THEORY OF THE TEXT AND THE NEW MEDIA

Text topic: Journalism and the New Media

Text author: Милан Радовановић

As a generator of different possible interpretations and experience, a text has always been a virtual object. Convergence of critical theory and new media technologies has not produced a virtual text, but has only raised it to a higher level of the hypertext. The concept of interactivity is present not only as a relation between the reader and the text in the process of producing a meaning, but also as a physical change of the text during reading. Development of new media technologies has led to a large convergence and overlapping theory of intertextuality and hypertext. With hypertext it is possible to overcome resistance and physical detachment of the printed text. The boundary is moved between what is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, to what is between the ‘center’ and the ‘periphery’. Decentralizing of the text is an important characteristic of the hypertext as the ‘center’ moves from a stable and hierarchized structure to the reader’s own interests and needs. In the center of the hypertext there is the reader, not the author. In this way, the new and revolutionary critical theories of the author, text and the reader, formulated decades ago, have found practical application and confirmation in the digitized area of the new media.