Defining What’s Important

As we grouped together in an editing suite, five of us began to delve into our mind’s dictionary in order to form a better definition of interactivity. What exactly is interactivity?

It was more challenging than we expected. The Internet and its interactive and social qualities have rapidly changed the way we do things today whether that be contacting someone or searching and sending information. How can you include everything into a simple sentence?

After a little under an hour, we had come to a consensus on a definition for not only interactivity, but for audience as well.

Our definition of Interactivity:

A mutual engagement between senders and receivers that encompasses omni-directional communication and control.

Our group wanted to cover all the bases by including a variety of aspects such as: a person’s choice in what they view or participate in; pluralize sender and receiver because the line between the two get blurred after a while and the transfer of information from and to multiple people.

The Redefining of the word Audience:

An active prosumer involved in the sharing, receiving and producing of information.

To us, audience is an old word that was used to describe a group of people that messages were targeted at. Now, the Internet has gained a conversation style where the “audience,” or as we would like to call them prosumers, not only act as consumers of information, but producers as well. They share what they stumble upon online and distribute their findings to friends and family. This cycle of sharing continues and occasionally receives feedback.

While things continue to be redefined in our technologically advanced generation, it is on the shoulders of people like us to make these terms and their meanings known.  Interactive and social media are relatively new fields of study, and we have the ability to mold this cutting edge information.