The Appropriation of a Digitally-Augmented Agora: Field Study of the Structuration and Spatialization of an Issue Public in Urban Space (original) (raw)

In 2013, we conducted a ten-week qualitative field evaluation of an interactive public space art installation. During these three months, we observed a vast array of examples of how the general public appropriated this technological artifact and the public space in which it was deployed. This article draws on Mosco’s political economy of communication framework to examine how one specific issue public—composed of several different groups actively engaged against police misconduct and brutality—creatively made use of Mégaphone in conjunction with online media to self-report, self-represent, and self-publish alternative and oppositional views around incidents of police abuses of power. In doing so, we explore how structuration, spatialization, and commodification might offer critical perspectives on interactive urban technologies.Nous avons effectué en 2013 une étude de terrain pendant dix semaines dans le but d’évaluer une installation numérique interactive déployée en espace public....