In Chapter 2, I discussed some shifts and reconfigurations that characterise the modern, media-saturated world. I dealt with issues around the ‘stretching’ of time and space as a consequence of technological developments in communication. Two other interrelated issues were the permeability of public and private social spheres and an increasing tendency towards informalisation in public discourses. I was exploring the way the nature of social interaction in modernity has been transformed. Developing these themes, this chapter looks more closely at attempts to close the gap between producers and audiences and the pervasiveness of ‘chat’ as a broadcast genre.

Three types of interaction

A useful starting point is a conceptual framework devised by a social theorist of the media. Exploring patterns of media action and interaction, John Thompson offers a three-way distinction between modes of communication (Thompson 1995). These are face-to-face interaction, mediated interaction and mediated quasi-interaction. Though he refers to all three as forms of interaction, his qualification for the third (as quasi-) indicates its dubious or, at least, marginal status as interaction. It is this third mode that is the subject of this chapter, but a preliminary exploration of this three-way distinction will be useful.

When two people interact face-to-face, their physical co-presence means that they will generally have a wide range ofverbal and other cues available for understanding one another, among them prosodic features (such as pitch and loudness), facial expressions and gestures. The interaction is two-way.