Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

discussed in computer-mediated communication environments. For

example, in the mid-1990s the largest subscriber list of all on Usenet

(over 3 million users) was r.a.t.s, which stands for rec.arts.tv.soaps

(Baym, 1995: 138). Baym (1995) claims that ‘[t]he idea of soap opera

fans using computers to gossip about their favorite (and least favorite)

soap characters challenges conventional images of both soap opera

fans and computer users’ (138).^3 Mathew Hills (2001) argues that on-line

fan clubs function as a community of imagination that is always

‘available’ to fans:

As an affective space in which caring for, and about, the object of fandom

constitutes the most significant communal claim, the fan newsgroup resem-

bles an ongoing and never-ending fan convention. ... It is thus a ‘space’ in

which common sentiment can migrate from a fixed or ritualistic point, mov-

ing out into the fan’s practice of ever yday life via the newsgroup’s constant

availability. (157)

• Equally, however, the content of broadcast media is overwhelmingly
  composed of simulations of, or references to, face-to-face interaction.
  Consider the soap opera, the most popular TV genre: it is made of up
  of thousands upon thousands of face-to-face interactions, or images of
  people on the telephone, and, more recently, the Internet. But mostly
  they indulge in never-ending close-up shots of dyads and triads of
  faces interacting. We watch the TV, ‘hooked’ on our programme, as if
  the faces, gestures and expressions which stream past the screen give
  us a simulated dose of the exact same kinds of interaction we are
  avoiding ourselves – as long as we remain a viewer. Similarly, radio
  genres engage all of the metaphorics of face-to-face company which
  listeners are suspending as a condition of that engagement. The radio
  announcer thanks us for ‘joining the programme’, or declares it is
  ‘good to be with you’. All of these statements are to suggest the
  announcer is in the room with you. But it need not be the face-to-face
  that is substituted in this way. It is not insignificant that advertisers use
  telephone rings, or doorbell or alarm clock sounds, with increasing
  frequency to also get the listener’s attention.

Each of these examples shows how broadcast media are a central

reference for face-to-face interaction, and extended forms of interaction,

as much as this interaction itself becomes the content of broadcast genres.

However, in the context of the second media age thesis, this co-dependent

relationship has become obscured. Instead the second media age thinkers

only emphasize one side of this relationship, that of the need for individ-

uals to renew interactive forms of communication in relation to the way

broadcast media displace geographic forms of interaction.

Broadcast and interactive communication also operate mutually

because they have central characteristics common to them, which are each

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