Crux Strategies.com and Media Inc.

William Stephenson's Play Theory Applied Online

P.J. Worsfold, 7/12/07

Contents

Although the tenor of much public debate has been focused on the media's capacity to engender socially negative characteristics such as violence, misogyny, racism and sexual objectification, there have been many in the research community who have studied media consumption from an audience perspective . Often working with different iterations of uses and gratifications theory, several scholars have put forth frameworks to help understand why we consume media. William Stephenson's Play Theory, which suggests that our interaction with various forms of mass communication helps us create and enhance our individual identities, is one of the older and better-known examples of such work. Play Theory and more specifically, its application to web usage will be the subject of this discussion.

In 1967, Stephenson published his audience-centric theory in, The Play Theory of Mass Communication. Stephenson introduced Play Theory with the words, "the media have been looked at through the ideas of morality, when, instead, what [is] required [is] a fresh glance at people existing in their own right for the first time" (Stephenson 45). Although Stephenson frequently refers to the media in his arguments, it is important to note that Stephenson saw the mass media as a subset of mass communications and that he intended Play Theory to be applicable to a broad scope of mass communications.

When applied to web usage, Stephenson's theory provides fascinating insight into our motivations to go online. Following a summary of the key concepts of Stephenson's theory and the assumptions that support it, this paper will explore web usage within the context of Play Theory. As this discussion will illustrate, Play Theory can sometimes be confusing or vague and it is occasionally at odds with certain aspects of mass communication in the digital era. Over the years, media scholars such as Shedletsky and Aitken have attempted to refine play theory and adapt it to suit the internet. Based on such efforts, the conclusion of this paper will discuss a notable limitation of the theory and consider ways in which the effects of this limitation can be mitigated.

The Key Concepts of Play Theory

Although the most powerful implications of Play Theory relate to the individual, Stephenson's perspective on the value of play is rooted in the work of Johan Huizinga, whose theories dealt with the broad cultural value of play. Stephenson credits Huizinga's Homo Ludens, which was published in 1938, as marking the beginning of modern thinking about play. Stephenson suggests that before Huizinga's work, play was viewed as a frivolous activity, whereas following Homo Ludens, play began to be recognized as process that gave "rise to useful conventions that permit culture to evolve and stabilize" (ibid 46).

The first step in understanding Play Theory is to understand Stephenson's notion of play. Extending Freud's position, Stephenson grounds his theory along a continuum with pain placed on one side and pleasure on the other. In this model, work leans toward pain, while play leans toward pleasure. Stephenson argues that work is anything to do "with reality, with earning a living, [and] with production", while play is a "time for recreation, hobbies, or self-cultivation" that is "largely unproductive except for the self-satisfaction it provides" (ibid 45).

Stephenson next places the functions of the mass media on his continuum of pain and pleasure. He notes that the media can be associated with both pain, through its capacity to support work, and pleasure, through its capacity to entertain. It is in defining what constitutes work related media consumption and play related media consumption that one first encounters the ambiguity of Play Theory. Stephenson suggests that mass communication dealing with work consists of matters of reality such as the weather, shipping news, and farming information (48). Conversely, play related mass communication deals with "leisure-time pursuits" (48), which would presumably include the arts, sporting events, and travel information. However, in this categorization, one cannot help but point out that what constitutes work and play varies from person to person. Thus, when one is applying play theory, one must first gauge the subject's definition of the two terms.

Once play and work are separated, one can forget all about work, as Play Theory is concerned solely with play related media consumption. Stephenson's model suggests that pleasure is derived from two distinct forms of media play. Davis and Baran have built on Stephenson's framework and classified these forms as participatory and elite dominated communication play (Kuehn). Participatory play occurs when "communicators are free to alter interaction to achieve their goals" (ibid). Under this form of play, participants are able to express themselves in equal terms. Online examples of instances where participatory play might occur include IM chats, online forum discussions, and Usenet postings. However, one must note that, while these modes of communication facilitate participatory play, it does not necessarily occur in each instance of communication. Participatory play is characterized by a lack of purpose or expectation. Moreover, in such exchanges, one party is not trying to convince, influence, seduce, or please the other (Stephenson 57).

Stephenson is vague when describing the pleasure we derive from participatory play. Referencing Szasz's notion of communication-pleasure (ibid 57), Stephenson suggests that participatory play's pleasure rests in the satisfaction of a good communicative exchange. To expand on Stephenson's position, it is my assertion that a portion of the pleasure derived from this type of play is due to the satisfaction one gets from clearly articulating one's opinions and feelings on a matter. This process would undoubtedly contribute to a better understanding of one's identity.

Elite dominated communication play deals less with the pleasure of communication and more with the pleasure of reception. Kuehn observes that the play in elite dominated communication "exists only through making choices of what to use from existing media content" (Kuehn). Referring to Hyman's research, Stephenson describes elite dominated communication as our daily intake of the media mix (Stephenson 49). Included in this media mix are all the play related stories that we consume through the mass media. The specific stories of the media mix may change, however, the types of stories and the amount of coverage devoted to them is likely to remain constant (ibid 49). While Hyman discusses this predictability in terms of the social stability it engenders, Stephenson is interested in the ways such a media landscape presents itself as a play-space to be mastered by the individual.

Stephenson suggests that, as we make our way through the daily mix, picking and choosing which stories we will consume, we are engaged in a form of play that is "repetitious, like a child's game played over and over with variations on a similar theme" (ibid 49). Play Theory holds that, aside from reaffirming our existing values, this sort of play improves our self-image by creating within us the reassuring sense that we are 'in the know' and that we have mastered the process of information gathering. Stephenson remarks, "the mix is the way a person has to think of the wider world around him" and through one's daily incursion into the mix, one "is generally able to hold [one's] head a little higher" (ibid 49).

Participatory and elite dominated play are two separate processes that generate different forms of pleasure. However, the essence of Play Theory lies in the shared psychological effect that these activities have on us as individuals. According to the Play Theory framework, we derive pleasure from communications play because it helps us to enhance and define our self-image in environments that are less likely to fall under some form of external control (Singer). Kuehn argues, "Play Theory alerts us to the fact that much of the gratification of communicating is using communication behavior as a way of defining 'self'" (Kuehn).

Play Theory Assumptions

Play Theory hinges on one primary assumption, which relates to the audience's active involvement in the media consumption process. Stephenson asserts his belief in audience involvement by commenting, "I do not think of [media consumption] as merely entertainment in a non-ego-involving sense, but at its best as a highly developed form of subjective play" (Stephenson 50). While today's popular view, which is influenced by modes of mass communication such as the 24 hour a day news channel, holds that audiences sit passively in the media's unrelenting stream, Play Theory assumes that audiences are extremely active and engaged in the media consumption process. This absorption and the decreasing self-consciousness that it inspires are in fact vital to achieving the individual development that characterizes communications play.

Applying Play Theory Online

The application of Play Theory across a spectrum of media is troublesome. Although Stephenson positions Play Theory as a model applicable to mass communication in general, the bulk of his discussion is centred on newspaper reading and he makes little mention of either television or radio based media consumption. Perhaps Stephenson intended this failure to assess a greater spectrum of media as a tacit indication that Play Theory was still a work in progress. In any case, the types of media play that society enjoys have evolved greatly since Stephenson first published his theory; The Play Theory of Mass Communication predates society's wide spread adoption of the internet by about three decades.

Stephenson offers several criteria on what constitutes play that are at odds with internet play today. For instance, he argues that "play is secluded, taking place in a particular place set off for the purpose in time or space: it has a beginning and an end" (ibid 46). Yet today, with low-cost or free web access growing more readily available all the time, the web can be accessed from phones, laptops, traditional desktop PCs, and an assortment of other devices in homes, offices, schools, libraries, and numerous other locations throughout the developed world. Web play can occur almost anywhere and at any time. Moreover, in online play from wikis to IM and online gaming to social networking, collaboration and communication are vital to the process; modern web play is anything but secluded. Finally, web based play challenges Stephenson's notion of play having a beginning and an end. Although, specific instances of web play may have easily identifiable beginnings and ends, increasingly, both the pleasure and the objectives of web play are derived from the cumulative effect of several instances of play. For instance, social networking on websites such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as blogging, and participation in online role-playing games are all forms of web play that contradict notions of time-constrained play.

However, once one gets past the semantics of the word play, modern web usage abounds with examples of both participatory and elite dominated communication play and for those interested in analyzing the reasons for the popularity of various online activities, Stephenson's theory becomes very illuminating. Kuehn offers a particularly interesting application of Play Theory in an early study of email and BBS communication. He was interested in the ways communicating parties used nonstandard text symbols and formatting to express sarcasm, wit, humour and other communicative subtleties in an environment that lacks standard social queues. Kuehn concluded that this practice was done in an effort to "promote individuality" (Kuehn) and that the fun of this participatory play existed in "figuring out context bound ways of self expression" (ibid).

The popularity of blogging, wherein bloggers express themselves to an often unknown audience, is also directly attributable to participatory play. The use and popularity of social networking sites can similarly be connected to participatory play. By allowing users to post their profiles and interact with other users, these sites allow users to manipulate and explore their own identities in an environment that is to some degree removed from the real world.

Although the implications of online participatory play are perhaps more interesting from a sociological or psychological perspective, a great deal of online activity is grounded in elite dominated communication play. From community newspapers to worldwide broadcast services, practically any organization involved in reporting the news has an online presence. In the late 1960s, Stephenson and others observed that individuals in western societies were bombarded with more news than they could ever consume on a daily basis, with the emergence of the web, this bombardment has increased exponentially. Although some argue that this information overload only serves to complicate our daily existence, Play Theory suggests that it presents a larger media landscape to be mastered by the adept web user. Given the popularity of information aggregating and indexing services such as RSS feeds, e-newsletters, and portals, which help users select and retrieve information of interest to them, it seems that many on the web are happily taking part in elite dominated communication play. Probably more than any other means of mass communication, internet users are able to define themselves by both the type of information that they access and the ways in which they go about getting it.

The Limitation of Play Theory

Play Theory is most significantly limited in its ability to explain people's use of less interactive media such as radio or television. From a web perspective, once one establishes an acceptable definition of online play, Stephenson's theory is limited by its failure to account for those who have access to the web, but who do not actively use it. Shedletsky and Aitken point out a similar limitation in their discussion of Play Theory, observing, "our theory of Intensified Interplay cannot be applied to these people [who avoid using the internet]" (Shedletsky and Aitken 73).

Not everyone likes the same sort of games or the same sort of play and perhaps online play is no different; no matter how easy and available web technology is, there may always be people who prefer to exist without it. On a related note, commenting on the failure of a late-1990s on-demand television endeavor, then president of production for ABC Inc., David Westin commented, "people want to come home and relax and be entertained by their television set. They don't want to have to program it themselves" (Kubey 68). Indeed Westin could be describing a group within society that will never derive pleasure from more interactive forms of media play. There are certainly those groups in society who do not read newspapers or listen to the radio. However, before we accept the idea that certain people will never go online, we must wait for the technological laggards. The web is winning new converts every day and clearly, certain people take longer to adopt new technologies than others. Moreover, internet proponents might argue that the tremendous popularity of on-demand television and web-based forms of entertainment such as podcasts and online video are indicative of a general societal shift toward more interactive forms of communication.

It is clearly too early to tell when the internet will reach its maximum social penetration. Until such a time when those studying web use can accurately state how many within a given group will choose not to use the internet, Play Theory will be limited. Under these circumstances, there is little that can be done except to offer simple caveats like the one mentioned above from Shedletsky and Aitken.

Conclusion

Since the masses began to go online, the internet has been celebrated for the nearly infinite amount of information that it offers. However, Play Theory suggests that such pronouncements ignore much of what makes the internet such an amazing phenomenon. While information exists whether someone reads it or not, the internet exists because people choose to use it. Individual communication and interaction are central to the success and to the value of the internet. Play Theory attempts to understand these processes and thereby elicits powerful commentary on each user's needs and the inner workings of the web.

Works Cited

Kubey, Robert. "TV and the Internet: Pitfalls in Forecasting the Future." Knowledge, Technology, & Policy. 13.2 (2000): 63-85.

Kuehn, S. A.. "Communication Innovation on a BBS: A Content Analysis." IPCT: International Computing and Technology, an Electronic Journal for the 21st Century. 1.2 (1993) 10 July 2007 http://www.helsinki.fi/science/optek/1993/n2/kuehn.txt.

Singer, Jane. "Entertainment." The website for Communication and Change, a course at Iowa University. 10 July 2007 http://www.uiowa.edu/~c019254/entertainment.html.

Shedletsky, Leonard J., and Joan E. Aitken. Human Communication on the Internet. Boston: Pearson, 2004.

Stephenson, William. The Play Theory of Mass Communication. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967.