Minecraft - Digging for Identity

Nadine Dolby (as cited in Kelly, 2012) suggests looking at social justice issues by asking "How does popular culture [in this case - Minecraft] reflect and produce political, cultural, economic, and social relations in the larger society? How does it function as a ground of struggle?" This game has become a mirror to all these aspects of society, both positive and negative.  

Just the colour of your "skin"?

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When students enter a realm, or Minecraft world, they are assigned a character, either Steve or Alex. These avatars can be modified by changing their appearance, by downloading from a limited set  or purchasing new "skins" (Skins, 2016). Having students look at the initial availability of online "skins" that may or may not, represent themselves, or at the very least, do not limit their self-expression to a binary of Steve or Alex can be built into coming to see the game through a more critical lens.  

Using the Four Resources model of Luke and Freebody (1990), or the one following that expands the interrogation, students can engage in discussion about:

• the author/ creator's purpose; 
• what decisions were made to include or exclude players;
• whose voice is not being heard from;
• who stands to gain from the arrangement of the text (game):
• whether or not there is indeed social or cultural fairness represented in the game; 
• what role they have within the game's virtual world(s); and 
• how they can be sensitive to the different relationships that are built in virtual worlds.  (Hinrichsen, J. & Coombs, A.)

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This is just the starting point and any opportunity to develop understanding on the inherent bias in this text, like that of other familiar media, would be utilized to build confidence and agency as they move around in virtual spaces while within our purview, and independently. In order to counter the discriminatory practices found within the gaming context, students need to be cognizant of choices they make and be better prepared to be a fair player/member of these communities, just as we wish them to be in the outside world.


It is essential that they recognize the real world slips into these virtual worlds. Christopher Long's daughter encountered racist, and misogynistic, remarks as she entered a server as a dark-skinned, female avatar.  As her father (Long, 2014, para. 12) points out:

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"All in a moment, she was made to feel how her appearance impacts the way the world experiences her and transforms her experiences of the world."



It is even more necessary for educators to guide themselves and their students to see beyond the tip of the iceberg, beyond only seeing these events as happening somewhere else, to someone other than themselves. 

     The critical component of media literacy must transform literacy education into an        exploration of the role of language and communication to define relationships of            power and domination because below the surface of that iceberg lies deeply embedded ideological notions of white supremacy, capitalist patriarchy, classism, homophobia and other oppressive myths.

(Kellner & Share, 2007, p. 61)

It appears that for all the reported "trolling" there is research, and anecdotal support, to suggest there is self-regulation amongst many members of the digital spaces - the specific Minecraft worlds and the various wikis, blogs and forums in which they participate. Dr Amanda Potts, a researcher at the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science, analyzed the language used by memebers of Minecraft communities:  

"In videogame forums, there is sometimes an expectation that community members share certain qualities (like being straight and male) and agree upon quite narrow conceptions of identity," says Dr Amanda Potts. "I found that when popular channel producers uploaded gaming videos that depicted unexpected relationships between men, viewers and subscribers of the channel became more accepting and tolerant. What you ended up with was a community that self-policed against homophobia." (2014, p. 1)