U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris launched a campaign on Tuesday encouraging young people, particularly gamers, to participate in the 2024 elections through her new “Freedom Town Map.”
Think about what happens when, having launched Fortnite one day, you find yourself in a fun and engaging digital environment that is also trying to teach you something about being a good citizen. Kamala Harris gives young gamers her new “Freedom Town Map,” the latest American invention.
Kamala Harris launched her recent campaign for the youths to come out in large numbers for the forthcoming election. The “Freedom Town” map was shown on October 28, 2024. It was advertised through a YouTube trailer and campaign website, and the map itself was to explain Harris’ primary campaign messages on the virtual platform.
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As part of Harris’s campaign team, the strategy is to turn out the youth in the poll. Her team believes this is a perfect opportunity to reach younger gaming voters who may switch off a conventional campaign platform.
The map Freedom Town
Freedom Town of Fortnite is not merely a fun-filled open field; its layout depicts one distinctive feature of ‘Freedom Town, USA’: the absence of guns, aligning with a campaign initiative to focus on non-violent gameplay. Players can do things like parkour courses, building jobs, and various missions, such as finding Harris’s campaign posters. By mixing fun with the idea of voting in this new way of playing games, you can reach young people in nontraditional ways.
Why gaming?
Traditional campaigns have, for instance, applied the channels of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to reach the young generation. Although this seems to be a form of polarization, Harris’s recourse to the social influence of a game such as Fortnite to connect with younger groups indicates a shift in using digital platforms in political strategies. Campaigns have high immersion and can make the target audiences remember their message. Fortnite has a young crowd and is widespread.
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The reception and impact
Indeed, the map has created quite a stir on social media, with people supporting the move and those opposing it- they all agree it is risky. It also made many users support the initiative that, in their view, could be helpful to ‘go to the places youth are in,’ enlightening people about choices that create relevance to the voting process. Through linking the concept of civic duty to noisy, unserious game-playing, Harris’s campaign seeks to try to mobilize a younger population that often does not vote.
The question is, will this strategy work?
People’s responses on social media were quite diverse. Some people are confused about why a gun-free map in Fortnite is an action game. If there is no further promotion, then the current engagement level of the map is likely to go down, which seems like a tough place to start for Harris in terms of getting the viewers interested in the gaming world.