What do text-based newsgames have to do with journalism? An account from Gem Model perspective

Abstract

The article aims to discuss text-based newsgames as a multimodal artifact, having in mind the goal to systematize their expressive processing and rhetorical strategies as possible tropes for journalistic processes and practices. For that, we have adapted some of the main layers/elements of the GeM Model (Genre and Multimodality), proposed by Bateman (2008, 2014), to analyze a Brazilian text-based newsgame called “A Teia”, having in mind its material regularities and semiotic modes. The game portrays the reality of a woman who has to decide what to do upon situations of continuous domestic violence and abuse carried out by her partner. In the design of trajectory of “A Teia”, the player follows a rhetorical cluster made of a non-linear sequence, according to an event/circumstance upon which the player has to decide, and so on. Another goal of the paper is to contribute for the assessment on how procedural rhetoric of digital text-based newsgames touches crucial aspect of journalistic practices, functions and values.

Keywords

• GeM Model
• Rhetorical strategies
• Journalism
• Newsgames