Media Landscape Summary - ML
Book & Lectures
Week 1
Book Chapter 1
This chapter begins by focusing on some of the contrasting conclusions drawn by
prominent medium theorists about the development and impacts of print and electronic
media technologies.
Classic Medium Theories
McLuhan: The Medium is the Message
...in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that
the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of
ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our a airs by each extension
of ourselves, or by any new technology’ (McLuhan 2001: 2).
—> The medium is more important than the message, not the content is important but
the fact that di erent modes of communication are possible.
For McLuhan, each media technology enables a di erent extension of our communicative
senses - in both space and time - beyond what was previously possible.
Media Technologies expand our physical sphere of communications - we can see, hear,
talk, or write across greater distances and at grater speed.
that as a result of the ease with which we can communicate across the world through
electronic media, we increasingly inhabit a ‘global village’.
Hot and Cool
The central distinction made by McLuhan between di erent forms of media involves two
categories - hot and cool. Hot media are high de nition and data intensive with a large
amount of information conveyed – usually to a single one of the human senses. Including
books, newspapers and radio, hot media occupy all or most of the attention of an
individual and leave few gaps to be completed by the audience.
In contrast cool media are low in information- intensity and high in audience participation
- rather like a discussion seminar as compared to a lecture. For McLuhan, the cool
medium par excellence was television, whose ability to combine sound with what, during
the 1950s and 60s, were very low- de nition moving pictures, is deemed to have enabled
both senses to be engaged, but each less intensively than in the case of printed literature
or radio.
On the radio extensive detail has to be spelt out by commentators, requiring intense
concentration from listeners and strongly shaping their interpretations. In contrast,
television commentators are able to provide less detail, allowing viewers to partially
interpret moving pictures for themselves.
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, The most important comparison for McLuhan, though, was between print media, which
he regarded as universally hot, and electronic media, which he believed were becoming
increasingly cool
Mass production of books, newspaper —> end of the age of oral, informal, face to face
communication
Cool Technology such as Television —> spontaneous, intimate, informal, incomplete,
inviting creative audience participation —> GLOBAL VILLAGE
Pessimism
Postman (1987): Kill your Television
From this point of view, early newspapers o ered a detailed, localised and relevant source
of communication, lled with rich, coherent information of direct signi cance to the lives
of readers.
For Postman, such engagement has gradually been undermined by a series of
technological developments, beginning with the telegraph and ending (at the time he was
writing) with television.
Visuals
The desire for image-based journalism is deemed to have a ected news priorities
—> visual appeal, becoming more and more important
For postman photography = ideal counterpart for the emphasis created by telegraphy
Postman regards the small screen as having concentrated all the worst tendencies of the
alliance of telegraphy and photography, ‘raising the interplay of image and instancy to an
exquisite and dangerous perfection’ (1987: 79) while bringing them to the centre of our
domestic lives.
He thinks people emotionally respond to spectacles places in front of them, but are
unlikely to understand or even remember them:
There is no murder so brutal, no earthquake so devastating, no political blunder so costly
– for that matter, no ball score so tantalising or no weather report so threatening – that it
cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster saying “now this!” (1987: 99-100)
Television consumption makes people believe that they understand the world.
Because of television we believe to know more, but we know less.
Mander also asserts that television is itself inherently a hierarchical, one directional mode
of communication which empowers an elite minority, whilst distracting and disorienting a
passive mass audience.
Technological Determinism
Innes (1951), Ong (1977) and Meyrowitz (1985)
They o er a crucial reminder that in order to answer questions about the relationship
between media, culture and society we must consider the signi cance of di erent of
media hardware and software.
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,Hot, Cool or Both?
• High intensity - low participation (hot)
• Low intensity - high participation (cool)
We need to examine the message as well as the medium and the context of media use
too.
Generalisation and Rei cation
Technologies have automatic social e ects, regardless of content or context
Approaches such as those of Postman, Mander and McLuhan can be labelled
technologically determinist.
Technologies, then, are rei ed, that is, they are transformed by the theorists into
independent objects, when in reality they are developed, manufactured, controlled and
used by people in particular social contexts
Indeed, those who blame social problems on television sometimes are accused of veering
close to the position of the luddites,
Luddites = workers protest movement in nineteenth century Britain which responded to
job losses within factories by destroying the new textile machines they regarded as
responsible.
It is for this reason that pessimistic arguments about the impact of technologies
sometimes are labelled luddite.
Technologies and Social Contexts
Television
• Tool of information and education
• Facilitator of social cohesion and political engagement
Production:
The institutional and social circumstances in which a technology is developed,
manufactured and distributed.
Representation:
Concerns media discourse about the technology, which can play a crucial role in
developing particular understandings of its purpose and meaning.
Regulation:
The various forms of control imposed by government or other bodies, which can restrict
and shape the ways technologies are used.
Consumption:
Emphasizes the importance of the contexts in which users engage with technologies.
Identity:
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, The way in which such consumption practices are intricately connected with the
development of individual and collective subjectivities.
Into the Digital Age
Convergence
Processes of digitalisation, however, have enabled the development of media
environments even more inclusive and exible by enabling text, images, music, speech
and video all to be converted into a universal system.
Phones, tablets etc enable many di erent media forms to use the same kinds of digital
code, then, processes of digitalisation increase cross-compatibility between previously
separate technologies.
Interactivity
Traditional broadcasting took the form of an allocutionary medium in the sense that
content is distributed in a single direction from a powerful centre, with audiences able
only to switch on and o or change channels.
The internet for the rst time introduced the possibility of interactive group or even mass
communication.
Diversi cation
Rather than merely switching on and icking channels, we are faced with a choice
between millions of sites, services and individuals. Similarly, digital television has
facilitated a massive growth in the number of di erent channels on o er.
As well as making media more interactive, then, digitalisation has contributed to a
substantial diversi cation and expansion of media content and of the relationships
between content and consumers.
Mobility
More and more of the media outlets we use are mobile, enabling us to communicate from
all sorts of locations.
The internet as solution or cause of social ills
Democracy and freedom?
Negroponte (1995):
Technology would liberate individuals of place
Control of societies would be decentralised
Community and global relations transformed for the better
Gilder (1992):
Transformation of education
Decline of standardised television culture
Draining of power from the established media industry
John Hartley (2009):
Celebrates what he regards as the democratisation of television as a result of the capacity
on the contemporary internet, speci cally via platforms such as YouTube - for ordinary
people to become producers and distributors of content.
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