This study interrogates if newsgames are meaningful supplements to already existing forms of journalism. Using the case of refugee and migrant issues, this study examines how the newsgames The Refugee Challenge, Against all Odds and The Migrant Trail convey information about migration in interactive game-play, and how migrants and their situation are represented in these games. The games are discussed in relation to empathy, objectivity, complexity and the representation of distant suffering. The overarching question is how newsgames compare to traditional journalism when it comes to helping audiences understand political events of global concern and power asymmetries between “Others” and “us.” We find that these newsgames especially enhanced journalism when they cleverly employed game logics to generate experiential engagement with the existential crisis of involuntary dislocation. Nevertheless, the games did not use their game capabilities to the fullest, which would have entailed opening up a discourse that allows for contradictory life worlds and different perspectives of and by Others in context. © 2017, © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Migration empathy newsgames digital journalism serious games refugees representing the Other distant suffering

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