Understanding the Discursive Influence of Memetic Communication in Game-Adjacent Space

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how memetic communication facilitates the movement of political ideas within game-adjacent spaces, the digital and physical areas where gaming culture intersects with broader sociocultural discourse. Introducing the concept of game-adjacency, I argue that gaming communities co-create and negotiate cultural and political meaning through memetic exchange, extending their communicative potential far beyond gameplay contexts. Drawing on various critical theorists, such as Michel Foucault’s discursive formations and Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptualization of symbolic violence, I applied critical discourse analysis (CDA) to an extensive dataset of over 500 memes captured from six subreddit forums. Additionally, I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 17 players on how these seemingly playful artifacts actively reinforce identity expectations, shape community norms, and influence political attitudes, in some cases facilitating pathways toward extremism. To connect both analytical phases, I propose the Game-Adjacent Memetic Communication Model (GAMCM), an interdisciplinary framework that allows for systematic decoding of memetic content across diverse media contexts, not just games. Ultimately, this dissertation highlights the role of memetic communication as an ideological gatekeeper in, between, and around gaming spaces and emphasizes the GAMCM’s applicability for critical media literacy initiatives, platform moderation strategies, and future digital culture research.