicated through the blogs and tweets.
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