The 'Impact' of Interactivity on Television Consumption

This final working paper is part of the study I conducted during my 5 months stay as a doctoral fellow with STeM in the School of Communications at Dublin City University (autumn/winter 2002). The aim of this paper, which is the amalgamation of two papers I worked on at DCU, is to sum up the main issues that I am concerned with in relation to the introduction of interactive television: domestication, interactivity and consumption are the prime issues. This paper will touch on how media technologies that we are familiar with today became and become domesticated; hence we might learn that the 'interactive turn' in media culture is not quite so revolutionary. It will furthermore address how interactivity has helped to redefine television as a broadcast medium and it will also focus on the apparent empowerment of the television consumers especially by pursuing an understanding of the ways that audiences are changing from merely being active sense makers to actually having to operate the medium, make choices, and participate more actively in the television experience?