Reporting Religion: Narrating Religion in Gaming Journalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT In journalism, issues of religion are increasingly reported by nonspecialists or specialists in other fields. This poses obvious challenges. This study explores the narrative frames employed by gaming journalists in reporting about religion in video games. This was done through semi-structured interviews with gaming journalists (n = 17) and an exploration of their produced gaming reviews (n = 116) in relation to games with religious narratives. The study argues that journalists largely did not identify much regarding religion in their own content–even more explicit religious presentations were argued to have little role in a “game.” However, the clearest religion journalists identified was gaming itself, presenting the experience of gaming as its own form of religious activity.