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Full Summary of Interactive Media and Entertainment
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Complete summary of Interactive Media and Entertainment by Prof. dr. Mariek Vanden Abeele
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lOMoAR cPSD| 8475154INTERACTIVE MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT
LECTURE 1 - INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS INTERACTIVITY?
AFFORDANCES THEORY
What is an affordance (vertaald: mogelijkheden)?
o Technologies are designed in certain ways, they have certain features, certain possibilities,...
o Technology limits us in certain ways but it also enables us in certain ways
⇨ The idea that technologies, through their features, and through their capabilities, enable us to do
things, but they also constrain us, you cannot do anything with it
• Example: you can use a smartphone to record something, but you cannot use it to fly an
airplane
• There are limits to technology
⇨ Affordances: (definitie in nederlands)het verwijst naar mogelijke acties die een acteur gemakkelijk
kan waarnemen.
o What are technological affordances?
• “Perceptions of an object’s utility, it’s possibilities for enabling (& constraining) human
action”
• Functional view: affordances enable or constrain particular behavior outcomes
▪ Affordances create a link between an object (water, technology) and an outcome
(walking, calling, messaging,...) for a user (person, animal,...)
▪ Example: water does not afford walkability to humans, while it does afford
walkability to small insects like water spiders,...
• Relational view: they ‘exist’ in relation to a user who must perceive them
▪ An affordance exists, because a user perceives it. If you do not perceive it, the
affordance does not exist yet.
▪ Example: ‘users’ of water may differ in the extent to which they perceive water to be
walkable. Jesus may perceive the walkability of water differently from me.
• Contextual view: (physical, social, cultural, political,...) contexts impact users’ perceptions of
them (through socialization, rules,...)
▪ Example: if you live in Iceland you can learn that water can be walkable, but only
when it has been cold and the water is frozen (so only in a certain context)
o Three threshold criteria to be an affordance:
• Criteria #1: the proposed affordance is neither the object nor a feature of the object
▪ The relationship between person and object means that affordances neither belong
to the environment nor the individual, but rather to the relationship between individuals
and their perceptions of environments”
▪ Structural features ( <--> design elements that offer “specific types of rules and
resources, or capabilities, offered by the system) of technologies are NOT
affordances of technologies
▪ Example: phone: it’s camera is not an affordance because the camera is a feature of
a smartphone, but it is not an actionable property. An actionable property is for example
recordability (this is an affordance).
• Criteria #2: the proposed affordance is not an outcome
▪ Outcomes are NOT affordances of the technology
▪ Affordances are the ‘means’ to achieve a goal, because they make an outcome
possible; but affordances can inherently lead to multiple outcomes – depending on the
actor’s goal.
, lOMoAR cPSD| 8475154
▪ Example: documenting protests with your smartphone is not an affordance of your
smartphone but an outcome. The affordance here is recordability.
▪ Function creep: the gradual widening of the use of a system or technology beyond its
original intentions
• Example cameras at the coast: the idea was to crowd control for COVID19,
but the purpose of the technology was already being expanded (using the
cameras to give parking tickets, for detecting crime, ... => starting to use the
technology beyond the scope of what was originally intended for it)
▪ Goals and outcomes are multiple, yet the affordances (recordability,...) remain the
same
• Criteria #3: the proposed affordance has variability
▪ Features are present or absent.
▪ Affordances are gradual (technologies can vary in the extent to which they ‘afford’
something)
▪ Example: there are all kinds of sensors that can record things, that have
recordability; audio recorder, video camera that captures audio & video, heat
detector that captures yet another thing...
o Is interactivity an affordance?
• Criteria #1: not an object, nor a feature
• Criteria #2: not an outcome of technology use
• Criteria #3: technologies show variability in their interactivity
▪ Example: smartphone is more interactive than old Nokia phone
⇨ INTERACTIVITY IS AN AFFORDANCE
o Interactivity draws from certain structural features that are designed into the technology
o An object or technology is well-designed when its affordances are readily and easily perceivable from its
features
INTERACTIVITY: AN INDIVIDUAL IN INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY (PSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE)
⇨ How does interactivity affect how individual users interact with and respond to media?
INDIVIDUALS ‘IN INTERACTION’ WITH TECHNOLOGY
When individuals interact with technology...
1. Where is interactivity situated?
2. What are the psychological effects on how users engage with the activity?
3. Is there relevant between- and within-person variability?
• Individuals have cognitions, feelings, behaviors.
• There are meaningful differences between individuals (between-person variability), and one
individual can think, feel and behave differently at different times/in different contexts
(within-person variability)
INTERACTIVITY AS ‘COMMUNICATION’
When a user interacts with a technology...
o They interact with an ‘interface’ = a communication system that translates the user’s goal into
outcomes
WHERE IS INTERACTIVITY SITUATED?
At the level of the source, the medium and the message
Variability in interactivity = to what extend can the source, medium and message be altered by the user?
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1. AT THE LEVEL OF THE MEDIUM
⇨ In what modality is the message processed?
• Modality interactivity:
▪ Number of modalities present in one medium.
▪ Multi-mediality: extend to which modalities are simultaneously active.
• Each modality and each combination of different modalities has a different influence on the
amount of perceptual bandwidth utilized.
▪ Perceptual bandwidth = how many of your senses do you need to activate in an
integrated manner at the same time to complete the interaction (=> depends on the
mental representation you must build of the activity)
• Extend to which sensory channels must operate together to build a
mental representation
• Example: newspaper has one modality (printed text that we read), radio has one modality
(audio) but television has two modalities (audio and visual images)
• Example smartphone: has more modalities: sometimes touch, visuals and audio are
combined, but also other combinations possible.
2. AT THE LEVEL OF THE SOURCE
⇨ To what degree can users customize and personalize (‘tailor’)?
• Sourceness: Who did the customization (user, news editors, friend,...), and can users
manipulate this?
• Degree of customization:
▪ LOW (e.g., filter content based on preferences) to HIGH (e.g., generate content)
▪ Often achieved through ‘tailoring’: information is matched with and filtered
according to unique aspects of the self
▪ User customization enhances sense of agency
• Example: Google Maps app: they know your location. This is a way of filtering to customize
the app to the user.
• Personalized media environments: they are personalized in the sense that they can be
customized...
▪ Example: if you use a news website you can pre-identify which kinds of news you
want to receive etc.
• ...But they are also personalized in the sense that you can yourself generate a lot of content into
the systems
▪ Example: your own blog, social media account,... => you generate content yourself
• If a system allows you to customize things, you tend to be more engaged with it. People
generally like media environments that are customized (explains success of YouTube, Netflix,...)
3. AT THE LEVEL OF THE MESSAGE
⇨ To what extend are exchanges contingent upon previous exchanges?
• Non-interactive: every interaction is new.
▪ Example: paiger, every number that you send is brand new
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• Reactive: message is a direct response (not more than 1 prior exchange)
▪ Example: Nokia 3310; more reactive, you can receive and immediately respond to a
message, but you still have to open every message, you cannot see the whole
conversation with every message like you can on a smartphone.
• Responsive: messages are threaded together in a coherent sequence
▪ Example: video games; keep in mind even what you have done hours ago in the
game, which makes the experience much more interactive.
▪ Example: smartphone; you can see the whole message history, you can take every
message into account
MODEL OF INTERACTIVITY EFFECT (SUNDAR ET AL.)
⇨ By impacting user engagement with the content, we’ll have implications for the cognitive processing for
the user (the extends to which they process the message easily), it will impact the user’s attitudes (how
they feel, whether they like the message,…) and it might influence the user’s behavior (whether they click
on something, whether they keep using it,…)
⇨ Is more interactivity always better? => NO
o Interactivity paradoxes:
• The effects of interactivity at the level of the source, modality and message are not
straightforward:
▪ More = not always better
▪ Cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral effects may not align
1. Where is interactivity situated => modality, source and message
2. Psychological effects on user engagement => cognitive processing of the message, attitudes towards
message/technology, behavior in interface
3. Differences => novel vs. experienced, involvement with content, ...
TYPES OF MEDIA DISCUSSED IN THIS COURSE
3 broad groups:
1. Communication technologies
2. Self-tracking technologies
3. Entertainment technologies
Using the lens of Sundar’s Model of Interactivity Effects, explain how each of these are interactive media.
INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND SOCIETY (SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE)
⇨ How do interactive and entertainment media change ‘the way we do things’ in society?
SOCIETY AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES
Case: Harvey Weinstein
o One of the first big #MeToo cases
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