ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1576282
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Dark and the Light Side of Gaming (Volume II)View all 5 articles
Vaults, Heroes, and Enemies: A Multimodal Approach to Poster Propaganda in the Fallout Series
Provisionally accepted- 1Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Niš, Serbia
- 2Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nis, Nis, Serbia
- 3Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden
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The Fallout game series has utilized in-game posters as both decorative and narrative elements, which have helped it shape its post-apocalyptic world. These posters often serve as (satirical) propaganda and reflect the societal structures, ideologies, and conflicts of the game’s dystopian setting. This study analyses all propaganda-themed posters from six Fallout role-playing video games (1997–2018) to examine their multimodal features and propaganda techniques. Using a multimodal framework combined with propaganda studies, we explore how text-image relations, figures of speech, typography, colour schemes, and iconography interact with propaganda strategies such as appeal to emotions and fear, name-calling, glittering generalities, and band wagon. Our findings reveal that text-dominant posters and sans-serif fonts are the most frequent design choices. Metonymy is the most used figure of speech, and it often reinforces ideological symbols, while red and blue emerge as dominant colours, frequently associated with military or nationalistic themes. The study also identifies strong correlations between specific propaganda techniques and multimodal features, demonstrating how visual and textual elements work together to achieve persuasive impact. The study situates Fallout’s posters within a broader context and provides insight into how video games appropriate and adapt real-world propaganda strategies and forms of political messaging.
Keywords: propaganda, Posters, multimodality, Video Games, Fallout
Received: 13 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Aleksić, Tasić and Stamenković. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dušan Stamenković, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden
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