A Communication-Based Approach to Interactive Media

I thought about titling this post “All Media is Social: It’s really not that complicated.” From caveman drawings, to the printing press, through mass media of the 20th century and 21st century, all media is social.  As we work to communicate with each other and negotiate meaning we are interacting in  social processes.    With new technology and the adoption of interactive platforms our lives become noisy leading to the postmodern communication dilemma, right?- the technology that is to make our lives easier seems to make it more complex.  One of the ways to reduce the amount of noise is to take a communication-based approach to interactive media.  Through the lens of communication we can frame interactive media (web, social media, digital communication, online communities, etc.) .  Confusion about adoption patterns, listening, participating, community, etc., can be seen more clearly with the use of a few good communication theories.

There’s nothing more useful than a good theory.

-Kurt Lewin

There’s nothing more useful than a good communication theory

-John Cragan

Theories, pragmatically, help us understand, predict, and explain phenomena.  In this case, communication phenomena.    While the interactive landscape may seem confusing a few communication theories can help us cut through the noise – to better understand, explain, and hopefully predict what is going on.

I know, you’re thinking “hey, that’s fine in theory, Poindexter, but what about the real world?”  Good point, but the Poindexter thing may have been offsides.  If your theory doesn’t work in the real world, if it doesn’t have utility, then it’s not a good theory. It’s really that simple.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to go into more depth about some particularly useful theories, the importance of listening (think customer centricity, user-centered design, and research), the art & science of interactive media (the zen like nature of human and digital communication), and applications of these concepts as they relate to building a better brand and improving marketing communication performance.  Together, these should provide an organizing framework to  help you meet your business goals, as well as helping your customers with their interaction goals.

The theories or frames that will be covered in the next series are:

1. Information Systems.Claude Shannon’s theory of message integrity.  While initially developed as a mathematical model for machine to machine communication, it provides a solid framework for human communication.
2. Symbolic Convergence Theory  (SCT).  Developed by Ernie Bormann and advance by Cragan and Shields,  SCT helps us understand how meaning, motive, identity, and emotion can chain out from any message or communication episode.  Elements of SCT have been covered earlier in the blog, notably here and  here.
3. Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT).  We often here that you need to tell a good story.  That’s right.  NPT, advanced by Walt Fisher).  What does your story, or collection of stories, need to hold true and resonate with your audience.
4. Diffusion of Innovation.  From the work of E. Rogers.  From his work we have insights to how an innovation (like a new idea, or technology) is adopted or not through networks and cultures.
5. Dramatism or Burke’s Dramatism Theory (BDT).  Looks at other elements of the dramatic nature of human communication and how we identify with the speaker/message sender.

With each post about the theories, I will provide applications and how those elements need to account for here-and-now phenomena and make current communication elements like  social media less mystical and abstract.

Feel free to send me questions that you may have or communication issues that your organization may be dealing with and I will work to incorporate into future posts.