Abstract:In the last decade, large public screens and globally organized public viewing areas (PVAs) have become increasingly significant elements of media events, expanding the possibilities for mass audiences to collectively watch events together in real time. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in connection with the British Royal wedding (2011) and the London Olympics (2012), this article explores the ‘sociality’ of public space broadcasting, focusing on interactions and performances of identity by people… Show more
“…Against this, the increasing encroachment into public spaces of large, constantly broadcasting television screens can be framed as both a reflection and an indictment of contemporary times and new generations: forever plugged in, short attention spans, unable to entertain themselves, a low common denominator. But by careful listening to participants’ accounts, we found an alternative practice of collective–private interactions of television watching, one which often enabled conviviality and reduced isolation (Widholm, ). Maurice is a middle‐aged UK‐born man of Jamaican parentage, well educated but who now “knows what it's like not to have a dicky‐bird”, and lives in sheltered accommodation.Yesterday I was sitting over there and we were watching the tennis and a chap sat down beside me and he said something and I said something and he said something and I said something and we started to talk and then he told me his name and I told him mine and that was that.…”
The urban bench has been romanticised as a location of intimacy and benign social serendipity, and problematised with regard to perceptions of unwelcome loitering. In this paper we explore embodied practices of sitting on benches within an urban context characterised by corporate‐led regeneration and impacted by austerity urbanism, imperial history and ongoing racisms. Our schizocartographic methodology enables us to attend to the differentiated and shifting subjectivities and temporalities of bench users, and to emerging counter histories of space. The research is based on the case study of a central square in Woolwich, south‐east London. This involved an eclectic combination of methods, including film‐making, ethnography and interviews, and a cross‐sectoral team of activists, academics and an artist. The paper starts by conceptualising public space with respect to lived experiences of marginalisation, arguing that architectural design is intrinsic to understanding micro‐geographies of conviviality and care. The case study material is used first to provide a visual sketch of sitting and watching others in the square and then to address conviviality and the value of visibility and relative proximity in framing a mostly un‐panicked multiculture. Third, we discuss agentic, yet critically aware, acts of self‐care. Finally, our focus shifts to the design of the benches and the “touching experiences” of bodies sat in various ways, impacted by structural inequalities, yet differentiated by the particularities of individual or collective priorities. In conclusion we argue that attending to the precision of sitting on a bench can illuminate multiple temporalities of urban change in relation to both individual subjectivities and hegemonic structures. Further, the counter histories that emerge can inform policy and practice for inclusive urban design.
“…Against this, the increasing encroachment into public spaces of large, constantly broadcasting television screens can be framed as both a reflection and an indictment of contemporary times and new generations: forever plugged in, short attention spans, unable to entertain themselves, a low common denominator. But by careful listening to participants’ accounts, we found an alternative practice of collective–private interactions of television watching, one which often enabled conviviality and reduced isolation (Widholm, ). Maurice is a middle‐aged UK‐born man of Jamaican parentage, well educated but who now “knows what it's like not to have a dicky‐bird”, and lives in sheltered accommodation.Yesterday I was sitting over there and we were watching the tennis and a chap sat down beside me and he said something and I said something and he said something and I said something and we started to talk and then he told me his name and I told him mine and that was that.…”
The urban bench has been romanticised as a location of intimacy and benign social serendipity, and problematised with regard to perceptions of unwelcome loitering. In this paper we explore embodied practices of sitting on benches within an urban context characterised by corporate‐led regeneration and impacted by austerity urbanism, imperial history and ongoing racisms. Our schizocartographic methodology enables us to attend to the differentiated and shifting subjectivities and temporalities of bench users, and to emerging counter histories of space. The research is based on the case study of a central square in Woolwich, south‐east London. This involved an eclectic combination of methods, including film‐making, ethnography and interviews, and a cross‐sectoral team of activists, academics and an artist. The paper starts by conceptualising public space with respect to lived experiences of marginalisation, arguing that architectural design is intrinsic to understanding micro‐geographies of conviviality and care. The case study material is used first to provide a visual sketch of sitting and watching others in the square and then to address conviviality and the value of visibility and relative proximity in framing a mostly un‐panicked multiculture. Third, we discuss agentic, yet critically aware, acts of self‐care. Finally, our focus shifts to the design of the benches and the “touching experiences” of bodies sat in various ways, impacted by structural inequalities, yet differentiated by the particularities of individual or collective priorities. In conclusion we argue that attending to the precision of sitting on a bench can illuminate multiple temporalities of urban change in relation to both individual subjectivities and hegemonic structures. Further, the counter histories that emerge can inform policy and practice for inclusive urban design.
“…It creates a perceived co-viewing audience nationwide, even worldwide, for individual viewers. The liveness of media event broadcast synchronizes millions of viewers around important identity performances and provides them with perceptual access to the sacred center of the society (Couldry, 2003; Dayan & Katz, 1992; Jiménez-Martínez, 2014; Widholm, 2015). Meanwhile, the pragmatic aspect of media event is to excite and enthrall large audience.…”
Section: Co-viewing Contexts Of Media Eventmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As a consequence, some current literature contradicts on the integrative power of media events in contemporary societies. While some research contends that the effectiveness of media events in social integration has been compromised by the proliferation of media channels (Katz & Liebes, 2007), other research suggests that media events are still likely to promote social integration, especially when broadcast in conjunction with social media engagement (Cui, 2013; Vaccari, Chadwick, & O’Loughlin, 2015; Widholm, 2015). Therefore, the first goal of this research is to look for empirical evidence of the extent to which media events arouse collective emotions and facilitate social integration.…”
This study examines how different types of co-viewing are associated with viewers' emotional response to the live broadcast of media events and their social identity. A survey (N = 206) was conducted to examine the effect of the live broadcast of a grand national ceremony in China. Results show that viewers experienced emotional arousal when they watched the media event in physical, mediated, and perceived co-viewing conditions. Among these conditions, mediated coviewing, operationalized as social media engagement during the event, is the strongest predictor of emotional arousal. Moreover, emotional arousal fully mediates the relationship between coviewing conditions and viewers' national identity conveyed in the broadcast ceremony. With empirical evidence, we demonstrate the continued relevance of the genre of media events and the importance of co-viewing experiences in the contemporary media ecology. We argue that this broadcast genre is still effective with regard to social integration, and dual-screening media events could be a new mechanism of this effect.
“…The notion of 'Media events'grand occasions, such as contests of politics or sports, charismatic missions, and the rites of passage of the great that are televised as they take place, gathering attention universally and simultaneously (Dayan, 2010)-has been applied to describe the use of live broadcast content in many different contexts, such as grand wedding ceremonies (Dekavalla, 2012), mega sports events (Cui, 2013), organised public viewing (Widholm, 2016), hypermedia events (Kraidy, 2018), and moments of recognition in musical media events (Naerland, 2019). In Media Events, Dayan and Katz (1992) framed the concept as a television genre that interrupts normal flows of broadcasting as well as the daily routines of viewers, commanding attention to a 'ceremonial core'.…”
This study conceptualises networked events as a platform-oriented view of media events by initiating a taxonomy of bottom-up construction.Focusing on computer-mediated event construction that may involve live delivery, permeate digital platforms, and attract user engagement prior to, during, and after the occurrence of ceremonial or disruptive events, the study argues that networked events can be characterised by polymorphism-i.e., presence of distinct patterns of uptake and different interactional orientations within the same space of interactions, such as hashtags. Using a network dataset of 221,105 tweets that included the hashtag #HimToo which was used extensively during the US Senate judiciary committee hearing that investigated claims of sexual harassment against President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the study demonstrates that three types of construction-i.e., actor-centric, memetic, and metaconstruction-causes polymorphism in Twitter engagement related to the event.
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