Title: The task of interpretation: Children walking‘Facebook streets’
Abstract: In this paper, I ask in what ways our knowledge about the interpretation of genres,
emergent from many decades of empirical research with mass media audiences, is useful in
understanding engagement with new media. This conceptual task is pursued empirically by
applying a conceptual repertoire derived from reception analysis to interviews with youthful
users of the online genre of social networking sites (SNSs). A conceptual repertoire from
audience reception studies is used to analyse findings from conversations with children
using the online genre of social networking sites. Drawing a parallel between audience
interpretation and new media use, in this paper, the roles, responsibilities and tasks
involved in navigating an online genre are outlined with the help of four mutually
intersecting categories. The tasks are those of collaboration, critique, intertextuality and
tackling textual interruptions, and their borders interact in messy relationships. The
interpretative contract which symbolises a relationship of mutuality between text and
reader, media and audience, technology and user, is mobilized to conclude that there are
significant parallels between audience reception and new media use, at both theoretical
and empirical levels.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-05-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
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