Time: 5pm to 6:30pm AEDT
Date: Monday, 29 April 2024
Venue: Online via Zoom
Meeting ID: 833 0741 2742
Meeting Password: 557134
Speaker: Amy Grantham
Over the last decade online viewership trends for e-sports (competitive videogaming) have been outstripping major physical sports events like the Superbowl. E-sports has also become a medalled event in the Asian Games, and is being actively considered for inclusion in one of the biggest multinational entertainment events in the world: the Summer Olympics.
Yet, e-sports continues to be conspicuously absent from formal nation-branding programs, even by famed e-sports pioneers like South Korea.
This doctoral project examines e-sports to assess the ways in which different entertainment industries can be used in nation-branding, and the functional utility that they have in different foreign and domestic policy contexts. Employing a multidisciplinary method, this research specifically examines the entertainment industry-oriented influence campaigns of South Korea, with some shortform studies of the United States.
The project finds that irrespective of the specific entertainment industry employed, their successful leveraging in nation-branding programs is highly contingent on perceptions of authenticity and likability – without which mimetic desire is highly unlikely to be induced among target audiences. These perceptions do not need to be completely accurate, but they should appear credible in order to maximise chances of achieving the promulgator’s desired outcomes. For e-sports specifically, while some complexities do exist, this research finds that there are currently no insurmountable barriers to e-sports’ deployment as an effective tool for nation-branding. E-sports’ near-invisibility in South Korea’s leader-level nation-branding campaigns is found to be a matter of federal convenience: South Korea continues to prioritise industries that achieve a “viral moment” in target countries’ mainstream media, rather than expand its high-level nation-branding programming to include novel avenues like e-sports. This project asks why.
This doctoral research provides significant contributions to scholarship in three areas. It addresses major gaps in academic-practitioner conceptual frameworks of influence in international relations, particularly with respect to national “attractiveness”, national “personalities”, and curation of mimetic desire. From a cultural studies perspective, this project serves as one of the first comprehensive academic investigations into the global e-sports industry, providing insights into its internal operations and external applications from the perspectives of three major stakeholder groups: governments, athletes, and fans. Finally, the project maps these findings in relation to K-pop, K-cinema, and physical sports, deepening understandings of entertainment industries’ idiosyncrasies and their ability to generate influential national “star power”.
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