Ludic Surveillance and Semogenesis of Choice in The Uber Game (opens in new tab)

News gamification integrates video game mechanics such as points, badges, and challenges, transforming the experience of news reading into an interactive, competitive process. This commodifies users’ news consumption, aligning it with the logic of neoliberal self-entrepreneurship and engagement metrics. To this end, this study examines how the gamified news feature story The Uber Game transforms choice into a semiotic mechanism of control, where ludic surveillance, regulates players’ decision...