Online Poker Rooms - TV Entertainment - Local Card Player Communities: On the Correlation between Media Technological Innovations and Global Poker Fever
Project leader: Prof. Dr. Ronald Hitzler
Project assistants: Gregor Betz, Dr. Gerd Möll
The increasing reciprocal penetration and supplementation of TV and Internet, their reaching out to mobile communications offers, and the continuous amalgamation of this whole media ‘package’ with everyday activities, in short: a convergence of media, have earlier and currently met changes in societal living conditions, which go along with growing risk willingness among more and more people. Within this general scope a currently literally omnipresent phenomenon is to be located, which is yet hardly discussed beyond a specific cultural world of experience: the ‘world-wide’ poker boom, which in varying degrees has been lasting for several years. This research project aims at recording this frequently stated poker boom in all its dimensioning. Regarding the survey, this globally plentiful occurring behaviour complex, fostered by media technological innovations and ground on modernity-driven societal ‘circumstances’ which correlate with mentality changes, shall be reconstructed and theoretically understood, against the background of the cultural history of gambling and especially card games, in its interlocking with and reference to game focusing on TV and Internet and during (additional) everyday activities. It shall be primarily asked, in which forms the state of play reveals itself, in which way medial change proceeds within this research field, which new and altered patterns of perception, activity and interaction are recognizable, how the relation of medial and non-medial ways of playing is arranged and how ‘subject characteristics’ of actors in this noticeably mediatized game world can be recorded empirically and theoretically. Within the SPP (German focus programme) the project is consequently located in research area A (‘action and interaction forms’). Nevertheless, research results might also be significant for the two remaining research areas of the SPP.
Research field: Action and interaction forms
Publications
Grenz, Tilo/ Leichner, Annika/ Möll, Gerd (Eds.) (2012): Mediatisierte Erlebniswelten. In preparation.
Hitzler, Ronald/ Möll, Gerd (2012): Eingespielte Transzendenzen. Zur Mediatisierung des Welterlebens am Beispiel des Pokerns. In: Hepp, Andreas/ Krotz, Friedrich (Eds.): Mediatisierte Welten: Beschreibungsansätze und Forschungsfelder. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 257-280.
Hitzler, Ronald (2011): Eine multidimensionale Innovation. Zum Zusammenspiel von Technologien und Techniken am Beispiel des globalen Pokerbooms. In: Bormann, Inka/ John, René/ Aderhold, Jens (Eds.): Indikatoren des Neuen. Innovation als Sozialtechnologie oder Sozialmethodologie. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, forthcoming.
Hitzler, Ronald (2010): Im Zockerparadies? Der Pokerspieler als Zeitgeist-Metapher des Konsumenten. In: Brünner, Christian u.a. (Eds.): Mensch - Gruppe - Gesellschaft (Festschrift für Manfred Prisching in zwei Bänden). Wien: Neuer Wissenschaftlicher Verlag (NWV), pp. 401-416.
Presentations
Betz, Gregor: Mega-Event-Macher. Medial gestützte Konstituierung der Kulturhauptstadt RUHR.2010. Presentation at the Workshop „Mediatisierte Erlebniswelten“, 2011-12-16 until 2011-12-17 in Dortmund, held 2011-12-16.
Hitzler, Ronald: (Er-)Leben im elektronischen Panoptikum. Die mediatisierte Alltäglichkeit von Observation und Exhibition. Presentation at the Workshop „Mediatisierte Erlebniswelten“. 2011-12-16 until 2011-12-17 in Dortmund, held 2011-12-17.
Hitzler, Ronald: Eine multidimensionale Innovation. Zum Zusammenspiel
von Technologien und Techniken am Beispiel des globalen Pokerbooms. Presentation at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 2011-06-12 in Karlsruhe.
Möll, Gerd: Von Fischen und Haien. Zur populationsökologischen Krise der sozialen Welt des Online-Pokers. Vortrag im Rahmen des kooperativen Workshops „Mediatisierte Erlebniswelten“, 2011-12-16 until 2011-12-17 in Dortmund, held 2011-12-17.
Möll, Gerd: Zocken im Internet. Zur Konstruktion neuer Medienwelten am Beispiel des globalen Pokerbooms. presentation at the autumn conference "Das Internet und der Wandel von Mediensektoren" of the section „Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung“ of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, 2011-11-24 until 2011-11-25 in Stuttgart, held 2011-11-24.
http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/soz/oi/aktuelles/Programm_Internet_Mediensektoren.pdfMöll, Gerd: Zur Mediatisierung des Glücksspiels. Das Beispiel Poker, presentation at the Annual Colloquium of the priority programme "Mediatisierte Welten: Kommunikation im medialen und gesellschaftlichen Wandel", 20.10.2011 - 21.10.2011 in Bremen.
Möll, Gerd: Der 'Goffmensch' beim Pokern. Oder: Fragile Sozialität und Entscheidung. Überlegungen zur Last und zur Lust des Entscheidens am Beispiel des Pokerns im Internet, presentation at the Workshop "Fragile Sozialität", TU Dortmund and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 17.12.2010 - 18.12.2010 in Dortmund.