Mediation as Calibration: A Framework for Evaluating the Author/Reader Relation

Abstract

Emerging communication technologies remediate and redefine relations between reader and author, but a comprehensive progressive framework for assessing this dynamic during the process of preparation, transmission, reception, and consumption of media remains elusive. Such a framework is of consequence for hypertext (and first generation electronic literature in particular). Speculative claims for its utility and equally reductive rejections of the reading experience it offers call for a model which assesses the calibration of the reader/author relationship from within the medium itself. This paper presents a first framework for assessing these dynamics both at the stage of authoring and reading. Within this analysis framework we identify eleven remediating factors conceived as scales between opposing tensions, and implement this model with reference to first generation electronic literature.