Social interaction and dark tourism in prison museums

This study explores how prison tourism experiences are co-constructed through situated visitor interactions. Penal heritage sites are decommissioned prisons, transformed into immersive educational attractions, drawing upon multiple interpretative practices to engage visitors with historic and contemporary issues of crime and punishment. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA), this research examines how gestures, talk, gaze and bodily position influence how visitors see, interpret, and emotionally negotiate difficult heritage. Findings reveal that visitors co-produce dark tourism experiences and negotiate the perceived darkness of sites through embodied practice. Situating visitors as active social agents, this study provides insights into the co-construction of dark tourism experiences, emphasising interpretation as an emergent process shaped by interaction rather than predetermined by site design or individual motivation. • Visitors co-produce dark tourism experiences through social interaction. • Interpretation of exhibits is an emergent process shaped by social interaction. • Visitors negotiate the perceived darkness of sites through embodied practice. • Exhibit design should consider social interaction in dark heritage spaces.