Playing with politics: Political fans and Twitter faking in post-broadcast democracy

Mobile and social media are interwoven with emerging, fan-like forms of engagement with mediatized politics. In ‘post-broadcast democracies’, a minority of citizens are affectively drawn to the spectacle of mediated politics. Increasingly, these citizens use the texts and personae of mediatized politics as raw material for their own creativity, using social and mobile media and online self-publishing platforms. More specifically, the activity of Twitter ‘faking’ shows playful, performative and mobile dimensions, which challenge scholars to rethink theories of play, performance, fandom and political engagement. Such activities challenge us to rethink mobile gaming in terms of the politics of mobile play.