Tag: Game of Thrones

If fight promotions are fiction, then he’s an idiot for taking McGregor seriously. If they’re reality, his actions are more understandable. Fiction works when everyone is able to set aside the fact that it is not reality. In order for Booker to achieve success, the audience first needed to ignore his artificiality. The same is true of gotcha-style politics. But this month we finally reached the limit of treating politics like it’s fiction. However, the right sells fiction too. Yes, social media has turned America into a perpetual mob, but if used correctly we can create practices that reward communication behaviors we want to see in our leaders. In these ways we can stop rewarding Cory Booker-style freakishness and develop systems of communication that incentivize leaders to act like leaders. Let America’s leaders set a standard and then foist the responsibility on us.

Are you a fan of the HBO series "Game of Thrones"? The book is one of few in academic research to explore the connection between popular entertainment and political beliefs. It expands on Gierzynski's 2013 book, "Harry Potter and the Millennials: Research Methods and the Politics of the Muggle Generation," which found that the books and films about the boy wizard influenced the political perspectives of those who grew up with them. And fiction captivates viewers on a more visceral level than news, allowing for greater influence, Gierzynski says. Many movies and TV shows contain political subject matter: "House of Cards" is about an unscrupulous congressman; much of science fiction features a president making decisions about an alien invasion. One of those themes is "belief in a just world," the focus of Gierzynski's study using "Game of Thrones." As Gierzynski writes, "The findings indicate that there appears to be a causal linkage between exposure to these shows and the belief in a just world - exposure to the repeated lessons of 'Game of Thrones' that the world is cruel and unjust seems to have dampened the tendency to believe the opposite, that the world is just." Gierzynski and his students conducted a similar study for "House of Cards," determining its influence on cynicism about political leadership, which in turn could discourage the viewer from seeing the value of political engagement or even the need to vote in elections. Gierzynski himself is a science fiction fan. "No one questions the fact that 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had a huge impact on people's views about slavery and racism," he says.