Playing the System. Using Frame Analysis to Understand Online Play

摘要

This paper outlines the different ways in which people play in and with digital games, virtual worlds and social media. People engage in play individually, yet it is often social. This paper explores combining the personal with the social and the connections between playfulness on serious social media sites and seriousness when in a game world. Viewed from this angle, grief play, for instance, is not so much a form of deviant play behavior as it is an alternative way of framing the activity of playing, and Google bombs and edit warring can be recognized as the playful activities that they are.