Interactive or not interactive this is now the question?

Starting with famous Shakespear’s question from Hamlet, transformed into paraphrase, is indeed the right starting point. Are the new media interactive? Do they bring revolutionary tool to the contemporary society? Is interactivity just a myth or reality?

Interactivity as word, should be clearly defined otherwise we can stand on the stage where this word can mean just another cliché. Analysis of interactivity must be contextualized, otherwise the concept can become, as Manovich (2001:70) said, „too broad to be trully useful“.

The concept of interactivity is definitelly not a concept, which would come into play with new media. It is a concept which exists in our world from the ancient times (imagine Greek amphiteatre) and gets replicated in every new medium. And „new media“, which are based on the computer technology, are of course no exception. They are interactive per se. As Manovich (2001: 71) put it, is on this level „the concept of interactivity a tautology. Modern human-computer interface (HCI) is by its very definition interactive“.

Replications of interactivity are driven by specific reasons: avant-garde teatre as a way to break with traditional teatre forms (artistic reasons of the artist); interactivity in TV show Big brother as a way to attract the audience (economic reasons of the TV station).

In every medium is interactivity changing the relationship between the author, text and audience. For instance: without voting component is Big brother, just another show. The TV station would have no reason to call it „interactive TV show“. Author of the text is still the TV station, but with voting feature is audience becoming co-author (as they can influence text dynamics).

Change of relationship can be traced also in the case of indymedia.com (independent internet media): audience is becoming the author. With this kind of changes are traditional media loosing the position of being the only legitimate author. In this manner, we can see that bloggers, which was an audience before (and still is), are becoming authors. And not just any authors, but are becoming so important that they receive the press-acreditations, they receive the press-release materials and get quoted by traditional media.

Let us conclude with another example of how modern technologies are changing the relation between author, text and audience: mobile technologies don’t just serve it’s primary function – giving the ability to talk. Mobile phone users can become movie producers (competing with tradicional production studios). In some cases they can become the ultimate source of photo/video material for traditional media (as BBC used photos and video material when reporting about terrorist attacks on London underground). Audiences in traditional sense are becoming authors as understood in traditional way.

References

• Cover, R. 2006. Audience inter/active: Interactive media, narrative control and reconceiving audience history. New Media Society. Vol8(1): 139-158.
• Manovich, L. 2001. The Language of New Media. MIT Press.