Via Gamasutra, "The Potential of America's Army as Civilian Public Sphere" by Zhan Li.

This thesis, researched during 2002-03, examines the political life of the America's Army fan community, comparing the activities and identities of three exceptional gamer groups (real life soldiers and veterans; Evangelical Christians; and hackers) to the official understanding of the game's purpose.(...) The thesis argues that the exceptional America's Army gamer groups' grassroots activities demonstrate how objections about the presumed triviality and irrelevance of gamespaces as political spaces may be refuted.