Abstract
This study explores how interactive practice and non-fiction animation can be integrated into the format of the public service announcement (PSA) to create more engaging and meaningful communication around sensitive social issues. Situated within the broader evolution of contemporary communication under conditions of digitisation, virtual interaction, and changing audience behaviours, the research examines the potential of interactive media to shift the viewer from passive recipient to active participant. Using gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa as the contextual focus, the study positions the PSA as more than a vehicle for information delivery. It proposes that the PSA is a method of social intervention that is capable of encouraging reflection, emotional engagement, and critical awareness.
The research is grounded in a pragmatic paradigm and adopts a research-for-design approach. It draws on literature relating to PSA history and function, useful cinema, interaction design, discursive design, and non-fiction animation, in order to establish a conceptual foundation for the development of an interactive PSA framework. The study also analyses interactive and narrative case studies, including The Boat (2015) and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018), to examine how immersion, constrained agency, atmosphere, and non-linear storytelling can shape audience experience. In addition, a survey of 253 respondents was conducted to better understand public perceptions and lived proximity to GBV, helping to inform the conceptual and narrative direction of the design outcome.
The outcome of the study is not a finalised, audience-tested PSA, but rather a proposed framework developed through the pre-production stages of an interactive artefact. The resulting concept uses layered visual metaphor, narrative design, and semi-immersive interaction to communicate GBV as both a social and ideological issue, with the intention of eliciting emotional response and deeper reflection rather than presenting the issue didactically. The stud y argues that interactive PSAs can function as a valuable design strategy for addressing complex topics by combining the rhetorical capacity of participation with the expressive and interpretive affordances of non-fiction animation. Ultimately, the research contributes a process-oriented framework for the design of interactive PSAs and identifies scope for future testing, refinement, and evaluation of such artefacts in practice.