engleski

Gaming Alone? Participatory Dimensions of Social Capital in Croatia’s Video Gaming Population

The aim of this presentation is to explore the relationship between selected dimensions of social capital and gaming preferences of the video gaming population in Croatia. For that purpose, a large scale online survey was conducted in September 2014 (N=2956). Although video games share little technological and communicational specifications with the medium of television, it is a widely held opinion (with some supporting research evidence) that interacting with video gaming content consequently results in withdrawal from public life and communal activities. The theoretical starting point is the work of Robert D. Putnam and his main thesis that home entertainment distracts people from active public participation. We use his elements of social capital, but with necessary adjustments to both the technological-communicational characteristics of video games and broader socio-cultural shifts. In order to address the reality of social capital in the digital interactive environment of video games, the following steps were undertaken. Firstly, we decided to use civic activism as a key outcome variable in order to enhance Putnam's definition of social capital as a structural „byproduct“ of social networking. We find post-institutional and post-organisational participation a more adequate form of measure for social capital as it better fits the reality of information society (Dijk), network society (Castells) or even networked individualism (Wellman & Rainie) in comparison to organizational „loyalties“ as described by Putnam. Secondly, in order to explore the relationship between video gaming culture and civic activism, a secondary set of independent variables was used: aspects of social capital in the form of structural social networking - operationalized as organizational and participatory membership in both offline and online contexts - as well as generalized trust and bridging/bonding constructs that are being accumulated during gameplay. Thirdly, video game play was operationalized through variables of intensity of play, genre preferences, self identification with gaming (sub)culture and in the form of actual partners during the video game play as a direct answer to the question whether video game users are gaming alone or not. Furthermore, seeing video games as part of a broader cultural, media and technological shift that both fits and fuels global socio-cultural transformation, we propose that identity, genre preferences and intensity of videogame play will manifest a different relation to civic activism and to other constructs of social capital that we used in the research. Certain genres will be a more suitable ground for fostering different dimensions of social capital as their narrative context as well as communication capabilities provide ground for more intense elements of social interactions, information exchange and more cosmopolitan and civic norms in regards to other genres. Genres such as FPS (First Person Shooters), sport simulation games (FIFA, NHL, Pro Evolution Soccer) and other competition and achievement oriented games, are more compatible with local identity and bonding elements (playing between groups of friends from a neighborhood) and in general do not need media competency and literacy that other genres require. Therefore we argue that genres like MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games), MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) or RPG (Role Playing Games) on average attract players with cosmopolitan identities, prone to bridge local social constraints, and engage in interaction with players from the global playground. In addition to the variables of genre preferences, we have also included the intensity of gameplay and self-identification with gaming (sub)culture. Intensity was defined as a negative contributor to social capital which follows the logic of Putnam's conclusion about the negative impact of entertainment industry on civic activities, as well as the epistemological line of the media effects approach. Self-identification with gaming (sub)culture was used as a potentially positive contributor to social capital as it is viewed as part of a participatory culture along the theoretical lines of Henry Jenkins. Using these three sets of constructs, we developed a series of multivariate linear regression models, aiming to examine the contribution of each set of predictors towards explaining the variance in the key outcome variable, civic engagement. The models were built hierarchically, starting with socio-demographic correlates (gender, age) and then adding a new set of predictors in each step and noting the changes in explained variance (R2), predictor coefficients and standard errors at each step. Our final model consisted of socio-demographic predictors, structural social capital indicators (group membership), cultural social capital indicator (generalized trust), online social capital indicator, bridging-bonding indicators and a series of gaming-specific predictors like gaming intensity (in various periods), gaming genre preferences and self-identification. The results point to clear differences in the variable of civic activism between younger and older video game players whereby the latter show a greater tendency for active participation. Our multivariate models, controlling for other relevant factors, show sporadic statistically significant association between intensity of play, self-identification with gaming (sub)culture and genre preferences with civic engagement. However, statistical significance does not hide the fact that the effects of „gaming variables“ identified in the regression analyses are weak, and do not point to a large influence (positive or negative) of gaming towards civic engagement. We have, however, found that participation in online groups explains civic activism better than participation in offline groups which supports the hypothesis of post-industrial or networked individualism participatory practices. Also, generalized trust has a small effect which points to the fact that the structural components of social capital (participation) have a stronger association than its cultural counterpart (trust).

video games; social capital

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