Interactive media | Definition, History, Examples, & Facts (2024)

interactive media, any computer-delivered electronic system that allows the user to control, combine, and manipulate different types of media, such as text, sound, video, computer graphics, and animation. Interactive media integrate computer, memory storage, digital (binary) data, telephone, television, and other information technologies. Their most common applications include training programs, video games, electronic encyclopaedias, and travel guides. Interactive media shift the user’s role from observer to participant and are considered the next generation of electronic information systems.

A personal computer (PC) system with conventional magnetic-disk memory storage technically qualifies as a type of interactive media. More advanced interactive systems have been in use since the development of the computer in the mid-20th century—as flight simulators in the aerospace industry, for example. The term was popularized in the early 1990s, however, to describe PCs that incorporate high-capacity optical (laser) memory devices, such as a CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory) drive, and digital sound systems. Other interactive media systems are cable television services with computer interfaces that enable viewers to interact with television programs, high-speed interactive audiovisual communications systems that rely on digital data from fibre-optic lines or digitized wireless transmissions, and virtual reality systems that create small-scale artificial sensory environments.