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New Media & Society
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The ‘Cultural Technology of Clicking’ in the Hypertext Era

Electronic Journalism Reception in Malaysia

Tony Wilson

Monash University, Australia, tonyjwilson{at}yahoo.com

Azizah Hamzah

University of Malaya, Malaysia

Umi Khattab

National University of Malaysia

Electronic journalism offers readers new interpretative possibilities, explored here in Malaysia. Ludic hermeneutic accounts of media reception posit engaging in games as a metaphorical model for an audience creatively forming the meaning of a screen text. Accessing the internet, web users’ comprehension of virtual content is a seriously play-like process. Reading online is fundamentally purposeful or teleological (‘goal-directed’, albeit not by duty); concerned with other than the mundane (‘extracted’ from the everyday); projecting a ‘fore-structure’ for understanding, securing meaning; holistic (moving ‘to and fro’), integrating aspects of a text; and constructing cultural identity and power (‘fortifying’ self and status). But the ludic focus on developing meaning intrinsic to the virtual web co-exists with material world concerns. Marginalizing the former, internet users emphasize securing extrinsic goals: talk of mundane duty is foregrounded. Reading the screen, still productive of understanding (identity and insight), becomes liminally ludic, sometimes laborious.

Key Words: electronic journalism • internet access • ludic • Malaysia • reception studies • serious play

New Media & Society, Vol. 5, No. 4, 523-545 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/146144480354004
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