Interactivity in the spotlight

Rob Cover in the article Audience inter/active: Interactive media, narrative control and reconceiving audience history (2006) examines the author-text-audience relationship, suggesting there is audience's desire for control over the text, placing that desire in the centre of interactivity. What I see problematic to a certain point is the negative notion of interactivity with being nothing more than a tension to alter a copy and to violate copyright.

There are (true) many opportunities to violate the content on the web and many measures have been taken to prevent it with different copyright regulations. But it should not be seen as the key generator of interactive participation highly encouraged by web 2.0. Today’s users are becoming ‘prodUsers’ in the Web world or (according to McMillan (Cover, 2006)) empowered audience who is to replace the traditional concept of audiencehood. ProdUsers do both, they consume content and produce it as well, but not only by altering existing content, but also by producing unique, authentic content, helping to generate knowledge.

If the interactivity is not the technologically driven concept as Rafaeli and Sudweeks (Cover, 2006) put it, but rather culturally constituted desire for communication, according to Raymond Williams (Cover, 2006) (with whom I strongly agree), there must be more to the ever increasing number of participants in interactive web activities. To mention (concentrating on media industry) just the media-audience distinction, which becomes blurred with active user participation. Interactivity or two-way interaction conflicts with a traditional view of the traditional media industry as producers on one side and users as consumers on the other and threatens the social status of journalists (Matheson, 2004), as also Cover (2007) points out in the case of CNN’s advertisement over independent internet media. The public service mission has been abandoned by the commercial press in favour of expanding profit margins. Keeping that in mind the internet and interactivity holds the great potential to change the way information is produced and consumed.

The monopoly of public knowledge, held by elite media is destabilized, which adds to the empowerment of individuals. With unlimited supply of information every citizen can become a gatekeeper and low production costs (blogs) have inspired millions to self-publish and millions more to read alternative content outside the mainstream (Scott, 2005).

• Cover, Rob (2006): Audience inter/active: Interactive media, narrative control and reconceiving audience history, New Media & Society, 8(1), 139-158.
• Matheson, Donald (2004): Weblogs and the Epistemology of the News: Some Trends in online Journalism. New Media & Society, 6(4), 443–468.
• Scott, Ben (2005): A Contemporary History of Digital Journalism. Television and New Media, 6(1), 89–126.