“Introduction
Taken-for-grantedness = we take things so much for granted, without thinking about how the thing changed the world. Ex: AI,
mobile phones, …
Changed for the better or for the worse?
+ communication - Distracting
+ acces to information - Privacy issues
+ a lot of tools
+ entertainment
+…
Interactive media = a process of mediation where a person interacts with a device to pass information, communication, …
A digital society
- Interactive and entertainment media are deeply integrated into our everyday life
- They have significantly altered ‘the way we do things’
o Changes in our individual lives
o Changes in our society
1. What is interactivity? What are affordances?
1.1. Affordances: the actionable properties of out (technological) environment
Technological affordances
= what technology allows us to do with it?
= perceptions of an objects utility, it’s possibilities for enabling and constraining human action
= describes the characteristics of technologies, not in terms of technology features (e.g. a ‘like’ or ‘share’ button), but rather in
terms of what kinds of actions the technology’s enables (e.g. editability, associability, …)
- ‘affordances’ originates from ecological psychology of perception
o Gibson
▪ Psychologist, intrigued by how animals interacted with their environments in an intuitive manner,
knowing what they could/couldn’t do with the world around them.
➔ stated that affordances of an environment were “what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes,
either for good or ill”
➔ ‘potentials for action’ or ‘actionable properties’
➔ affordances are the functionalities of objects or elements in our environment that are immediately and
readily perceivable when we interact with them.
o E.g. water spider
▪ can walk on the surface of water → intuitively
➔ Walkability = affordance of water (that exists for the water spider). When it perceives water, it will
not hesitate to walk on it.
▪ Humans
➔ water is not walkable
➔ however, drinkable or swimmable
➔ walk-ability, drink-ability, swim-ability
1
,! ‘- ability’
→ ‘act’ (drink, walk, swim) that is ‘enabled’ by the element or object of the environment, but that this functionality needs to of
course be perceived to act upon them.
! Notice: while one act may be enabled, another act may be constrained; it is because we can swim IN water, that we cannot
walk ON water.
! Affordances refer to what an object or element in the environment affords someone to do, and – importantly - not do.
e.g.
- approaching a staircase
o we perceive ‘climb-ability’.
- a door with a handle
o we perceive the door’s ‘pull-ability’ [ENABLE] and at the same time perceive that it is (most likely) not ‘push-
able’ from our side [CONSTRAIN]
o Alternatively if the door holds a ‘push’ sign, we will perceive the reverse.
Functional view = an affordance is seen as a feature or characteristic of an object or technology that suggests
its potential use or action
Ex. A push door: you cannot pull the door
Relational view = if the affordance exist or not, it wil depend on the entity interact with the object
Ex. Water: swim-ability, drink-ability. But what about walk-ability? Walking on water is not possible for
humans, so you can say it’s not an affordance for humans
Contextual view = affordances its also something you learn is social learning
Ex. Analogue camera: if you would take a picture from a child, the child will likely want to see it
Ex. Threads: new Twitter but on Instagram
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
- The end of 20th century
- Gained momentum as digital technologies became central in our lives
- ➔ need to understand interaction human X technology + optimizing this process through interface design
- In this context → technological affordances
o Affordances applied to a digital technology
o = the actionable property of a technology, that users perceive when they interact with the technology, usually
through its interface
o May lead to certain outcomes by enabling/constraining certain users of the technology
o E.g. → a button or hyperlink on a website afford pressing them, but you can’t do much more with them than
this (i.e., you cannot move them around on the website, …)
2
, 1.2. The characteristics of technological affordances
Hutby, 2001
- provided description of what technological affordances are and why the concept is relevant.
- To nuance to the debate between (hardcore) technological determinists and (hardcore) social constructivists.
o The hardcore determinist
▪ technology = ‘independent force’ in society
▪ capable of causing societal change
• good (a utopian digital society)
• bad (a dystopian digital society)
▪ Essentially: ignores human agency as technology’s force is seen as strong, uncontrollable and
therefore unstoppable.
o Social constructivists
▪ technology = not independent of society, nor void of individual agency.
▪ technology is like a text: created by humans with purposes in mind, but users of technology who
interpret the technology, and who will adapt/embed them in the way they want to.
▪ ‘interpretative flexibility’ of technology, arguing that there are periods in which there are several
interpretations.
- Hutchby saw strengths, but also weaknesses in both perspectives
o questioned constructivists: is it is really true that technologies always carry multiple interpretations?
▪ E.g. From a constructivist viewpoint, argue that guns are technologies that are ‘texts’: their meaning is
not fixed but socially decided upon. Indeed, in the USA you could argue that there is “interpretative
flexibility” around what guns are: Some believe guns are dangerous objects causing unnecessary
deaths and harm, whereas others see in guns token objects representing one’s right to self-defend (to
name just two interpretations), and others again may see guns as equipment for doing sports (i.e.
sports hunting). A claim often made by pro-gun lobbyists to defend their interpretation, then, is that
“guns don’t kill people, people kill people”.
Ultimately a person pulls the trigger → so yes, people kill people
- But: there is no denying that gun-related deaths and violence are a far worse issue in the USA then they are in Europe –
and it is hard to believe that this would be solely due to people being more violent over there than here. It is not just
people killing people… It is people killing people WITH guns – on purpose but also often accidentally, simply because it
is ‘easy’ to fire them (because of the way the gun is designed). So you could argue that there is something in the
technology, a property or inherent characteristic of guns and the way they are designed, that makes them highly prone
to cause deaths and harm and therefore being technologies that need strong regulation.
1.3. The three threshold criteria of technological affordances
Benefit of the affordances concept for media researchers
→ does not focus on features
→ utmost importance to new media researchers as they deal with a study field that is inherently dynamic, due to the ever-
changing nature of new media, technologies and their features
e.g. Facebook’s features for posting status updates and pictures have changed considerably over the past few years.
Even though these features change, however, a central affordance of Facebook remains persistence: information that
you post, persists on your profile page - even when you are not online.
Focus on affordances → better grasp what digital media share in common
- central characteristic: interactivity
o through the user interacting with them that things happen
o difficult to determine what is an affordance and what is not
3
, Evans et al. (2017) → three threshold criteria for determining what is an affordance and what is not:
How do we judge if something is an affordance?
- Criterium 1: Affordances are actionable properties that can be recognized beyond specific objects and their features
• Neither the object nor a feature of the object, but actionable properties
• It’s rather the dynamic relationship between the user, object and its features
• Ex. The camera from a phone itself is a feature, the affordance here would be record-ability. The shape of the
button isn’t an affordance
- Criterium 2: Affordances need to be distinguished from outcomes.
• Affordance is a process, not an outcome
• When it can lead to different types of outcomes
• Ex. You can record a short video clip, pictures, … different outcomes that you can gain from one affordance
(record-ability)
• ! unintended consequences
▪ Function creep= a concept we use when the intended purpose of the technology gets stretched so
other things creep their way in there
▪ Ex. Belgian coast uses smart cameras against coronavirus → prohibited because of the GDPR rule
- Criterium 3: Affordances are not ‘absent’ or ‘present’ but can rather exist to a varying degree.
• Their needs to be variability , it has a ‘range’ in which it can exist
• Features are present or absent
• Affordances are gradual (technologies can vary in the extent to which they afford something)
• Ex. Recordability, is an affordance that a camera has, but also a voice recorder has the ability to record
Is interactivity a technological affordance?
Yes!
- Criteria #1: Interactivity is not an object, nor a feature
- Criteria #2: Interactivity is not an outcome of technology use
- Criteria #3: Technologies and interfaces show variability in their interactivity
Interactivity is an affordance that users can perceive when the structural features of a technological interface are well-designed.
Are mobile media themselves, such as mobile phones, affordances?
NO!
- Criteria 1:
o The phone itself is an object, but affordances are not objects.
o Mobile technologies offer unrestricted use due to their portability, making them continuously available to
users.
o Portability, although not the object itself, is an affordance of mobile media. It's not a concrete material
feature, but rather the ability to carry the device.
- Criteria 2:
o Different outcomes result from this portability; mobile phones can be used while commuting or in specific
locations like the bathroom.
- Criteria 3:
o There are varying degrees of portability among different devices; wearables and phones are more portable
than laptops.
4
Taken-for-grantedness = we take things so much for granted, without thinking about how the thing changed the world. Ex: AI,
mobile phones, …
Changed for the better or for the worse?
+ communication - Distracting
+ acces to information - Privacy issues
+ a lot of tools
+ entertainment
+…
Interactive media = a process of mediation where a person interacts with a device to pass information, communication, …
A digital society
- Interactive and entertainment media are deeply integrated into our everyday life
- They have significantly altered ‘the way we do things’
o Changes in our individual lives
o Changes in our society
1. What is interactivity? What are affordances?
1.1. Affordances: the actionable properties of out (technological) environment
Technological affordances
= what technology allows us to do with it?
= perceptions of an objects utility, it’s possibilities for enabling and constraining human action
= describes the characteristics of technologies, not in terms of technology features (e.g. a ‘like’ or ‘share’ button), but rather in
terms of what kinds of actions the technology’s enables (e.g. editability, associability, …)
- ‘affordances’ originates from ecological psychology of perception
o Gibson
▪ Psychologist, intrigued by how animals interacted with their environments in an intuitive manner,
knowing what they could/couldn’t do with the world around them.
➔ stated that affordances of an environment were “what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes,
either for good or ill”
➔ ‘potentials for action’ or ‘actionable properties’
➔ affordances are the functionalities of objects or elements in our environment that are immediately and
readily perceivable when we interact with them.
o E.g. water spider
▪ can walk on the surface of water → intuitively
➔ Walkability = affordance of water (that exists for the water spider). When it perceives water, it will
not hesitate to walk on it.
▪ Humans
➔ water is not walkable
➔ however, drinkable or swimmable
➔ walk-ability, drink-ability, swim-ability
1
,! ‘- ability’
→ ‘act’ (drink, walk, swim) that is ‘enabled’ by the element or object of the environment, but that this functionality needs to of
course be perceived to act upon them.
! Notice: while one act may be enabled, another act may be constrained; it is because we can swim IN water, that we cannot
walk ON water.
! Affordances refer to what an object or element in the environment affords someone to do, and – importantly - not do.
e.g.
- approaching a staircase
o we perceive ‘climb-ability’.
- a door with a handle
o we perceive the door’s ‘pull-ability’ [ENABLE] and at the same time perceive that it is (most likely) not ‘push-
able’ from our side [CONSTRAIN]
o Alternatively if the door holds a ‘push’ sign, we will perceive the reverse.
Functional view = an affordance is seen as a feature or characteristic of an object or technology that suggests
its potential use or action
Ex. A push door: you cannot pull the door
Relational view = if the affordance exist or not, it wil depend on the entity interact with the object
Ex. Water: swim-ability, drink-ability. But what about walk-ability? Walking on water is not possible for
humans, so you can say it’s not an affordance for humans
Contextual view = affordances its also something you learn is social learning
Ex. Analogue camera: if you would take a picture from a child, the child will likely want to see it
Ex. Threads: new Twitter but on Instagram
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
- The end of 20th century
- Gained momentum as digital technologies became central in our lives
- ➔ need to understand interaction human X technology + optimizing this process through interface design
- In this context → technological affordances
o Affordances applied to a digital technology
o = the actionable property of a technology, that users perceive when they interact with the technology, usually
through its interface
o May lead to certain outcomes by enabling/constraining certain users of the technology
o E.g. → a button or hyperlink on a website afford pressing them, but you can’t do much more with them than
this (i.e., you cannot move them around on the website, …)
2
, 1.2. The characteristics of technological affordances
Hutby, 2001
- provided description of what technological affordances are and why the concept is relevant.
- To nuance to the debate between (hardcore) technological determinists and (hardcore) social constructivists.
o The hardcore determinist
▪ technology = ‘independent force’ in society
▪ capable of causing societal change
• good (a utopian digital society)
• bad (a dystopian digital society)
▪ Essentially: ignores human agency as technology’s force is seen as strong, uncontrollable and
therefore unstoppable.
o Social constructivists
▪ technology = not independent of society, nor void of individual agency.
▪ technology is like a text: created by humans with purposes in mind, but users of technology who
interpret the technology, and who will adapt/embed them in the way they want to.
▪ ‘interpretative flexibility’ of technology, arguing that there are periods in which there are several
interpretations.
- Hutchby saw strengths, but also weaknesses in both perspectives
o questioned constructivists: is it is really true that technologies always carry multiple interpretations?
▪ E.g. From a constructivist viewpoint, argue that guns are technologies that are ‘texts’: their meaning is
not fixed but socially decided upon. Indeed, in the USA you could argue that there is “interpretative
flexibility” around what guns are: Some believe guns are dangerous objects causing unnecessary
deaths and harm, whereas others see in guns token objects representing one’s right to self-defend (to
name just two interpretations), and others again may see guns as equipment for doing sports (i.e.
sports hunting). A claim often made by pro-gun lobbyists to defend their interpretation, then, is that
“guns don’t kill people, people kill people”.
Ultimately a person pulls the trigger → so yes, people kill people
- But: there is no denying that gun-related deaths and violence are a far worse issue in the USA then they are in Europe –
and it is hard to believe that this would be solely due to people being more violent over there than here. It is not just
people killing people… It is people killing people WITH guns – on purpose but also often accidentally, simply because it
is ‘easy’ to fire them (because of the way the gun is designed). So you could argue that there is something in the
technology, a property or inherent characteristic of guns and the way they are designed, that makes them highly prone
to cause deaths and harm and therefore being technologies that need strong regulation.
1.3. The three threshold criteria of technological affordances
Benefit of the affordances concept for media researchers
→ does not focus on features
→ utmost importance to new media researchers as they deal with a study field that is inherently dynamic, due to the ever-
changing nature of new media, technologies and their features
e.g. Facebook’s features for posting status updates and pictures have changed considerably over the past few years.
Even though these features change, however, a central affordance of Facebook remains persistence: information that
you post, persists on your profile page - even when you are not online.
Focus on affordances → better grasp what digital media share in common
- central characteristic: interactivity
o through the user interacting with them that things happen
o difficult to determine what is an affordance and what is not
3
, Evans et al. (2017) → three threshold criteria for determining what is an affordance and what is not:
How do we judge if something is an affordance?
- Criterium 1: Affordances are actionable properties that can be recognized beyond specific objects and their features
• Neither the object nor a feature of the object, but actionable properties
• It’s rather the dynamic relationship between the user, object and its features
• Ex. The camera from a phone itself is a feature, the affordance here would be record-ability. The shape of the
button isn’t an affordance
- Criterium 2: Affordances need to be distinguished from outcomes.
• Affordance is a process, not an outcome
• When it can lead to different types of outcomes
• Ex. You can record a short video clip, pictures, … different outcomes that you can gain from one affordance
(record-ability)
• ! unintended consequences
▪ Function creep= a concept we use when the intended purpose of the technology gets stretched so
other things creep their way in there
▪ Ex. Belgian coast uses smart cameras against coronavirus → prohibited because of the GDPR rule
- Criterium 3: Affordances are not ‘absent’ or ‘present’ but can rather exist to a varying degree.
• Their needs to be variability , it has a ‘range’ in which it can exist
• Features are present or absent
• Affordances are gradual (technologies can vary in the extent to which they afford something)
• Ex. Recordability, is an affordance that a camera has, but also a voice recorder has the ability to record
Is interactivity a technological affordance?
Yes!
- Criteria #1: Interactivity is not an object, nor a feature
- Criteria #2: Interactivity is not an outcome of technology use
- Criteria #3: Technologies and interfaces show variability in their interactivity
Interactivity is an affordance that users can perceive when the structural features of a technological interface are well-designed.
Are mobile media themselves, such as mobile phones, affordances?
NO!
- Criteria 1:
o The phone itself is an object, but affordances are not objects.
o Mobile technologies offer unrestricted use due to their portability, making them continuously available to
users.
o Portability, although not the object itself, is an affordance of mobile media. It's not a concrete material
feature, but rather the ability to carry the device.
- Criteria 2:
o Different outcomes result from this portability; mobile phones can be used while commuting or in specific
locations like the bathroom.
- Criteria 3:
o There are varying degrees of portability among different devices; wearables and phones are more portable
than laptops.
4
