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Audience Design & Behavioral Instructions

Are You Cooperating?

“Learn more about our code of conduct at itsmarta.com, male passengers are requested not to board the coach reserved for …, don’t be one of those people using their speaker phone in public, please do not lean against the doors, leave them doors alone, please leave the courtesy seat to the …, smoking—including e-cigarettes is not permitted, eating drinking and smoking are not permitted on …, smoking eating and drinking is not permitted on the …, thank you for not smoking eating and drinking in the train, thank you for keeping this train clean, please give your seat …, priority seating is intended for the elderly and passengers with disabilities—your cooperation is requested, the emergency button should only be used in an emergency, please give way to those exiting, … hold the handle and sit stabley, please prepare to get up, all passengers are requested to leave the train, doing this is a punishable offense.”

While public transport announcements contain a lot of information, they also remind passengers to be civil. Because of what is said, and how it is said, passengers are asked to be particular kinds of people: These announcements attempt to design the audience through conventions and instructions as polite, considerate users of public transport - e.g. “giving up seats” and “keeping the train clean”. Nevertheless, these announcements are also routine and as such, construct the ‘normal’ public transport space. In doing so,  the space is characterized by obedience to or deviance from these instructions which guide the audience experience and redefine what it means to inhabit this “public” space. (Moonay 2014, 32)

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