Augmented criminality: How people process in situ augmented reality crime information in relation to space/place

Abstract

Communication about crime and the places it occurs has been an important area of study for criminology, sociology, public policy, and media scholars. Where incidents used to be communicated through word of mouth, physical evidence, and news outlets, recent advances in crime tracking, mapping, and mobile media have dramatically changed how individuals are informed about crime. Many organizations have adopted mobile text alerts, and recent advances in augmented reality (AR) technologies have made it possible to overlay visuals about crime on top of users’ physical surroundings. How people make sense of this visual, individualized, and location-specific crime information, however, is largely unknown and complicated by the fact that mobile technologies are challenging to study in situ, as people move through and experience urban place. Within the AR literature, while existing research has started to look at the ways that AR can affect people’s experience of place, the precise ways that people perceive and integrate AR displays into their understanding of place are still largely unexplored. This empirical study reports findings from a project utilizing AR as an urban probe, where we took participants ( N = 57) around to places in a large metropolitan area in the United States and showed them visual AR crime information overlaid on the physical place where they were moving through. After seeing these urban probes, participants were asked what they noticed, remembered, and thought occurred in that place when shown AR crime information. The analysis draws on Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triad to explain how people read places through the lens of AR, and also how they extrapolate, speculate, and make associations from AR information. Based on these findings, this study discusses the implications for mobile media scholars and their understanding of visual place-based communication, as well as for designers and policymakers considering the use of AR to communicate crime information.

The Building That Teaches: Exploring Augmented Reality Affordances in Academic Incubators

“…This resulted in participants reflecting on how they interacted with a physical space while using the AR-application with implications for social norms when participating in a hybrid environment. Building occupants adjusted their understanding of place based on both digital and physical information, which supports prior research by Liao et al (2020) that when AR is designed to communicate knowledge about a specific place, digital information is “interpreted alongside the physical space itself, rather than overriding physical space” (p. 374). Aligning with the notion of a “fast sense of place” (Raymond et al, 2017), this affordance of hybridity impacted how users immediately and directly began to derive meaning and an evolving sense of place through their interactions.…”

“…Since that time, the number of apps that give consumers opportunities to test out furniture, lighting, wallcovering, and paint in their own spaces has grown. 2 Mobile-AR as a part of mobile media is being studied at a variety of disciplinary intersections with contributions being made to a wide range of applications including future directions of the industry (Liao, 2019), impact on place (Liao et al, 2020;Liao & Humphreys, 2015), advertising content (Liao, 2015), gaming applications (Frith, 2017b), retailing and marketing (Riar et al, 2021), and education (Dunleavy et al, 2009). We are exploring how mobile-AR enhances user experiences in buildings-that-teach.…”

Wearable witnesses: Deathlogging and framing wearable technology data in “Fitbit murders”

“…While some researchers have explored augmented reality crime tracking (Liao et al, 2020) and the relationships between mobile communication and perceived security (Ellcessor, 2022; Reichow & Friemel, 2020), communication and media scholarship has not focused on the increasing use of digital devices in criminal trials and associated commentary in news reports. As recently as 2020, a transdisciplinary review of research on wearable health technologies did not indicate research strands on crime, criminal investigations, or death (Li et al, 2021).…”

Methodological Reflections on Capturing Augmented Space: Insights From an Augmented Reality Field Study

“…Thus, for a systematic survey of AR, it is important to consider the various dimensions that constitute an individual's relationship to space. To achieve this goal, some AR scholars refer to abstract theoretical models indicating a complex nexus of spatial dimensions to describe an augmented engagement with space-e.g., Liao et al (2020), building upon Lefebvre's triad of perceived, conceived, and lived space. Others simply focus on one spatial dimension (mostly spatial perception, e.g., Woods, 2020), neglecting other aspects of our multi-dimensional relationship to space.…”