發現螢幕：資訊品質與觀眾賦權再思考

Discovering the Screen: Information Quality and Audience Empowerment Reconsidered

螢幕走入家庭和日常生活已超過半世紀之久。它相對親和開放的閱聽使用者導向，對資訊品質和觀眾賦權這類媒體研究的核心關懷所能有的啟示，卻一直較受忽略。為此，本文首先嘗試比照兩種媒體觀，藉以記述媒體研究在相關議題的漫長討論中所經歷的一趟發現螢幕之旅；接著描繪電視螢幕處理資訊的獨到邏輯，以解釋其對傳統資訊品質概念的衝擊及對觀眾概念所開啟的新想像。本文指出，發現螢幕的存在，使我們意識到既有社會文化疆界其實是人為建構。這種意識固然帶來品質不確定的知識困境，但是藉著模糊邊界的螢幕而發現「他者」，則能開啟資訊創造的新契機，為知識帶來新的出路。

Situated home for more than a half century, the screen, with its technological propensity to blur social and cultural boundaries, influences the nature of not only information construction, but also information itself. This implies a strong impact on future developments of human knowledge. As the openness and user-friendliness implied in its boundary-blurring features is relatively ignored, we are not inspired as we could have been in considering information quality and audience empowerment-- the two major concerns in media research. Specifying two major approaches to media study, this essay explains how communication research, with the bulk of relevant discussion, has undergone a long journey to the discovery of the domestic TV screen. It then explores the unique 'cultural logic' of the TV screen as an information presentation system that has been perceived as problematic yet now treated in a new light for reconsidering quality and empowerment issues. The essay concludes that, more than anything else, the discovery of the boundary-blurring screen marks a chance to discover the often hidden receiver, to treat him/her no longer as the missing 'Other' in the communication process. Therefore, the quality issue should never be a unilateral responsibility but rather a mutual endeavor; and real audience empowerment comes only from information co-construction where lies the hope for knowledge in its current legitimation dilemma.