The Playful Citizen: Civic Engagement in a Mediatized Culture

This edited volume collects current research by academics and practitioners on playful citizen participation through digital media technologies. With the emergence of digital and mobile technologies our conceptions and hopes of what citizen participation entails have changed profoundly. Interactive, networked and affordable technologies have transformed the relationship between knowledge, creativity and power. Citizens use media technologies in playful ways to engage in creative knowledge production and to alter professional roles and power structures.This book, available in Open Access, provides an overview of the potentials and limitations of citizen's engagement in the digital age through a collection of chapters from various academic fields. What connects these contributions is a focus on what we call playful participation. It is through this ludic engagement, we argue, that the contemporary production of knowledge and creative interventions in journalism, research, activism, art, politics, city making, and many other areas, should be understood. The book editors hold positions at Universities in the Netherlands (Utrecht University) and the UK (University of Warwick). They have published widely about digital media technologies, play, and identity.

Frontmatter --; Contents --; 1. The playful citizen: An introduction --; Introduction to Part I --; 2. Engagement in play, engagement in politics : Playing political video games --; 3. Analytical game design : Game-making as a cultural technique in a gamified society --; 4. Re-thinking the social documentary --; 5. Collapsus, or how to make players become ecological citizens --; 6. The broken toy tactic: Clockwork worlds and activist games --; 7. Video games and the engaged citizen : On the ambiguity of digital play --; Introduction to Part II --; 8. Public laboratory: Play and civic engagement --; 9. Sensing the air and experimenting with environmental citizenship --; 10. Biohacking: Playing with technology --; 11. Ludo-epistemology: Playing with the rules in citizen science games --; 12. The playful scientist: Stimulating playful communities for science practice --; 13. Laborious playgrounds : Citizen science games as new modes of work/play in the digital age --; Introduction to Part III --; 14. On participatory politics as a game changer and the politics of participation --; 15. Playing with politics: Memory, orientation, and tactility --; 16. Meaningful inefficiencies : Resisting the logic of technological efficiency in the design of civic systems --; 17. Permanent revolution: Occupying democracy --; 18. The playful city: Citizens making the smart city --; 19. Dissent at a distance --; 20. Playing with power : Casual politicking as a new frame for political analysis --; Index of names --; Index of subjects