13. Interfaces and Engagement: From Implications to Responsibilities

I formulate this chapter as a response to an overarching question that this work, and the network it emerged from, has consistently come across. We have often been asked, that, given that there are myriad ways in which agentic audiences engage, respond, interact with and make sense of media technologies, what can audiences can do to resist intrusive interfaces? I select this question, out of all the questions we have been asked, because the question has beckoned us to think carefully about the variety of implications we see emerging out of this project, and why, in the end, we have struggled with the way the question is phrased. In responding, I make use of the implications arising out of CEDAR’s work to expand the focus from what audiences should do, to what a variety of others need to do, in order to champion the interests of audiences.