Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

that whilst these interactive forms differ, they have in common the fact

that they are bothviewed as a mediation of face-to-face interaction and that

from this standpoint the term ‘disintermediation’ is flawed. There is no

reason why, within the logocentric framework of ‘mediation’ theory,

using submedia of the Internet, for example, is any less ‘mediated’ than

watching television.

However, as we shall see, whilst it is erroneous to classify either

network or broadcast dynamics as either more or less ‘mediated’, the con-

ceptualization of mediation itself must be emancipated from the transmission

model. Thompson’s model also sits firmly within the communication-as-

transport paradigm of communication – a transmission-based model in

which the face-to-face is the base and is mediated by an architecture that

extends it in some way.

The problem with ‘mediation’

Thompson’s model is useful in the way it summarizes the background

theoretical architecture that is drawn on by many of those attempting to

theorize old and new media. For example, the ‘cues-filtered-out’ approach

is easier to understand in this comparative typology of media forms.

Nearly all of the cyberspace literature is framed by a social interaction

model – i.e. that face-to-face interaction is being supplanted by extended

forms of communication – and this is seen to be derived from technology

somehow intervening and separating us from some ‘natural state’ of inter-

action which is the face-to-face.

More useful still in Thompson’s typology is the way in which it takes

the interaction model to its outer limit. And the limit of this model is pre-

cisely the question of communicative context. We can recall Thompson’s

claim that ‘the participants in mediated interaction are located in contexts which

are spatially and/or temporally distinct’. A number of observations can be

made here:

• What is assumed in this statement is that the communicative context
  which is to be privileged over all others is the ‘local’, ‘embodied’ con-
  text capable of mutual presence, which is separated from other such
  ‘local’ contexts.


• The task of communication is to overcome such separation by the
  transmission of symbolic forms.


• Interactants have some measure of control in overcoming this separa-
  tion of contexts by actively adding specific cues that are otherwise
  structurally absent.

Mediation theory is a variant of instrumental theory, discussed above.

Instead of an interactant simply using a medium to convey a message, the

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