No Incentives to Interact: A Case Study of Mobile Phone Interactions with Martin Luther King Jr. Memorials in Washington, DC

abstract:This case study uses a triangulation of methods to analyze how visitors use their phones on-site at two lesser-known Washington, DC, memorials. While individuals frequently used phones to engage with the sites, they did not use the affordances of their internetconnected devices: they took many pictures for themselves but infrequently shared them, and they did not consume additional online information to compensate for a lack thereof on-site because they believed it should have been provided at the memorial. Overall, the lack of online interaction was caused by few incentives: the sites are not recognizable enough as sites of tourism, which is why photographs are not shared, and there are no prompts on-site to consume additional information, which is why individuals do not research online. This article shows that visitors' full interactive engagement with the sites, employing online and offline modalities, does not seem to occur without incentives.