Task 5

Summary

Jensen in his article explores the concept of interactivity in various fields and tries to find a proper definition to it. He looks to the history how it has changed in a relation to innovations in media. For example one can not compare the definition “interactive media” in 1950s with contemporary one.

In his article he introduces several communication theories that could help us to define interactivity. In my opinion one of the best ones to create a good basis for understanding communication was Bordewijk and Kaam's Matrix for the Four Communication Patterns.

	Information controlled by a central provider	Information controlled by the consumer
Distribution controlled by a central provider	1) Transmission	2) Registration
Distribution controlled by the consumer	3) Consultation	4) Conversation

He goes through many famous mass media theories (like concepts provided by McQuail, Lazarsfeld, Horton and Wohl, etc.) to help us understand what has meant by interactive media throughout the history – reading from that it becomes clear that what was thought earlier, when television and radio was considered to be as new interactive media, could not be compared with what is happening nowadays when the use of internet has changed many media standards. For example television channels are now providing an opportunity for the viewer to choose what kind of shows to watch, only to offer still competition to internet where people are already used to choosing their own content what to consume.

Later on in his article, Jensen tries to find different tools that could help us closer to the understanding interactivity. He eliminates interactivity as prototype and interactivity as criterium as they create more false conclusions than helping us simplifying meaning behind this word. More suitable for him is to define it trough interactivity's continuum & dimensions where he divides is to 1-dimension, 2 – dimension, 3 – dimension, n – dimension.

As he states in the end of his article that even though “interactivity” as such is widely used concept, it is still very difficult to define. In his conclusion he makes a statement that it is something very complex and differs from field to field, so it is impossible to give it one level definition.