Analysis of critical approaches on interative communication enabled by social media

Abstract

Interactivity is one of the most discussed terms in studies on new media and, recently, on social media. A significant number of authors with a positive approach towards social media, share the opinion that interactivity is the most prominent feature of the new generation of media, which has changed the audience's access to information. Meanwhile, in the last years, the critical attitudes to new social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc are growing. Critical authors view interactivity as a fetch that social media platforms use to gain more information on user behavior and activity, which they, then use as a product to be offered to advertisers. At this point, essential question marks are raised regarding the participatory culture and the algorithmic logic of social media and the transparency of them towards their users. Our study is focused on interactivity, looking at it from the perspective of the two mainstreams mentioned above, in order to address the key questions raised over this issue. The study is basically based on a qualitative analysis, examining the main critical approaches of different authors.