Holger Pötzsch
Biographic Data
| ID | 82573 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Holger Pötzsch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Holger |
| FAMILY NAME | Pötzsch |
| SIGNATURE | PÖTZSCH H |
| AFFILIATIONS | UiT The Arctic University of Norway |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5533-5014 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 100 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Devil Goes by Many Names’: A Critical Examination of Propaganda, PR, and Fake News as Forms of Information Disorder
This article offers an outline of the terms propaganda and public relations before addressing the contemporary phenomenon of fake news. We identify commonalities and differences between these three manipulative practices and show that, rather than being exceptions, they constitute regular techniques of governance in both liberal democracies and more authoritarian systems of rule. Developing a set of family resemblances, we then show that propagan…
Spiel*Kritik: Kritische Perspektiven Auf Videospiele Im Kapitalismus
Denken in einer schlechten Welt«: Von der Notwendigkeit einer kritischen Videospielforschung
In ihrer Einleitung kontextualisieren Holger Pötzsch, Thomas Spies und eyda Kurt kurz die Entstehung dieses Sammelbandes, bevor sie sich einer Übersicht über den Kritikbegriff zuwenden. Eingeführt werden zentrale Aspekte im Denken von Immanuel Kant und Karl Marx, der kritischen Theorie und der Cultural Studies sowie von Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Edward Said, Nancy Fraser und anderen. Danach wenden sich die Verfasser kritischen Annäherungen …
Digital Games as Media for Teaching and Learning: A Template for Critical Evaluation
Background Videogames can be useful tools for teaching and learning. To plan educational uses, potential benefits and possible problematic aspects of specific titles need to be critically assessed by teachers and school leaders prior to implementation. Theory and Method Based on game ontological models, we identify salient areas of inquiry in games research and use these to structure a template for evaluation. This way we operationalize foundatio…
Guilt and Grievability at War: Military Accountability and the Other in Mark of Cain and Battle for Haditha
This article conducts a critical reading of the British war films Mark of Cain (Munden, M., 2007.Mark of Cain) and Battle for Haditha (Broomfield
Labour Struggles in Digital Capitalism: Challenges and Opportunities for Worker Organisation, Mobilisation, and Activism in Germany
In this article, we investigate labour struggles under the condition of digital capitalism. The main research question we address is: How do German unions evaluate and respond to the rapidly accelerating digitalisation of economy and work? Based on a series of interviews with union representatives in Germany, we trace recent developments within an increasingly digitised economy, outlining challenges and opportunities for unions. Our findings show…
History, Heritage, and Memory in Video Games: Approaching the Past in Svoboda 1945: Liberation and Train to Sachsenhausen
This article explores authenticity, immersion, and heritage in two historical video games, Svoboda 1945: Liberation and Train to Sachsenhausen. The two games use different strategies when inviting understanding, emotional attachment, and immersive experiences of past events. We draw upon a critical, self-reflective analysis of the design process and a comparison of both games. Our aim is to expand further the toolset for historical game analysis …
Algorithms, contexts, governance: An introduction to the special issue
This introduction to the special issue on algorithmic governance in context offers an outline of the field and summarizes each contribution to the issue
Farsfigurer, skeive døtre og voldens egendynamikk i The Last of Us: Part II
Denne artikkelen gir en fortolkning av Naughty Dogs skytespill The Last of Us: Part II (2020). Med utgangspunkt i Judith Butlers kritikk av krigsdiskurser viser jeg hvordan spillet rekalibrerer kjønnsnormer, undergraver skytesjangerens konvensjoner og fremtvinger en kritisk granskning av vold og eskalering. Gjennom måten spillet avslører voldens ødeleggende egendynamikk og introduserer skeive og transkarakterer som en selvsagt del av spillverden,…
Critical Digital Literacy: Technology in Education Beyond Issues of User Competence and Labour-Market Qualifications
The present contribution conducts an intervention in the study and practice of digital and media literacy. After reviewing key tenets of recent debates, I advance a specific understanding of the concept – critical digital literacy – that, as I argue, comprehensively addresses issues of knowledge, competencies, and skills in relation to digital technologies. In particular, I posit that critical thinking about educational and other values of ‘the d…
War Games: Memory, Militarism and the Subject of Play
Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction: Studying War and Games Philip Hammond and Holger Pötzsch -- 2 Reality Check: Videogames as Propaganda for Inauthentic War Philip Hammond 17 -- 2 Reality Check: Videogames as Propaganda for Inauthentic War Philip Hammond -- 3 Playing in the End Times: Wargames, Resilience and the Art of Failure Kevin McSorley -- 4 The Political Economy of Wargames:…
Playing Cultural Memory: Framing History in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Czechoslovakia 38-89: Assassination
The present article brings game studies into dialogue with cultural memory studies and argues for the significance of computer games for historical discourse and memory politics. Drawing upon the works of Robert Rosenstone and Astrid Erll, we develop concepts and theories from film studies and adapt them to respond to the media specificity of computer games. Through a critical reading of the first chapter of the history-based first-person shooter…
Media Matter
The present contribution maps materialist advances in media studies. Based on the assumption that matter and materiality constitute significant aspects of communication processes and practices, I introduce four fields of inquiry - technology, political economy, ecology, and the body - and argue that these perspectives enable a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of contemporary technologically afforded forms of interaction. The a…
Archives and identity in the context of social media and algorithmic analytics: Towards an understanding of iArchive and predictive retention
This article reconceptualizes the archive in the context of digital media ecologies. Drawing upon archival theory and critical approaches to the political economy of the Internet, I account for new dynamics and implications afforded by digital archives. Operating at both a user-controlled explicit and a state- and corporate-owned implicit level, the digital archive at once facilitates empowerment and enables unprecedented forms of management and …
Selective Realism: Filtering Experiences of War and Violence in First- and Third-Person Shooters
The present article develops the concept of selective realism to understand how design features and narrative frames of first- and third-person shooters (F/TPS) exclude attention to salient, yet unpleasant, features of warfare such as problematic forms of violence, long-term psychological impacts, or sociopolitical blowbacks. Identifying four specific filters that frame player experiences, I argue that the resulting selectivity is significant bec…
Art Across Borders: Dislocating Artistic and Curatorial Practices in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region
The present article investigates the role of artworks in processes of bordering in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. Drawing upon a neo-formalist framework, it firstly analyzes works that were exhibited during the X-Border Art Biennial to identify disruptive potentials vested in the artistic pieces’ formal properties, before it, secondly, addresses potential performance effects of these works and of the curatorial decision to distribute exhibition …
The Emergence of iBorder: Bordering Bodies, Networks, and Machines
This paper scrutinizes the interrelation between technology and processes of bordering. In particular, it addresses the ways through which biometrics, dataveillance, predictive analytics, and robotics enlist the human body, networks, and human-machine assemblages in practices of inclusion and exclusion at the contemporary dislocated and 'smart' border. Through a description of the sociotechnical apparatuses underlying biometric, algorithmic, and …
The emergence of iWar: Changing practices and perceptions of military engagement in a digital era
The present article investigates the influences of new media technologies on perception and practices of warfare. Drawing on established conceptual frameworks, such as virtuous war and diffused war, the article argues for the fundamentally ambiguous nature of the Internet and social networking technologies that facilitate democratic participation and political activism, but at the same time enable unprecedented forms of oppression, surveillance a…
Framing narratives: Opening sequences in contemporary American and British war films
This article analyses the function of opening sequences in war films. With reference to Erll’s studies on film and memory, the author suggests that, besides initiating processes of framing film worlds, opening sequences also activate a certain memory-making rhetoric that enables potential impacts on historical discourse and memory politics. He subdivides this last function into three rhetorical modes of cultural memory – an objectifying, subjecti…
Renegotiating difficult pasts: Two documentary dramas on Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972
Drawing upon theories of social and cultural memory, commemoration, and memory politics, this article explores how two British documentary dramas – Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday and McDougall and McGovern’s Sunday (both 2002) – re-enact the events of Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972, where British paratroopers shot and killed 13 unarmed demonstrators and wounded another 14. Moving from a textual analytical focus to a historical contextualization and recont…
Borders, Barriers and Grievable Lives: The Discursive Production of Self and Other in Film and Other Audio-Visual Media
Based on a close reading of Ridley Scott’s war film Black Hawk Down (USA 2001; BHD), the present article investigates the formal properties through which a certain strain of war and action movies discursively constitutes the other – the enemy – as less than human. I develop the argument that the emergent relation between friend and foe in these films can be read through the concept of the border as an epistemological barrier that keeps the other …
Challenging the border as barrier: Liminality in Terrence Malick's the thin red line
This paper is about the cultural production and negotiation of borders and boundaries in and through contemporary Hollywood war and action movies. It works on the assumption that the way borders are represented in artifacts of popular culture has an impact on political discourse and, therefore, on border practices. War and action movies are read through the concept of the border, i.e. the way in which conventions of representing self and other, f…
Black Hawk Down: Film Zwischen Reflektion Und Konstruktion Gesellschaftlicher Wirklichkeit
The Emergence of iBorder: Bordering Bodies, Networks, and Machines
This paper scrutinizes the interrelation between technology and processes of bordering. In particular, it addresses the ways through which biometrics, dataveillance, predictive analytics, and robotics enlist the human body, networks, and human-machine assemblages in practices of inclusion and exclusion at the contemporary dislocated and 'smart' border. Through a description of the sociotechnical apparatuses underlying biometric, algorithmic, and …
Selective Realism: Filtering Experiences of War and Violence in First- and Third-Person Shooters
The present article develops the concept of selective realism to understand how design features and narrative frames of first- and third-person shooters (F/TPS) exclude attention to salient, yet unpleasant, features of warfare such as problematic forms of violence, long-term psychological impacts, or sociopolitical blowbacks. Identifying four specific filters that frame player experiences, I argue that the resulting selectivity is significant bec…
Playing Cultural Memory: Framing History in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Czechoslovakia 38-89: Assassination
The present article brings game studies into dialogue with cultural memory studies and argues for the significance of computer games for historical discourse and memory politics. Drawing upon the works of Robert Rosenstone and Astrid Erll, we develop concepts and theories from film studies and adapt them to respond to the media specificity of computer games. Through a critical reading of the first chapter of the history-based first-person shooter…
The emergence of iWar: Changing practices and perceptions of military engagement in a digital era
The present article investigates the influences of new media technologies on perception and practices of warfare. Drawing on established conceptual frameworks, such as virtuous war and diffused war, the article argues for the fundamentally ambiguous nature of the Internet and social networking technologies that facilitate democratic participation and political activism, but at the same time enable unprecedented forms of oppression, surveillance a…
Borders, Barriers and Grievable Lives: The Discursive Production of Self and Other in Film and Other Audio-Visual Media
Based on a close reading of Ridley Scott’s war film Black Hawk Down (USA 2001; BHD), the present article investigates the formal properties through which a certain strain of war and action movies discursively constitutes the other – the enemy – as less than human. I develop the argument that the emergent relation between friend and foe in these films can be read through the concept of the border as an epistemological barrier that keeps the other …
Archives and identity in the context of social media and algorithmic analytics: Towards an understanding of iArchive and predictive retention
This article reconceptualizes the archive in the context of digital media ecologies. Drawing upon archival theory and critical approaches to the political economy of the Internet, I account for new dynamics and implications afforded by digital archives. Operating at both a user-controlled explicit and a state- and corporate-owned implicit level, the digital archive at once facilitates empowerment and enables unprecedented forms of management and …
Challenging the border as barrier: Liminality in Terrence Malick's the thin red line
This paper is about the cultural production and negotiation of borders and boundaries in and through contemporary Hollywood war and action movies. It works on the assumption that the way borders are represented in artifacts of popular culture has an impact on political discourse and, therefore, on border practices. War and action movies are read through the concept of the border, i.e. the way in which conventions of representing self and other, f…
Algorithms, contexts, governance: An introduction to the special issue
This introduction to the special issue on algorithmic governance in context offers an outline of the field and summarizes each contribution to the issue
Art Across Borders: Dislocating Artistic and Curatorial Practices in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region
The present article investigates the role of artworks in processes of bordering in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. Drawing upon a neo-formalist framework, it firstly analyzes works that were exhibited during the X-Border Art Biennial to identify disruptive potentials vested in the artistic pieces’ formal properties, before it, secondly, addresses potential performance effects of these works and of the curatorial decision to distribute exhibition …
Renegotiating difficult pasts: Two documentary dramas on Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972
Drawing upon theories of social and cultural memory, commemoration, and memory politics, this article explores how two British documentary dramas – Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday and McDougall and McGovern’s Sunday (both 2002) – re-enact the events of Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972, where British paratroopers shot and killed 13 unarmed demonstrators and wounded another 14. Moving from a textual analytical focus to a historical contextualization and recont…
Black Hawk Down: Film Zwischen Reflektion Und Konstruktion Gesellschaftlicher Wirklichkeit
Framing narratives: Opening sequences in contemporary American and British war films
This article analyses the function of opening sequences in war films. With reference to Erll’s studies on film and memory, the author suggests that, besides initiating processes of framing film worlds, opening sequences also activate a certain memory-making rhetoric that enables potential impacts on historical discourse and memory politics. He subdivides this last function into three rhetorical modes of cultural memory – an objectifying, subjecti…
Black Hawk Down: Film Zwischen Reflektion Und Konstruktion Gesellschaftlicher Wirklichkeit
Challenging the border as barrier: Liminality in Terrence Malick's the thin red line
This paper is about the cultural production and negotiation of borders and boundaries in and through contemporary Hollywood war and action movies. It works on the assumption that the way borders are represented in artifacts of popular culture has an impact on political discourse and, therefore, on border practices. War and action movies are read through the concept of the border, i.e. the way in which conventions of representing self and other, f…
Renegotiating difficult pasts: Two documentary dramas on Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972
Drawing upon theories of social and cultural memory, commemoration, and memory politics, this article explores how two British documentary dramas – Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday and McDougall and McGovern’s Sunday (both 2002) – re-enact the events of Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972, where British paratroopers shot and killed 13 unarmed demonstrators and wounded another 14. Moving from a textual analytical focus to a historical contextualization and recont…
Borders, Barriers and Grievable Lives: The Discursive Production of Self and Other in Film and Other Audio-Visual Media
Based on a close reading of Ridley Scott’s war film Black Hawk Down (USA 2001; BHD), the present article investigates the formal properties through which a certain strain of war and action movies discursively constitutes the other – the enemy – as less than human. I develop the argument that the emergent relation between friend and foe in these films can be read through the concept of the border as an epistemological barrier that keeps the other …
Framing narratives: Opening sequences in contemporary American and British war films
This article analyses the function of opening sequences in war films. With reference to Erll’s studies on film and memory, the author suggests that, besides initiating processes of framing film worlds, opening sequences also activate a certain memory-making rhetoric that enables potential impacts on historical discourse and memory politics. He subdivides this last function into three rhetorical modes of cultural memory – an objectifying, subjecti…
The emergence of iWar: Changing practices and perceptions of military engagement in a digital era
The present article investigates the influences of new media technologies on perception and practices of warfare. Drawing on established conceptual frameworks, such as virtuous war and diffused war, the article argues for the fundamentally ambiguous nature of the Internet and social networking technologies that facilitate democratic participation and political activism, but at the same time enable unprecedented forms of oppression, surveillance a…
Art Across Borders: Dislocating Artistic and Curatorial Practices in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region
The present article investigates the role of artworks in processes of bordering in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. Drawing upon a neo-formalist framework, it firstly analyzes works that were exhibited during the X-Border Art Biennial to identify disruptive potentials vested in the artistic pieces’ formal properties, before it, secondly, addresses potential performance effects of these works and of the curatorial decision to distribute exhibition …
The Emergence of iBorder: Bordering Bodies, Networks, and Machines
This paper scrutinizes the interrelation between technology and processes of bordering. In particular, it addresses the ways through which biometrics, dataveillance, predictive analytics, and robotics enlist the human body, networks, and human-machine assemblages in practices of inclusion and exclusion at the contemporary dislocated and 'smart' border. Through a description of the sociotechnical apparatuses underlying biometric, algorithmic, and …
Media Matter
The present contribution maps materialist advances in media studies. Based on the assumption that matter and materiality constitute significant aspects of communication processes and practices, I introduce four fields of inquiry - technology, political economy, ecology, and the body - and argue that these perspectives enable a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of contemporary technologically afforded forms of interaction. The a…
Archives and identity in the context of social media and algorithmic analytics: Towards an understanding of iArchive and predictive retention
This article reconceptualizes the archive in the context of digital media ecologies. Drawing upon archival theory and critical approaches to the political economy of the Internet, I account for new dynamics and implications afforded by digital archives. Operating at both a user-controlled explicit and a state- and corporate-owned implicit level, the digital archive at once facilitates empowerment and enables unprecedented forms of management and …
Selective Realism: Filtering Experiences of War and Violence in First- and Third-Person Shooters
The present article develops the concept of selective realism to understand how design features and narrative frames of first- and third-person shooters (F/TPS) exclude attention to salient, yet unpleasant, features of warfare such as problematic forms of violence, long-term psychological impacts, or sociopolitical blowbacks. Identifying four specific filters that frame player experiences, I argue that the resulting selectivity is significant bec…
Critical Digital Literacy: Technology in Education Beyond Issues of User Competence and Labour-Market Qualifications
The present contribution conducts an intervention in the study and practice of digital and media literacy. After reviewing key tenets of recent debates, I advance a specific understanding of the concept – critical digital literacy – that, as I argue, comprehensively addresses issues of knowledge, competencies, and skills in relation to digital technologies. In particular, I posit that critical thinking about educational and other values of ‘the d…
War Games: Memory, Militarism and the Subject of Play
Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction: Studying War and Games Philip Hammond and Holger Pötzsch -- 2 Reality Check: Videogames as Propaganda for Inauthentic War Philip Hammond 17 -- 2 Reality Check: Videogames as Propaganda for Inauthentic War Philip Hammond -- 3 Playing in the End Times: Wargames, Resilience and the Art of Failure Kevin McSorley -- 4 The Political Economy of Wargames:…
Playing Cultural Memory: Framing History in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Czechoslovakia 38-89: Assassination
The present article brings game studies into dialogue with cultural memory studies and argues for the significance of computer games for historical discourse and memory politics. Drawing upon the works of Robert Rosenstone and Astrid Erll, we develop concepts and theories from film studies and adapt them to respond to the media specificity of computer games. Through a critical reading of the first chapter of the history-based first-person shooter…
Farsfigurer, skeive døtre og voldens egendynamikk i The Last of Us: Part II
Denne artikkelen gir en fortolkning av Naughty Dogs skytespill The Last of Us: Part II (2020). Med utgangspunkt i Judith Butlers kritikk av krigsdiskurser viser jeg hvordan spillet rekalibrerer kjønnsnormer, undergraver skytesjangerens konvensjoner og fremtvinger en kritisk granskning av vold og eskalering. Gjennom måten spillet avslører voldens ødeleggende egendynamikk og introduserer skeive og transkarakterer som en selvsagt del av spillverden,…
Labour Struggles in Digital Capitalism: Challenges and Opportunities for Worker Organisation, Mobilisation, and Activism in Germany
In this article, we investigate labour struggles under the condition of digital capitalism. The main research question we address is: How do German unions evaluate and respond to the rapidly accelerating digitalisation of economy and work? Based on a series of interviews with union representatives in Germany, we trace recent developments within an increasingly digitised economy, outlining challenges and opportunities for unions. Our findings show…
History, Heritage, and Memory in Video Games: Approaching the Past in Svoboda 1945: Liberation and Train to Sachsenhausen
This article explores authenticity, immersion, and heritage in two historical video games, Svoboda 1945: Liberation and Train to Sachsenhausen. The two games use different strategies when inviting understanding, emotional attachment, and immersive experiences of past events. We draw upon a critical, self-reflective analysis of the design process and a comparison of both games. Our aim is to expand further the toolset for historical game analysis …
Algorithms, contexts, governance: An introduction to the special issue
This introduction to the special issue on algorithmic governance in context offers an outline of the field and summarizes each contribution to the issue
Digital Games as Media for Teaching and Learning: A Template for Critical Evaluation
Background Videogames can be useful tools for teaching and learning. To plan educational uses, potential benefits and possible problematic aspects of specific titles need to be critically assessed by teachers and school leaders prior to implementation. Theory and Method Based on game ontological models, we identify salient areas of inquiry in games research and use these to structure a template for evaluation. This way we operationalize foundatio…
Guilt and Grievability at War: Military Accountability and the Other in Mark of Cain and Battle for Haditha
This article conducts a critical reading of the British war films Mark of Cain (Munden, M., 2007.Mark of Cain) and Battle for Haditha (Broomfield
The Devil Goes by Many Names’: A Critical Examination of Propaganda, PR, and Fake News as Forms of Information Disorder
This article offers an outline of the terms propaganda and public relations before addressing the contemporary phenomenon of fake news. We identify commonalities and differences between these three manipulative practices and show that, rather than being exceptions, they constitute regular techniques of governance in both liberal democracies and more authoritarian systems of rule. Developing a set of family resemblances, we then show that propagan…
Spiel*Kritik: Kritische Perspektiven Auf Videospiele Im Kapitalismus
Denken in einer schlechten Welt«: Von der Notwendigkeit einer kritischen Videospielforschung
In ihrer Einleitung kontextualisieren Holger Pötzsch, Thomas Spies und eyda Kurt kurz die Entstehung dieses Sammelbandes, bevor sie sich einer Übersicht über den Kritikbegriff zuwenden. Eingeführt werden zentrale Aspekte im Denken von Immanuel Kant und Karl Marx, der kritischen Theorie und der Cultural Studies sowie von Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Edward Said, Nancy Fraser und anderen. Danach wenden sich die Verfasser kritischen Annäherungen …
Political science (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Politics (12 works) · History (10 works) · Aesthetics (9 works) · Art (9 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Digital Games and Media (8 works) · Law (8 works)