Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The phrase mediated interaction is now more popularly associated with the speed and ease of Internet connections which facilitate new ways of creating electronic interpersonal relationships and community-building through facilities like web forums, SMS messaging, and ICQ. But that is to ignore the involvement of much of the “mass media” – and that phrase itself is problematic – interceding in forms of human life and relationships. Psychiatrists Horton and Wohl (1956) wrote of the ways in which the mass media, radio, television, and film, give an illusion of face-to-face relationships between spectator and performer which they describe as “ para -social.” More recently, John Caughie has talked about the potential for pseudo -involvements with media figures as “mediated social relationships.” The focus here is on continuities produced through different media over time in their various involvements in the human business of “interaction.” Take television as a case in point. When talking about some forms of television like talk shows, there is discussion about how the elevation of the audience to the stage is part of a breaking down of the distinction between spectacle and spectator in modern public life. This has an important impact on the communicative strategies of the media, since Carpignano et al. (1990) suggest that the phenomenon is bringing about “new social relationships ... log in or subscribe to read full text