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86 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
Garth Jowett (1981) has charted how, long before the development of
writing, personal seals, portraits on coins and printed illustrations pro-
vided a system of broadcasting symbolic imagery to denote political,
financial or intellectual authority.
For Williams (1981), the only difference between modern and
pre-modern systems of broadcasting is that, today, audiences assemble in
numerous combinations, in contrast to the ‘massing’ of previous kinds of
audiences:

… we have at once to notice that there are radical differences between, for
example, the very large television audience – millions of people watching
a single programme, but mainly in small unconnected groups in family
homes; the very large cinema public – but in audiences of varying sizes, in
public places, on a string of occasions; and the very large actual crowds,
at certain kinds of event, who are indeed (but only in this case) physically
massed. (15) 1

Broadcast and network interactivity as forms of communicative solidarity

Whilst the historical basis for making a distinction between broadcast and
interactivity is weak, the sociological basis for making this distinction is
strong. The repeated observation made by second media age theorists
that the take-up of interactive technology is a way of overcoming broad-
cast is, I argue, an important one. It suggests that, in media societies, the
horizontal integration of direct two-way interaction provides aspects of
social integration, and a sense of belonging that cannot be provided by the
‘vertical’ kinds of integration of broadcast media.
However, the second media age theorists offer few answers as to why
this yearning for interaction is a yearning for technologically extended inter-
action, and cannot be satisfied by face-to-face interaction.
Since the formation of publics mediated by broadcast apparatuses,
face-to-face interaction, and its extended forms, which may be synchro-
nous (in low bandwidth tele-mediated interaction such as telephone) or
asynchronous (such as letter writing), have provided horizontal inter-
action in ways that complement broadcast interaction. This fact can be
seen in numerous studies over the years which demonstrate how vertical
and horizontal kinds of interaction have historically been co-extensive. 2
The fact that broadcast and interactivity operate mutually is most
visible at the level of content:

• The programming material of broadcast media – the soap narratives,
the sporting events, the personality of media presenters, the content
of the news – provides the content of countless conversations, be they
face-to-face, on the Internet, or as other kinds of interaction. The fact that
the Internet is parasitic on broadcast can be found in what is actually