Framing Affordances: A Study of how Pokémon Go is Framed in the Media as Affording Healthier Behaviour

Abstract

In a selection of media articles, the mobile game Pokémon Go is discussed as affording a healthier lifestyle. This is achieved by framing it as providing players with the opportunity to exercise. However, the long-term health results of playing the game have not been proven. The aim of this research is not to find out whether this can be proven or not, but to understand where this perception of the purpose of the game derives from. The study was therefore executed on the basis of the following research question: What can an investigation of the connections made between Pokémon Go and healthier lifestyles in a sample of popular press articles show concerning the perception of affordances? A selection of popular media articles was studied in which Pokémon Go was described as affording healthier behaviour among players. A combination of textual analysis and framing theory was used to show that the authors describe such behaviour as a consequence of specific elements of Pokémon Go, such as the need to go outside to find Pokémon. As the research question already indicates, affordance theory was involved in the research. This theory describes how objects facilitate actions and imply a user who can execute them. It was then analysed to what extent the claims of the journalists could be related to affordances of the game and to what extent these claims could be based on frames. The results showed that the proposed notion of ‘framed affordances’ facilitates the understanding that the implied connection between object and user could be a result of framing, as journalists are likely to interpret affordances of Pokémon Go on the basis of how they observe the game. ‘Framed affordances’ are therefore not a form of affordances, but a tool to study how observers of affordances imply what kind of behaviour these affordances might result in. The concept could be used to facilitate insight into where the framing of health games in the media derives from. Foucault’s concepts of discourse and bio-politics were involved in this study to facilitate a possible explanation of where a frame derives from and to enable a more extensive insight into how the observation of an affordance might be determined. As this study explored the role of frames in only one sample of texts, it must be noted that other studies might detect other ways of framing. This study is therefore not to be used to understand how health games are framed; rather, it can function as a model for comparable studies investigating whether the connection between mobile games and health is based on frames.