Interaction In Public Settings Research Articles

INTENTIONS AND INTERVENTION OF PUBLIC SPACE DESIGN DURING PANDEMIC

This study examines the spatial effects of public places during the pandemic, as well as individual perceptions of public spaces. In Malaysia, incidences of COVID-19 had a significant impact on people's movement. During the epidemic, the level of public safety and the ability to interact with individuals on the pedestrian walkway has been a serious worry. The concept of conducting research to determine tendencies and public perceptions regarding public usage during the Movement Control Order was sparked by the increased number of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia. The government sequentially limited social interaction in public settings. The scope of the study is the design of the public space components in pedestrian walkway zones in commercial areas. The researchers used both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including observation and questionnaire surveys. The data was gathered using probability and random sampling, with a sample size of 104 respondents. Limited distance and safety efficacy were found in studies. According to the findings, distance and safety have a considerable impact on the preferences and demands of public users. The respondents in this survey were also dissatisfied with the quality and width of the pedestrian walkway. Full transit space, semi-transit space, and limited transit space have all been presented as options for the conceptual design. Many agencies concerned with the design of public areas will find the study informative.

Deontic authority in intervention discourse: Insights from bystander intervention

Our study offers a linguistic–pragmatic examination of instances of bystander intervention, a social action that takes place when a bystander or a group of bystanders intervenes when a wrongdoer abuses a victim or behaves outside socially acceptable norms. We approach this social phenomenon by analyzing data drawn from a database of 11 video-recordings that all involve naturally occurring interactions in public settings in China. The notion of intervention discourse is tentatively introduced in this study to distinguish it from those used to achieve other communicative purposes and to disclose some recurrent patterns of language use in bystander intervention. The data analysis summarizes six categories of intervention discourse along the continuum of strong to weak intervention: terminating, consequence-stating, advising, judging, appealing and stance-taking. Our study demonstrates that the skillful exercise of deontic authority embodied in intervention discourse might have a tangible influence on the outcome of the intervention.

Reminders of Heteronormativity: Gay Adoptive Fathers Navigating Uninvited Social Interactions

Gay adoptive fathers and their children are becoming more visible in American society. Consequently, a deeper understanding is needed of the challenges and opportunities gay fathers experience in social interactions. Using a phenomenological approach, gay adoptive fathers from 20 families were interviewed about their experiences parenting as gay men. Although fathers led fulfilling lives as parents, many of them faced uninvited social interactions that reminded them of their place in a heterosexual order. These reminders of heteronormativity included scrutiny about their parenting, concerns about the well‐being of their children, and decisions regarding disclosing information about their families. This article illustrates the use of a social constructionist lens to understand the emotional burdens gay adoptive fathers carry navigating these interactions in public settings. By narrowing the focus on such encounters, this article attunes practitioners and educators to gay fathers' emotional worlds while deepening their understanding of the social fabric of heteronormativity.

Understanding performative interactions in public settings

Interactive digital technologies pervade our shared spaces in personal, mobile, infrastructural and other embedded forms. These changes challenge the ways we understand and investigate the relationships between people, computing and settings. Responding to this situation—where ubiquitous computing is not only personal but also public, and where digital interactions may happen anywhere — this special issue explores how HCI research can use the strengths of an intersection of theory, practice and innovation in order to best address this conjunction of interactive technologies, public spaces and people interacting with or within both. With this shift to interaction happening in public spaces, people can no longer be seen as just ‘users’ but have to be understood as acting assemblages of bodies and technologies in the space they inhabit. This shift highlights the need to understand users in every setting—including those at desks and at work—as socially and culturally situated humans with agency. While this is not a new research development, this special issue speculates on and discusses how the shift to ‘everywhere interactions’ makes it important for research in human–computer interaction to reach beyond existing conventions. With this work comes a need to understand the interacting human as a situated body that is at any moment also a possible spectacle: as a body, a human and a user who engages with technology in response to the situation while also being a ‘performance’ for others to witness. Understanding people as actors in their context allows us to regard every user as a ‘performing body’ and a ‘performing subject’, and it enables us to analyse the performative aspects of interaction in many other situations than those where we design for actually staged performances in a defined performance space or stage. In this sense, ‘performative interaction’ is both concerned with technologies for on-stage performers using technologies as part of artistic expression, and an analytical frame for understanding every situation in which people engage with technologies (in public space). The question becomes: where and in which situations is this analytical frame relevant and useful?

Reality TV and Participatory Culture in India

This article focuses on events surrounding the third season of Indian Idol in order to assess the changing relationship between television, everyday life, and public political discourse in contemporary India. In the summer of 2007, media coverage of Indian Idol focused on how people in Northeast India cast aside decades-old separatist identities to mobilize support for Amit Paul and Prashant Tamang, the two finalists from the region. Situating this media phenomenon in relation to the changing landscape of Indian television and the socio-historical context of ethno-national politics in Northeast India, I explore how reality television, combined with mobile media technologies and practices, has enabled new modes of cultural and political expression. Positing the notion of “mobile publics,” I argue that participatory cultures surrounding television create possibilities for the renewal of everyday forms of interaction in public settings that may have been forgotten, subdued, or made impossible under certain political circumstances.