Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

Garth Jowett (1981) has charted how, long before the development of

writing, personal seals, portraits on coins and printed illustrations pro-

vided a system of broadcasting symbolic imagery to denote political,

financial or intellectual authority.

For Williams (1981), the only difference between modern and

pre-modern systems of broadcasting is that, today, audiences assemble in

numerous combinations, in contrast to the ‘massing’ of previous kinds of

audiences:

... we have at once to notice that there are radical differences between, for

example, the ver y large television audience – millions of people watching

a single programme, but mainly in small unconnected groups in family

homes; the ver y large cinema public – but in audiences of var ying sizes, in

public places, on a string of occasions; and the ver y large actual crowds,

at certain kinds of event, who are indeed (but only in this case) physically

massed. (15)^1

Broadcast and network interactivity as forms of communicative solidarity

Whilst the historical basis for making a distinction between broadcast and

interactivity is weak, the sociological basis for making this distinction is

strong. The repeated observation made by second media age theorists

that the take-up of interactive technology is a way of overcoming broad-

cast is, I argue, an important one. It suggests that, in media societies, the

horizontal integration of direct two-way interaction provides aspects of

social integration, and a sense of belonging that cannot be provided by the

‘vertical’ kinds of integration of broadcast media.

However, the second media age theorists offer few answers as to why

this yearning for interaction is a yearning for technologically extendedinter-

action, and cannot be satisfied by face-to-face interaction.

Since the formation of publics mediated by broadcast apparatuses,

face-to-face interaction, and its extended forms, which may be synchro-

nous (in low bandwidth tele-mediated interaction such as telephone) or

asynchronous (such as letter writing), have provided horizontal inter-

action in ways that complement broadcast interaction. This fact can be

seen in numerous studies over the years which demonstrate how vertical

and horizontal kinds of interaction have historically been co-extensive.^2

The fact that broadcast and interactivity operate mutually is most

visible at the level of content:

• The programming material of broadcast media – the soap narratives,
  the sporting events, the personality of media presenters, the content
  of the news – provides the content of countless conversations, be they
  face-to-face, on the Internet, or as other kinds of interaction. The fact that
  the Internet is parasitic on broadcast can be found in what is actually

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