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Samantha Bombacigno

E-DEMOCRACY THROUGH SERIOUS GAMES

Year:

Supervisor: Luciano Gamberini

Graduate student: Samantha Bombacigno

ICT allow citizens to access and acquire more and more crucial information related to the democracy life of their country, to analyze it in detail and to increase the participation of people to active citizenship, concept defined e-democracy. In order to analyze this tendency, we decided to study a specific category of these interactive products, the serious games. They are an alternative information tools, which attract the attention of young people toward social activities. My qualitative research has been conducted on three specific serious games: Democracy, Election Play e Mc Donald’s game (see images above). The aim of this research is to analyze the efficacy of videogames for the diffusion of information, the influence to change the player’s opinions and behavior in connection with the game topic. The research shows that “Democracy”, “Election Play” and “Mc Donald’s game” are valid tools to influence the opinion of the participants in relation to topics covered from every game.

Analyzing in detail each game, the research shows that only the players of Mc Donald’s game have not been influenced by the game. Their opinion about the products made by the American Multinational has not been changed, in particular if we consider the negative aspects. The reason is that more than half of participants have a negative perception of those products. With connection to the main changes of players, the serious games have represented a great chance to acquire a higher number of information about the topic of each game. The consequence is a more conscious knowledge about issues of great social significance. The influence of the serious games on the participant’s behavior is not significant in all the three games, indeed the behavior changes only in half of participants. Finally, the research doesn’t show gender differences with connection to the perception of the opinion’s change, both as well as the influence of the games on the player’s behavior.