Engagement, Participation, and Liveness: Understanding Audience Interaction in Technology-Based Events

Abstract

Technologies have been changing how the audience participates in different events. This participation is distinct in each type of event. For example, in educational settings, polls with clickers and word clouds are usually used to involve the audience. For music festivals and other musical performances, organizers opt out of providing led sticks, necklaces and wristbands. Different uses for the smartphones, such as using them as lanterns aiming at obtaining crowd effect, are other ordinary and spontaneous ways of interaction. Recently, more research has been published in journals and scientific conferences discussing the use of these technologies, with techniques for fostering interaction and collaboration. Therefore, we conducted a literature review using forward and backward snowballing, looking for articles about how researchers use new technologies to increase audience experience in different contexts of events and what concepts are raised from that perspective. As a result, we propose a taxonomy of those concepts related to audience experience through three lenses: engagement, participation, and liveness.