Games and citizen engagement : towards democracy 3.0

Abstract

The 21st century society is characterized by new and emerging power relationships resulting in a struggle between those who govern and those who make use of different media to make their voices heard. Historically games (both digital and non digital) have been used to engage citizens in community projects, in a bid to move from the non-participatory culture to one driven by tokenism, to one that aims to achieve more citizen power. In this book chapter, we shall be looking at how present day public engagement is emerging through online networks and the role, which past and current games may take in view of civic participation and action. Games have been attributed features that have a degree of influence on people’s decisions and actions. In this chapter we propose a model for designing games as media that can support citizen engagement as a continuous process whilst facilitating tangible actions entwined in the real and the game worlds.