Intertext: what it is, main characteristics and types of intertexts

What is intertext?

Intertext is defined as all those texts that allow interpersonal communication, as well as the existence of a space for the exchange of information or content between the reader and the medium in which this content is generated. Thus, it is necessary to have the presence and participation of both parties.

The intertext is one of the three types of digital texts, after the unimodal digital text and the multimodal digital text, distinguished precisely by facilitating communication and exchange with the reader, who at the same time becomes a user according to the medium of dissemination of the digital text.

Main characteristics of intertext

Let us now review the most important characteristics of this type of digital texts that allow us to identify them and distinguish them from other types:

Faculty of bidirectionality

An important feature of this type of texts is that their main objective is feedback, or well known in the medium as feedback. This mainly refers to the fact that they seek the user’s participation with the content they present, creating this two-way faculty it generates.

Importance of the connection

The intention of user participation necessarily requires that the reader has a device that is connected to the Internet network, only through this means it will be possible to generate user participation effectively in terms of the ways in which they engage, share and comment on the text that is presented.

Combination of resources

Another important characteristic of intertext has to do with the way in which it is able to combine several communicational resources. In this case, we refer to the way in which it mixes resources such as movement, sound, interaction, movement and even speech, which can occur orally or through written text, in its process.

Types of intertext

There are two ways of classifying intertexts, which we can identify on the basis of the medium in which they are developed, disseminated and interacted with. On the one hand we have the Web 2.0 intertexts and on the other the Web 3.0 intertexts. These work as follows:

Web 2.0 or social web intertexts

In this first classification we find the spaces in which intertexts can be generated such as interactive web pages, emails, chats, forums, social networks, educational platforms, blogs, platforms such as wordpress, and special repositories for shared reading where we find image servers, document exchanges, tube or video servers and digital libraries.

Intertexts of the web 3.0 or semantic web

In this space, also called environment and that refers mainly to applications, we find other spaces such as cloud computing that is fed from hypertexts, cybertexts and other intertexts, there is also the processing of metadata and finally the texts that are observed as social bookmarks, geolocation, tags, among others.

To learn more about other types of digital texts, or types of texts in the literary field, in our section dedicated to this type of art you can find much more information that will be very useful to access it.