The Fallacies and Fortunes of 'Interactivity' in Communication Theory

The term ‘Interactivity’ persists as both a buzzword and a fraught concept within communication theory. For 1950s information theorists (e.g. Shannon and Weaver, 1949) interactivity denoted two way communication between either humans, animals or machines, but today it has become exclusively hardwired to the telecommunications and computing sectors. The use and misuse of the term in ‘new media age’ discourses is problematised in this paper by showing that traditional media can enable interactivity – whilst exploring accounts that new media do not, in themselves, guarantee interactivity. The limitations of the concept of interactivity becomes apparent the more it is empiricised or made exclusively reducible to one or other technical medium. This in turn underpins the historicism of second media age thinkers, for whom interactivity becomes synonymous with the ‘interactive society’. (Castells, Van Dijk)