While live event experiences have become increasingly mediatized, the prevalence of ephemeral content and diverse forms of (semi)private communication in social media platforms have complicated the study of these mediatized experiences as an outsider. This article proposes an ethnographic approach to studying mediatized event experiences from the inside, carrying out participatory fieldwork in online and offline festival environments. I argue that this approach both stimulates ethical research behavior and provides unique insights into mediatized practices. To develop this argument, I apply the proposed methodology to examine how festival-goers perceive differences between public and private, permanent and ephemeral when sharing their live event experiences through social media platforms. Drawing on a substantial dataset containing online and offline participant observations, media diaries, and (short in situ and longer in-depth) interviews with 379 event-goers, this article demonstrates the value of an ethnographic approach for creating thick descriptions of mediatized behavior in digital platforms.
Aiming to re-conceptualize liveness in the social media era, this paper explores the temporality of liveness within the lived experience and media practices of cultural events. Through qualitative analysis of extensive interview material, diaries and media content from three very different Dutch case studies - Oerol Festival 2017, Serious Request 2017, and Pride Amsterdam 2018 – it will shed light on the participants’ experience of ‘time’ within the spatio-temporal proximity of these mediated ‘live’ events.As liveness is mediated attendance to events, the experience of the moment - the ‘now’ of the event - is always accompanied with the awareness of a variety of other moments in time: the moment that your friend watches your Facebook live stream; the algorithmic time that makes your post pop up on Instagram; the moment that you see the photo while back at work and remember the fun you had. As we are skillful media users and knowledgeable participants in event-spheres (Volkmer & Deffner, 2010), the experience of a live moment therein is blended with the idea of re-living it at a later time. Nowness and memory are intertwined as we create mediated memories that enact both future and past, the community and the self (Van Dijck, 2004). In this paper I argue that the prominence of live digital technologies within our deeply mediatized (Couldry & Hepp, 2017) society has made navigating event-spheres a very complex and layered temporal experience, a struggle between living and re-living moments that appear to us as current due to an interplay of immediacy and affinity.
Psychosocial problems related to social isolation are a growing issue for wellbeing and health and have become a significant societal problem. This is especially relevant for children and adults with chronic illnesses and disabilities, and those spending extended periods in hospitals or permanently living in assisted living facilities. A lack of social relationships, social connectivity, and the inability to travel freely leads to feelings of isolation and loneliness. Loneliness interventions often use mediated environments to improve the feeling of connectedness. It has been proven that the utilization of haptic technologies enhances realism and the sense of presence in both virtual environments and telepresence in physical places by allowing the user to experience interaction through the sense of touch. However, the technology application is mostly limited to the experiences of serious games in professional environments and for-entertainment-gaming. This project aims to explore how haptic technologies can support the storytelling of semi-scripted experiences in VR to improve participants’ sense of presence and, therefore, the feeling of connectedness. By designing and prototyping the experience, the project aims to obtain insights and offer a better understanding of designing haptic-technology-supported storytelling and its potential to improve connectedness and become a useful tool in isolation interventions. The project will be conducted through the process of participants’ co-creation.
