The task of interpretation

In this paper, I ask in what ways our knowledge about the interpretation of genres, emergent from many decades of empirical research with mass media audiences, is useful in understanding engagement with new media. This conceptual task is pursued empirically by applying a conceptual repertoire derived from reception analysis to interviews with youthful users of the online genre of social networking sites (SNSs). A conceptual repertoire from audience reception studies is used to analyse findings from conversations with children using the online genre of social networking sites. Drawing a parallel between audience interpretation and new media use, in this paper, the roles, responsibilities and tasks involved in navigating an online genre are outlined with the help of four mutually intersecting categories. The tasks are those of collaboration, critique, intertextuality and tackling textual interruptions, and their borders interact in messy relationships. The interpretative contract which symbolises a relationship of mutuality between text and reader, media and audience, technology and user, is mobilized to conclude that there are significant parallels between audience reception and new media use, at both theoretical and empirical levels.