Producing interactivity : Does media convergence promote interactivity and audience participation?

This study investigates the process of producing interactivity in a converged media environment. The study asks whether more media convergence equals more interactivity. The research object is approached through semi-structured interviews of prominent decision makers within the Finnish media. The main focus of the study are the three big ones of the traditional media, radio, television and the printing press, and their ability to adapt to the changing environment. The study develops theoretical models for the analysis of interactive features and convergence. Case-studies are formed from the interview data and they are evaluated against the models. As a result the cases arc plotted and compared on a four-fold table. The cases are Radio Rock, NRJ, Biu Brother, Television Chat, Olivia and Sanoma News. It is found out that the theoretical models can accurately forecast the results of the case studies. The models are also able to distinguish different aspects of both interactivity and convergence so that a case, which at a first glance seems not to be very interactive is in the end found out to receive second highest scores on the analysis. The highest scores are received by Big Brother and Sanoma News. Through the theory and the analysis of the research data it is found out that the concepts of interactivity and convergence arc intimately intertwined and very hard in many cases to separate from each other. Hence the answer to the main question of this study is yes, convergence does promote interactivity and audience participation. The main theoretical background for the analysis of interactivity follows the work of Came Fleeter, Spiro Kiousis and Sally McMillan. Heeler's six-dimensional definition of interactivity is used as the basis for operationalizing interactivity. The actor-network theory is used as the main theoretical framework to analyze convergence. The definition and operationalization of the actor-network theory into a model of convergence follows the work of Michel Callon. Bruno Latour and especially John Law and Felix Stalder.