1 The semiotics of social justice: a multimodal approach to examining social justice issues in videogames Jason Hawreliak a and Amélie Lemieux b a Department of Game Studies, Brock University, Canada; b Faculty of Education, Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada Abstract: This article explores how principles of multimodality can be effectively incorporated into game design and analysis in the context of social justice. The authors use a multimodal framework to assist developers, researchers, and educators in better understanding representations of class, race, and gender in videogames. Videogames are multimodal in nature: not only do they “remediate” and adopt the representational practices of other media, but also employ algorithmic, procedural, haptic, and interactive forms of expression. Videogames are uniquely situated to represent systemic oppression and privilege through what Ian Bogost (2007) calls “procedural rhetoric,” i.e. the representation of social systems through computational systems. Procedural rhetoric allows players to experience and interact with systems of oppression and privilege in ways that other media cannot. To define these concepts, the paper will include examples from several videogames deal with issues of representation either implicitly or explicitly, including Overwatch (2016), a competitive First-Person Shooter; CartLife, and Apex: Legends, a survivalist First-Person Shooter. Keywords: Multimodality; Videogames; Social Justice; Procedurality; Gender; Race Introduction Gaming culture – a broad term we define as the way digital and analog games act as intermediaries for various forms of relationality 1 – has a harmful track record of bigotry, stereotypical representation, abuse, and harassment, particularly towards people of color, women, and LGBTQ2S+ people (Cross, 2014; Richard & Gray, 2018; Ruberg, 2017; Vossen, 2018). Indeed, the appellation ‘Social Justice Warrior’ is generally used as a pejorative term to denigrate people who critique the pernicious effects of white supremacy, classism, and heteronormativity in media. As several, wide-ranging content analyses have demonstrated, the typical videogame protagonist is white, heteronormative, hetero-compliant, and male (Bolton, 2016; Burgess, Stermer, & Burgess, 2007; Lahti, 2016; Sarkeesian, 2013). In Chris Paul’s (2018) words, ‘[f]rom the limited depictions of women and people of color in games to ongoing campaigns of harassment, like GamerGate, 2 the current state of culture around video games is dark’ (p. 2).  Corresponding author’s email: jhawreliak@brocku.ca