Searching for the Holy Grail: Images of Interactive Television

You may use this document for any personal or educational purpose. For-profit use requires my permission. Provided "as is" without expressed or implied warranty. Summary Searching for the Holy Grail is the difficult quest for a successful business model of ITV or the content (almost used as a mythical concept) of successful ITV (trigger applications etc) without clearly knowing what one is looking for (interactivity and future television), just like the medieval knights did not exactly know what the Holy Grail (cup or platter used by Christ at the Last Supper) looked like. This report compares the concepts of interactivity in communication science with images of interactivity held by corporate experts in the field and tries to reveal more realistic perspectives of future ITV and business models based on this. The theoretical assumption central to this investigation is that the changing and shifting ideas of professionals and scholars dealing with the subject, about the use of interactive television programmes, services and navigation systems is influenced by the meaning these professionals and scholars attach to the concept of interactive television. The images of interactive television held by the professionals of ITV are constructed in the decision-making processes (identification, legitimation, evaluation) of the development of interactive television. This research considers these processes very important to obtain insight in the future of interactive television, because they represent the conceptualization of interactive television. In this research the following minimal and functional definition of television is used to explore the concept of interactive television and to be able to distinguish interactive television from other media: In principle, television is the public transmission, over some distance, of audiovisual programmes and services made for a relatively large audience. A short summary of the most common definitions of interactivity in social and communication science indicated how bad the concept of interactivity has been operationalized. Most often the question is whether particular media are interactive. Many definitions of the concept in communication science are a supplement to the sender-message-receiver model. A feedback or reactions by receivers are added. In this way definitions of interactivity remain in the confines of the transmission model so characteristic to most of communication science. In this report we argue for a contextual model integrating a sociological, social-psychological and communication scientific definition of interactivity. This model fits to an alternative approach in communication science not primarily defining communication as transmission but as a symbolic process …