The Medium and the Message

In 1964, Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” Medium, in this case, is the singular of a word we’re used to seeing in the plural: media. What he meant was that we tend to focus on the content of the message (the words being said or the images shown), but we really need to look at the medium, or the means by which the information is communicated. According to this line of thinking, the television is more important for the way it makes us see the world than for any given program it might carry.

Medium (plural media or mediums)
A format for communicating or presenting information.
A means, channel, agency or go-between through which communication, commerce, etc is conveyed or carried on. (source)

In the introduction to her book The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media, Iliana Gershon discusses what she calls “media ideologies”—a concept which is essentially a more modern reframing of McLuhan’s idea of the medium and the message:

People’s ideas about the medium shape the ways that medium will deliver a message. No matter what is actually said, the medium becomes part of what is being communicated. Sometimes the medium is in synch with the message, and sometimes it is so out of synch with the message that the message is undercut. . . . That is to say, what people think about the media they use will shape the way they use media. (Gershon 3)

Is it acceptable to break up with someone via text? Why or why not? If not, is there something about the text medium that makes it unacceptable for this kind of communication? Or if so, what would be the advantages of breaking up with someone by text?

As Gershon discovered, one of the quickest ways to reveal our often invisible media ideologies is to ask the question, “is it acceptable to break up with someone via text message?”

Both McLuhan and Gershon alert us to the fact that the means by which a message is communicated can be as important as the content of the message itself. What this means for critical reading is that, when interpreting a message, we need to consider how that message got to us and which interpretive frameworks we’re using to understand it. A video on the web can be as informative as an article in a print book, but we should make note of the fact that we’re taking in the information through images and audio rather than text. Consider, for instance, a topic like the logistics of the massive Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. While a journal article and an online video might convey similar facts and information about the camp, the experience of seeing and hearing stories from the camp would probably leave a very different impression than reading alone.

Analyzing Different Media

Especially when your goal is to analyze and understand a particular work, it’s essential to consider the specific qualities of its medium (or media). If we think that a scene in a movie is sad, for example, we are probably getting that impression through medium-specific cues such as melancholy music on the soundtrack, muted colors, or close-up shots of sad faces. The same scene in a novel would have to communicate sadness in a different way—through word choice or symbolism, for instance. Depending on the kind of analysis you’re doing, this aspect may be more or less important. A research paper built largely on journal articles won’t need to consider medium very much, but an analysis of a photograph needs to keep in mind the particular way a photograph communicates. When working with different media sources, it’s important to ask yourself the question: “how do I know what I think I know about this?” Don’t forget to consider the medium alongside the message!