sms-based television

On today's Friday-seminar Espen Ytreberg and Yngvil Beyer will talk about tendencies in interactive SMS-based TV. I have skimmed through the yet unpublished article that the talk is based on (Beyer, Enli, Maasø and Ytreberg). The article presents analyses of the design of these formats and the interactional relations that are facilitated. I may have to revise my own thoughts concerning personal media/mass media, but I think I will still argue that even SMS-based TV-formats that rely heavily on SMS/MMS-input from their audience are not really facilitating mediated social interaction the way we are used to. Maybe I will have to include another arrow in my own model indicating that mass media institutions strive to initiate more symmetrical relations towards their audience (see 23rd of August).

Or maybe I'm all wrong... Web-chats facilitate mediated social interaction, but TV-chats do not? There is clearly an element of mediated social interaction also in TV-chats. Maybe my reluctance lies in the potential scale of TV-chats? In order to be interactive (whatever that means), the audience size has to be relatively small. Some of these programs have like 5000 viewers, which isn't very much. Basically, I believe that for most viewers these TV-formats are just as one-way mediated as any other TV-program. A few however, bothers to pay for texting and sending MMS-messages to take part in the program, and get their messages on air. Then again, lurkers are common in any social and interactional setting. Seems I have some more thinking to do.