Playing Gender: An Analysis of Femininity in the Popular Culture Phenomenon League of Legends
Date
2019-05-11
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Abstract
Video games are immensely popular in contemporary society, and it conveys explicit and implicit messages to the consumer. The author investigates the presence of gender portrayal and how the popular culture phenomenon League of Legends depict and represent women. The author analyzes its content, such as roles and appearances, to develop an understanding of its accuracies regarding femininity in the game, and to expand upon the general body of knowledge on video games. A literature review was conducted by the author analyzing the presence of gender in various forms of media (books, television etc.), and gender in video games, and how women are portrayed in them. As prior literature shows, women are underrepresented, stereotyped, and presented in a sexualized manner. The author contends that media including video games, have an impact on an individual’s identity, socializing them to imitate the content that they see in video games under the pretense that it is ‘normal’ and ‘the way it is’ in reality. As a result, the author draws on the theories posited by George Gerbner and Ann Swidler in order to explain the implications of their theories on socialization. The author then engages in a qualitative content analysis of the roles in the game, and twelve female characters or ‘champions’ in League of Legends to uncover any themes or patterns, in relation to their roles, personality traits, occupation, and appearances etc. In addition, the author briefly discusses the male characters in the game to understand if the results on the female characters were unique only to them and not the male characters. Results suggest that women were more likely to be placed in typically male-coded roles, such as leaders and protectors, but at the expense of being depicted in scantily-clad clothing and sexualized manners. Presented research reflect some of the conclusions drawn in previous studies, but opens the field of video games to more research topics regarding League of Legends as a case study. It is an evolving video game with new content added frequently, as a result, the game can be re-investigated to explore developments on gender representations of men and women.
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Keywords
Gender, Femininity, Popular Culture, Video Games, Qualitative Methods, Content Analysis, Case Study
Citation
Kuk, B. (2019). Playing Gender: An Analysis of Femininity in the Popular Culture Phenomenon League of Legends. Honour's Thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. 1-78.