This blog post aims to summarize an article by Jens F. Jensen, named “Tracking a New Concept in Media and Communication Studies” and points out some important notes about the concept of ‘interactivity’.
It has been tried to define the words “interactive” and “interactive media” from various aspects thus it seems that there are lots of confusion about them. The meaning which is a multidimensional concept has been tightly related to the discipline it has been applied. For instance, its functionality either in sociology or computer science can change the meaning. Additionally, it’s been claimed that “interactivity” in media communities is still vague or a “buzzword”, and still is an under-defined concept.
To investigate this concept in communication studies, it’s been declared that the advancement of communication science is affected by information societies’ models and methods; in particular, interactive communication technologies and new media. By the way, there is no definite distinguished concept of “interaction” in the field, since it highly depends on the context in which it has used. For instance, the meaning of ‘interaction’ in media and communication studies refers to the actions of recipient related to the content of media; which the word has not been used in media technologies for a long time, instead more technically-oriented remarks like ‘two way communication’ or ‘return channel’ systems were used. Subsequently, in the field of informatics (which is stated to be synonymous in media studies) ‘interaction’ is closer to the relationship between people and machines and does not include communication between two people (mediated by a machine).
In summary, there are three ways of describing the concept: Firstly as a prototype; secondly as criteria; and thirdly as a continuum. Among these the concept as a continuum found to be more suitable to define interactivity since it has various levels and there are different forms of interactivity as well. The different interactivity aspects can be categorized into four dimensions by means of communication models. These dimensions have been recognized as transmission (one-way user interaction by selecting information), consultation (user is able to select or request for information in a two-way media system), conversation (user can produce information in a two-way media system) and registration (media can adopt and reply to user’s request).
To sum up, the “interaction” concept is quite complex as there are a lot of uncertainty around the concept. Even with plotting various dimensions, there is no clear-cut outcome since the boundary is indistinct between user’s actions toward the information and each other or monitoring the users by systems and replying to their request sensitively. So perhaps it is still required to develop a better understanding toward the significance of ‘interactivity’ in media and communication studies.
Interactive Media 