Arena

Arena is an activity-rich, immersive forum that reveals needs and motivations. Freed from the constraints of social conformity, participants engage at their convenience, within the terms set. It is conducted over an extended period of up to two weeks, which interweaves the real world and encourages fuller, more considered feedback.

During the 2010 World Cup we hosted an online community of fans who shared their experience of the England campaign through film, text and images in our World Cup Arena. We followed them on their emotional rollercoaster journey and learnt about them through metaphorical image tasks and their uploaded filmed commentaries. They served as one strand in a study that drew on multiple data sources to reveal the role of mobile as both a research tool and a media platform.