Live sites in an age of media reproduction : mega events and transcontinental experience in public space

The proliferation of Live Sites, (also known as Public Viewing Areas), designed to expand and extend the scope of media audience participation, has raised a series of questions regarding the quality of this relatively new mediated-embodied experience. Commentary tends to be polarised over whether Live Sites enhance or lessen the spectator experience through a democratising effect of ‘viewing from a distance’, as opposed to the emotionally engaged superiority typically associated with ‘being there’ live at the event. In this paper we suggest that to assess the effects of Live Sites through such dichotomies, oversimplifies the experience offered by these new mediated public spaces. We argue that such debates are problematic insofar as they tend to treat the function of Live Sites simply as a matter of event reproduction and transmission, instead of recognising the constitutive role that the media play in them. This is particularly the case with regard to digital media’s capacity to extend audience participation, and to transform the ‘live’ experience, through inclination, global reach, new forms of surveillance, and social media. Here, we advocate a more critically reflexive engagement with these technological innovations, contending that assessing the impact of Live Sites is not simply a matter of technical experiential quality but of understanding how mediated public viewing alters dynamic aspects of contemporary urban social life.