Popular culture is a significant interest for scholars of International Relations and world politics. This article explores the capacity of video games to articulate, represent, and simulate the practice of international politics in both narrative and procedural capacities through a study of the highly popular Mass Effect science fiction series of video games. The introduction of procedural rhetoric as a means of textual criticism is argued to address existing concerns within the study of International Relations to articulate the significance of representation with cultural texts and to extend the implications of claims about science fiction as a compelling set of contingent arguments about the broader sphere of social life that constitutes International Relations.

中文翻译：

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大众效应的程序修辞：视频游戏是国际关系中的争论

流行文化是国际关系和世界政治学者的重大兴趣。本文通过研究广受欢迎的《质量效应》（Mass Effect）科幻小说系列视频游戏，探讨了视频游戏在叙事和程序能力上表达，代表和模拟国际政治实践的能力。有人提出将程序性修辞作为一种文本批评的手段来解决国际关系研究中存在的问题，以阐明使用文化文本进行表述的重要性，并扩大关于科幻小说的主张的涵义，因为这是一系列令人信服的或然论据。构成国际关系的更广泛的社会生活领域。