Theme; When Humans Lose Their Humanity.

Are
Ethics Relevant in Visual Media, Past, Present and
Future? Discuss.
Brian Duffy CDG1

Games have a unique position as an interactive medium. From the beginning, their potential for
audience engagement and immersion has attracted many groups interested in propaganda and
indoctrination. This essay will examine the mechanisms of this propaganda and its place within
contemporary visual media, with an emphasis on video games. By applying this framework to
several case studies of organisations which have engaged in video game propaganda, clear
similarities emerge, when comparing both methods and results.

“Ours is the first age in which many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have made a full-time
business to get inside the collective public mind. To get inside in order to manipulate, exploit, control is the
object now. And to generate heat, not light, is the intention.”
- Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man

For as long as visual mass media has existed, it has been accompanied by fervent discussion surrounding
the ethics and psychology therein, with particular emphasis on depictions of violence. In turn,
representations of violence have become ever more graphic and realistic. [1] Throughout the history of film,
controversy has followed works such as A Clockwork Orange(1971), which was widely banned upon initial
release due to excessive violence. In the late 20 th century the rising popularity of video games added fuel to
this debate, as controversies and outrage grew around popular games such as Doom, Mortal Kombat, and
Grand Theft Auto. Despite their rudimentary and unrealistic visuals, these games allowed the player to
directly engage in violent acts, often featuring blood and gore typically reserved for adult-rated films. This
content, alongside the interactivity and prolonged engagement of this new medium and a clear push to
market video games towards children, caused many to fear the influence they may have on their audience.

Ample evidence can be found among academic research and studies both to support and dispute negative
effects from violent video games. In 2005, a broad review of related studies found that “the evidence
supports hypotheses that violent video game play is related to aggressive affect, physiological arousal,
aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behaviours.” [2] Other studies conflict with these findings, presenting
evidence that shows little to no link between virtual violence and real world aggression [3] and disputing the
commonly espoused connection between video games and the rise of school shootings in the United States.
[4]

While it remains unclear whether media such as video games can truly alter the behaviour of the audience,
it is less disputed that visual media influences the attitudes and expectations of that audience. However,
this debate has mostly focused on interpersonal violence; individual acts of physical violence generally
carried out by or against criminals or monsters of some kind. Meanwhile, the discussion topic of this essay,
‘When Humans Lose Their Humanity’, evokes a more insidious form of violence than the chaotic
individualist bloodshed of Grand Theft Auto. Instead, this essay will focus on the role of video games in
promoting collective violence, and explore their use as propaganda tools.
 Collective Violence & Propaganda
Collective violence, as defined by the World Health Organisation’s Definition and Typology of Violence refers
to “violence committed by larger groups of individuals and can be subdivided into social, political and
economic violence”. Collective violence can manifest in several forms; at times occurring spontaneously in
the form of riots or revolution, while other times being planned methodically, appearing as military coups,
gang warfare or terror attacks. However the majority of collective violence is officially sanctioned and refers
to state military and police forces acting under legal mandate, through war or civilian oppression.

Through collective violence, both the perpetrators and the victims are typically stripped of their humanity.
The perpetrators lose their humanity through a process known as ‘deindividuation’, which finds it roots in
early 20th century clinical psychology. This process, colloquially referred to as ‘mob mentality’, results in “a
psychological state of decreased self-evaluation, causing anti-normative and disinhibited behaviour“. [5]
Through this process, the individual identity of group members is suppressed, allowing the group leaders to
guide the actions and attitudes of the members. According to Jeana L. Magyar-Moe PhD: “Prejudice occurs
when people focus on one dimension of an individual, label that person as part of an in-group based on that
dimension, and then assign different, negative behaviours to people in that in-group versus those who are
part of the out-group.”[6]

To justify collective violence, the in-group must necessarily label the out-group as lesser, alien and in many
cases, subhuman. This view of the enemy as less than human does not come naturally, nor does the
impulse to kill, as shown in U.S. General S.L.A. Marshall’s famous military analytical work Men Against Fire.
Marshall estimated that during combat in WWII, fewer than 25% of soldiers fired their weapons. [8] Despite
criticism of his rather subjective methods of data collection, the conclusion that most soldiers are adverse
to firing on the enemy has been corroborated by studies carried out in other militaries. As such, there is
typically a concerted effort to introduce and spread this dehumanisation through media propaganda.

Historian Philip Taylor defines propaganda as a “deliberate attempt to persuade people, by any available
media, to think and then behave in a manner desired by the source.” [9] The title of his work, Munitions of the
Mind, refers to the practical military use of propaganda both before and during wartime to embolden both
soldiers and bystanders. As media forms have advanced, so too has their use as propaganda tools. During
World War I both the Allied and Axis powers, experimented extensively with mobilising the fledgling film
industry to produce propaganda. Following the 1917 October Revolution, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin
particularly emphasised the use of film propaganda both within and without the newly formed Soviet
Union, leading Sergei Eisenstein’s famous Battleship Potemkin, which depicts the 1905 mutiny aboard the
titular ship. Despite Potemkin’s propagandistic origin, the film is still lauded today for its contributions to
film-making.[10] Later, the German Nazi party would infamously produced many propaganda films, and even
today the United States military are involved and heavily invested in their representation in Hollywood
films, and their potential use as recruitment propaganda.

When the blockbuster superhero film Captain Marvel released in theatres, starring Brie Larson as fighter
pilot-turned-superhero Carol Danvers, the U.S. Air Force who had worked closely with the production
launched a campaign of of pre-show advertisements in over 3600 theatres nationwide. [11] This drive led
directly to a 5% increase in the representation of female applicants to the Air Force Academy, and shows
that propaganda in visual media remains prevalent today.
 Games as Propaganda
“Growing consensus among Communication Researchers and Media Psychologists suggests that users tend
to approach media, including video games, as ‘believers.’ ... If the media stimulus is well designed and
displays social cues appropriately, it takes effort to recall that a character ‘is not real,’ because automatic
social perceptions suggest otherwise.” T. Hartmann & P. Vorderer; It's Okay to Shoot a Character: Moral
Disengagement in Violent Video Games

Video games present a unique opportunity for propagandists through their unmatched level of interactivity.
Unlike passive media such as films or books, games can present the audience with tangible moral agency
within the medium. Furthermore, players familiar with violent video games are likely to feel less guilt when
carrying out this virtual violence, due to a process known as moral disengagement. According to Albert
Bandura, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University, moral disengagement can be defined as
“a phenomenon in which moral self-sanctions are disengaged from detrimental behaviour.” This method of
divorcing typical ethical standards from certain beliefs or actions lies at the heart of propaganda, as Bandura
goes on to explain: “Moral disengagement centres on the means by which a soldier can kill without being
devastated. Society must convince soldiers that they are fighting a just cause.” [12]

Similarly, in the study of moral disengagement in video games quoted earlier, Hartmann and Vorderer found
that players presented with condemnable actions perpetrated by their virtual opponents experienced less
negative emotions when killing them, while justifying the player’s violence leads to reduced guilt and
negative affect.[14] In the paper Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities, Albert Bandura
further describes the ways in which moral agency is gradually eroded in soldiers, terrorist organisations and
arms dealers. These “social and psychological manoeuvrers” include euphemistic labelling, dehumanisation,
distortion of consequences, and displacement of responsibility through obedience. While moral
disengagement is carried out by individuals, the morality which shapes their psychological self-sanctioning
remains heavily influenced by their environment. As Bandura explains, “The ideological orientations of
societies shape the form of moral justifications, and influence which members of society tend to be cast
into devalued groups.”[15]
“Video games provide ample opportunities to influence the formation of public opinion, public assessment
of political, economic and military decisions of the government. Video games are a source of propaganda,
increase its influence and fit it into public discourse, but at the same time camouflage it.” S. Fialka PhD;
Video games as a tool of propaganda in the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation [16]

Svitlana Fialka, professor of communications at Kiev’s National Technical University, wrote on the topic of
video game military propaganda. In her analysis of pro-Russian mobile games related to Ukraine, Fialka
identifies the following methods of propaganda:

 Repetition of certain ideas

 Use of emotional statements
 Demonisation of the enemy
 Falsification of history
 Speculation on the ideas of patriotism
 Assigning labels
 Cultivating stereotypes

Many of these methods mirror those of personal moral disengagement which encourage the players to
justify their actions. This effect may compound with the inclination of players to approach video game
worlds as ‘believers’ and the contemporary, non-fictional narrative to foster hostile attitudes and behaviours
in the audience which transfer to real-world conflict. This is certainly the intent of most military
propaganda, and as the largest global media market[17], video games present a significant opportunity for
the propagandists.

Virtual Warfare
Within the video game industry, there is no genre more popular or consistent than the first-person
shooter(FPS).[18] Development studio id Software are credited with establishing the FPS genre in the early
1990s with titles such as Wolfenstein 3D(1992), Doom(1993) and Quake(1996), which soon evolved into an
industry-wide trend. The Medal of Honor series, created by renowned film director Steven Spielberg, was
launched in 1999 to critical and commercial success. The first game was set in World War II and Spielberg
brought military advisor Dale Dye on board, who had worked with him on Saving Private Ryan. This
emphasis on military and historical accuracy alongside more realistic visuals and grounded combat
scenarios had a significant impact on the trajectory of the FPS genre, with new franchises such as
Battlefield(2002) and Call of Duty(2003) soon following. However, as the global ‘war on terror’ ramped up
through the early 2000s, it became more popular to set these games in modern-day settings, often alluding
to ongoing conflict. This created a subdivision within the FPS genre; fantastical games such as Halo and
Titanfall remain popular, though it is the ‘modern military shooters’ such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds which dominate the industry. [19]

This move towards grounded, realistic environments and narratives featuring contemporary, semi-fictional
combat provides fertile ground for propaganda to flourish. Call of Duty, the most prolific of these modern
military shooters, regularly exhibits elements of propaganda indistinguishable from those outlined in
Svitlana Fialka’s study on the topic, despite the supposed neutrality of the developers and publishers. Call of
Duty: Modern Warfare(2019) references many politically charged events of modern history, such as the
2012 attack on the US embassy in Benghazi and a fictionalised recreation of the 2011 raid on Osama Bin
Laden’s compound in Pakistan. The game presented these events uncritically through the eyes of the US
military.; While this subjective approach goes largely unscrutinised, this time the series was criticised for
historical revisionism[22]. The narrative explicitly blames the Russian antagonists for the notorious Highway
of Death massacre during the first Gulf War in 1991. During this attack, the US military coalition blockaded
and bombed a six-lane highway of retreating Iraqi forces and refugees fleeing Kuwait, killing over 500
people.[23] The attack has been broadly criticised as a possible war crime, and at the time the U.S.
government fought to to delay dissemination of photographs, while President George H.W. Bush announced
a cessation of hostilities the very next day. This simple falsification of history is alarming given the
disproportionate reach and potential influence of these games, and their presentation as barely-fictional
mirrors of reality. The Call of Duty franchise has released 24 games since it launched in 2003, most of which
individually reached tens of millions of sales [20], while the series maintains over 100 million monthly players.
[24]
As with the Captain Marvel example, blurring the lines between blockbuster entertainment and military
propaganda is likely to reach a far greater audience than traditional explicit propaganda, while remaining
highly effective.

America’s Army
The United States military has a long history of involvement with external organisations to develop
technology beyond their typical purview; many of these partnerships are known as the military-industrial
complex. Similarly, the military-entertainment complex is concerned with partnerships with the
entertainment industry, and the production of media with propagandistic intent. For example, the film Top
Gun was produced in direct collaboration with the Pentagon, in an effort to rebrand the U.S. Navy following
the Vietnam War. Many other famous films have been co-scripted with the U.S. Department of Defense,
including Goldfinger (1964), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Godzilla (1998), and the
aforementioned Captain Marvel; in 2016 the website Spyculture invoked the Freedom of Information Act to
assemble a list of 410 films produced in collaboration with the D.O.D. [26]

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. military has been equally keen to incorporate the booming video game industry to
the military-entertainment complex, and has maintained a presence at the forefront of video game
technology. Shortly after the release of id Software’s Doom II in 1994, the U.S. Marine Corps began work on
a modified version of the game titled Marine Doom. This new game featured more realistic environments
and the weapons were replaced with standard-issue M16 and M249 automatic rifles. The Marine Doom
project was presented as a training tool for recruits, however even in this rudimentary form the
propagandistic potential was clear, as Lieutenant Barnett and Sergeant Snyder optimistically described in a
1997 interview:

"[Marine Doom] is about repetitive decision making. (…) We're trying to get these things ingrained by doing
them over and over, with variations. (...) Kids who join the marines today grew up with TV, video games, and
computers. So we thought, how can we educate them, how can we engage them and make them want to
learn? This is perfect" [27]

In the following years, the military experimented with various forms of video games for training including
commercial games such as Medal of Honor and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. Then in 1997, the U.S. Army
partnered with the Institute of Creative Technology, publisher THQ and Pandemic Studios to produce Full
Spectrum Warrior. Unlike Marine Doom, this game was played from a third person perspective, and allowed
the player to issue commands to a squad of soldiers, rather than engaging directly with the combat. Full
Spectrum Warrior was released to the general public, while a separate edition was produced for the U.S.
Army. The military version traded inferior visuals for improved opponent intelligence, as was discovered by
players who found the military edition via cheat code days after the commercial release. While this came to
be the U.S. military’s unintentional first foray into commercial gaming, Full Spectrum Warrior was neither
sponsored nor officially endorsed by the U.S. Army.[28]

Following the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the military-entertainment complex became immediately
concerned with recruitment, and began collaborating with video game and entertainment giants including
NVIDIA, Lucasfilm, Dolby, and Epic Games. On July 4th 2002, the U.S. Army released America’s Army.[29] The
game was a commercial and critical success beyond expectations, receiving many industry awards including
‘Best of Show’ at the 2002 E3 Expo, which showcased military personnel and equipment as marketing for
the game. The American public were largely in favour of the ongoing military action at the time, and the
news cycle kept the Army at the forefront of the public consciousness; now, America’s Army promised to
provide an accessible insight into the military. Unlike most military shooters, players could not fight on
either side of a battle. Rather, each team would see themselves as U.S. troops, while the opposing team
were presented as Arab or South American militants.

By August 2003 there were almost 2 million registered players, which placed it comfortably within the top
10 video games globally. The project cost an estimated 6 to 8 million dollars; given the $2.2 billion dollar
annual recruitment budget of the U.S. Army, it is estimated that the if the game lead to merely 400 new
recruits it would have recouped its initial cost.[30] While other popular series would later emerge from the
U.S. military-entertainment complex such as SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals, none have come close to the success
of America’s Army. The franchise spawned six sequels all developed with the Unreal Engine, including an
arcade game located in many recruitment locations, while a seventh entry has been in development since
2018.

Glorious Mission
The United States were not the only nation engaging their military-entertainment complex to produce video
game propaganda around this time. Despite initial concerns about the influence of video games and an
ineffective ban in 2000, by 2004 the Chinese Communist Youth League, an extension of the ruling Chinese
Communist Party, decided to partner with several technology firms to produce a series of ‘patriotic games’.
Intended to counteract some of the flood of western media, these projects such as the military tactics game
Anti-Japan War Online and online role-playing game Guohun Online(National Spirit Online) were promoted
as important educational and cultural media. According to CCYL official Chen Xiao: “Anti-Japan War Online
is a patriotic online game that is both interesting and instructive, and can attract and guide young
players.”[31] Anti-Japan War Online was set during World War II and depicted major battles from the Second
Sino-Japanese War, presented in miniature to limit the level of violence, However, the game was far from an
unbiased historical record; players were limited to playing as Chinese soldiers from various walks of life,
while the Japanese characters were reportedly made uglier to be more easily distinguished. [32] As Project
Manager Liu Junfeng of PowerNet Technology told the Guardian: "Our developers hate Japan, so they want
to make the game very provocative, but the team leaders have tried to tone down the violence." [33]

The CCYL produced several more of these patriotic games in the following years such as the Sim Battle
series, though it was the state military who produced China’s first hit propaganda game to rival America’s
Army. Glorious Mission was a training and recruitment tool developed by the People’s Liberation Army(PLA)
in partnership with Giant Interactive. [34] Following the template of Full Spectrum Warrior and America’s
Army, two versions of the game were developed. The commercial edition released in June 2011, while the
military distributed their own version for training use among the Navy, Army and Air Force divisions of the
PLA as well as the People’s Armed Police. [35] An online version of the game was released in 2013 to celebrate
the 86th anniversary of the founding of the PLA which centred around the capturing of the Diaoyu islands, a
disputed territory controlled by Japan, which remains a source of conflict today. The release was hugely
successful, with millions playing the game within hours. [36]

Holy Defence
The production of video games for training and propaganda purposes is not limited to state militaries, nor
to the Western and Asian nations which produce most commercial video games. Hezbollah, a political and
paramilitary organisation based in Lebanon have been similarly eager to embrace modern entertainment. in
2003 the group released Special Force, a first-person shooter which casts the player as a Hezbollah soldier
or Mujahid, taking part in battles against the occupying Israeli Defence Forces during the South Lebanon
conflict between the years 1982 and 2000. The game celebrated the victory of the Lebanese forces over
Israel through all the missions, and contained a training area where players could practice shooting images
of Israeli officials including prime minster Ariel Sharon. Special Force was labelled by critics as anti-Semitic
extremist propaganda, while the creators of the game insisted it was a defence against the ‘invasion’ of
Arab markets by foreign games. As Mahmoud Rayya, part of the development team within Hezbollah's
Central Internet Bureau put it:

“Most games being offered on the market are games in which, unfortunately, the hero is an American, and
he is coming to kill the terrorist, who is an Arab. We wanted to provide our youths with an alternative. (...)
Resistance is not confined to weapons. You also have to catch up with the ever-growing industries like the
Internet and computer games. (..) This game is resisting the Israeli occupation through the media. [...] In a
way, Special Force offers a mental and personal training for those who play it, allowing them to feel that
they are in the shoes of the fighters.”[37][38]

Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge was released in 2007, and portrayed the 2006 Lebanon War,
again between Hezbollah and Israel. Featuring videos of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and
an extensive list of Hezbollah martyrs in lieu of ending credits, the sequel also emphasised resource
management alongside standard first-person shooter mechanics. Limiting the player’s ammunition and
health packs was designed to teach the audience about the effective guerilla tactics Hezbollah had become
known for, according to officials.[39]

In recent years, Hezbollah has re-entered the video game market with Holy Defence, a 2018 title featuring
comparatively advanced visuals and mechanics which follows a fictional Mujahid named Ahmaud through
re-enactments of key battles against the Islamic State in Syria and Lebanon. According to sociology
professor and Hezbollah expert Waddah Chahara, the goals of this game are clearly beyond simply
celebrating Hezbollah victories and celebrating their martyrs.:“It’s a call to their young public to emulate the
game, and to take pride in joining the fight. (Hezbollah) has a strong tradition of placing its public in battle-
like scenes.”[40]
 Conclusion
“New communications technologies make it increasingly difficult for governments to control their message
and frame the diplomatic agenda. (...) Propaganda is, finally, a competition to see whose story triumphs in a
crowded global theatre of influence.” Marshall Soules PhD; Media, Persuasion and Propaganda

In a research article published in January 2021, sociologists Nick Robinson and Joe Whittaker argue that
propaganda games should not be viewed purely as recruitment tools “intended to recruit ‘normal’
individuals to a movement by radicalizing them.” Rather, they contend, “the purpose of such games as
propaganda is to reinforce and normalize the beliefs and motivations of those already in the movement.” By
comparing games like America’s Army, Glorious Mission, and Special Force, many similarities emerge; each
of these games promote intense nationalism and xenophobia, while venerating combat. Through the
medium of video games the consequences of violence can be abstracted, while real events both
contemporary and historic can be distorted or entirely rewritten. These features define propaganda as well
as the mechanisms of moral disengagement, which are likely to be far more effective on existing members
of a group, rather than those outside. [42] The recruitment effect that is observed through these games rarely
occurs as previously disinterested individuals are radicalised to join Hezbollah or the United States military.
Rather, those groups are focused on civilians who already support their cause, and convincing them to fight.
As a result, the most harmful effect of this propaganda is likely to be the increasing radicalisation and
desensitisation of recruits. Unlike the 75% of WWII soldiers who reportedly never fired their weapon,
modern soldiers have likely slain hundreds or thousands of virtual combatants before they see their first
battlefield.

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