International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Intermediality refers to the interconnectedness of modern media of communication. As means of expression and exchange, the different media depend on and refer to each other, both explicitly and implicitly; they interact as elements of particular communicative strategies; and they are constituents of a wider cultural environment. Three conceptions of intermediality may be identified in communication research, deriving from three notions of what is a medium (→  Media ). First, and most concretely, intermediality is the combination and adaptation of separate material vehicles of representation and reproduction, sometimes called multimedia , as exemplified by sound-and-slide shows or by the audio and video channels of television. Second, the term denotes communication through several sensory modalities at once, for instance, music and moving images. Third, intermediality concerns the interrelations between media as institutions in society, as addressed in technological and economic terms such as convergence and conglomeration. As a term and an explicit theoretical concept, intermediality has perhaps been most widely used in reference to multiple modalities of experience (→  Modality and Multimodality ), as examined in aesthetic and other humanistic traditions of communication research (→  Aesthetics ). Crediting an 1812 use of “intermedium” by the British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ... log in or subscribe to read full text