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Interaction versus Integration 137
Table 5.2 John B. Thompson’s instrumental/mediation
paradigm
Types of interaction Qualities
Face-to-face interaction (mutually embodied Dialogic
presence) Mutual presence
A high degree of contextual infomation
(body language, gestures, symbolic
cues, deictic expressions: ‘here’, ‘this’)
Reciprocal
Interpersonal specificity
Mediated interaction (technical mediums Dialogic
like writing, telephoning) Extended/not mutual
Restricted degree of contextual
information (letterhead, signature,
date placed on communication)
Reciprocal
Interpersonal specificity

Mediated quasi-interaction (books, Monological
newspapers, radio, TV) Extended
Produced for an indefinite range of
recipients by a small number of media
producers
Senders and receivers of messages
nevertheless form bonds

form of interaction, according to Thompson, because it ‘links people’
together (84).
As per the summary of Thompson in Table 5.2, the two forms of
extended interaction are significant in the way they correspond to inter-
active versus broadcast communication. The quasi-interactive quality of
broadcast is precisely the feature that second media age thinkers are crit-
ical of. Second media age thinkers are critical of the fact that there are
agents who stand between a sender and receiver of messages. The now
fashionable concept of ‘disintermediation’ that has emerged in recent
literature is entirely circumscribed by this rejection of mediation-by-agents
(see Dominick, 2001; Flew, 2002). This concept is primarily confined to
describing the economic functions of media in connecting buyers and sellers
(the removal of the ‘middleperson’), but has also broadened out to the cul-
tural functions of media. Somehow, the heightened dependence on CMC
which replaces such mediation-by-agents isn’t also seen to be a form of
mediation (as Thompson’s model proffers). Disintermediation only refers
to the removal of human agents in the media process.
Oddly, machine-assisted or electronic means of communication are
somehow exempt from the mediation process, as if they are transparently
a means of rescuing the face-to-face from the way it suffers at the hands
of mass media. However, what can be noted in Thompson’s typology is