James Moulding, co-founder of Games for the Many, joins the podcast to discuss the success of Corbyn Run, a political campaigning game that went viral during the 2017 British elections. We discuss the development of the game, the role of social media in promoting it, and the potential for online games to spur political engagement in youth.
You can play Corbyn Run here.
Dr. Joel Penney, Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, discusses his new book “The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age“. The book explores how everyday citizens actively assist in the promotion of political messages through their social media activity, following logics of viral marketing to enact persuasion at a peer-to-peer level. Dr. Penney shares his research on the Bernie Sanders campaign and the role that citizens played on social media, and Facebook in particular, to help the campaign get out its message through official and unofficial channels.