Marshall Mccluhan's The Medium Is The Message

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

Wilbur Schramm, a former student and professor at the University of Iowa once said, “With language and writing in hand, humans had paid the tuition for their own education.” Schramm’s argument here presents a Utopian perspective on media while also illustrating Marshall McLuhan’s idea that “the medium is the message”.

When Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” back in 1967, we were facing a very different society than we are today. His focus was of course on the mediums of the time: radio, newsprint and television. Mark Federman, a Chief Strategist for the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology asserts in his article, What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message? (2004), McLuhan was not speaking directly about the medium itself. His thought process went to a deeper level. Federman “note[s] that it is not the content or use of innovation, but the change in inter-personal dynamics that the innovation brings with it” that is the issue. In a world that we can now access hundreds of thousands of bits of information in milliseconds, we can certainly see a shift in media influence. Today we can actually watch events as they unfold, whether they are events for a greater good or events of horrific acts of terrorism, technology has enabled society to be omnipresent. Melody Thompson (2011) refers to Jaron Lanier in discussing how technology shapes our relationship to itself. She notes that Lanier believes technology imposes on us its own viewpoint and that shapes our decisions. In a world where we live with a 24 hour news cycle and news stations that can skew their reporting to send the message they want their viewers to hear, it is quite prophetic when Lanier states “it

The evolution of mass media has affected our social institutions: family, religion, morality and education, on an unprecedented scale. For most of us in the American culture, the new forms of mass media are entwined with both of our personal and professional lifestyles. Understanding how the development of these forms of mass media has been and continues to influence our American culture is vital. It will help us appreciate the role media plays in our life and will also help us to be more informed as citizens, consumers, and employees. Barnett, 2004 noted that “The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, and with the explosion of wireless communication in the early

The media must have some sort of effect on people and the portrayal of other women always resonated with me. I know that there are many people who claim that unrealistic appearances in things like magazines cause an increase in eating disorders and low self esteem. The constant strive for perfection has been evolving due to digital enhancements with programs such as Photoshop or others that assist with photo editing. It is really easy to make things appear completely changed from their natural looks. A lot of places are requiring acknowledgement of alterations via disclaimers on advertisements. This prompts a debate for who has to concede between what is considered artistic freedom and dangerous content. Technology also contributes to the amount of media exposure people have now through the Internet and social media. These are considered staples in the lives of many impressionable young people, so it could add pressure to accept a new normal.

Since the beginnings of American society, America has used news media as its primary tool to distribute information. Media is involved in nearly every aspect of everyday life. From morning until night, citizens are constantly bombarded by media images on television, radio, magazines, and the internet. However, since the mid-2000’s, one form of media has dominated the social landscape. This type of media has entirely changed the way other media connects with its viewers. It has shifted the power of information from the select few to the masses, from the broadcaster to the audience. It has given the individual voice a pedestal. It has made information faster, busier, more streamlined, more hectic, more interactive, all at the

Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage, first published in 1967, explores the rise of technology and its impact on mass media. As the media spreads nationwide, McLuhan criticizes the growing power and the increasing influence of the media.

The media is a well-known, influential aspect on gender roles that broadcast negative messages to society through television by the images that are mainstreamed, which has an effect on people’s thinking process. Television brainwashes both men and women to believe they are not perfect, unless they have the body image of a celebrity. Though it is just a fantasy and not reality, “81% of 10 year girls are afraid of being fat, half of those girls believe they feel better about themselves when they were on a diet” (Reed 2016). The media paints a broad spectrum of ways it is stereotypical to not only just women, but men too. Women are pictured as a walking toothpick, while men are muscular. How can someone enjoy watching television when it is manipulating people’s lifestyle? We should not support the media when it is doing no good than harm. From advertisements to commercials, “it controls social life by invisibly transferring the dominant hegemonic ideology” (Wolska 2016). The media portrays many unrealistic stereotypes about gender, which often leads to not feeling acceptable in today’s world.

In contrast Marshall McLuhan described how he believed that medium is literally the message. "The Medium" is a theory made by McLuhan himself as he expressed that a medium is any augmentation of ourselves. If McLuhan was a live today he would considered the social media as a median. The message, McLuhan clarifies, is the change that is brought into human social life. Along these lines, the medium is the message, as per McLuhan, implies that the aftereffects of an adjustment in human culture is brought about by a recently presented innovation. McLuhan keeps on indicating out that society ought not get to be occupied by the substance, which is not the same as the

This altogether negative impact that media representation has on women is a mostly “western” or “first world” (North America, Europe, Parts of China, Japan). Other cultures accept their women in nudity and value them as functional assets to a community, rather than as objects for judgment and use. This oversexualization has not proven to have any positive impact on either the male or female population. Additionally, while men do face social boundaries, they do not face the severity of discrimination as women have, and this trend persists throughout history. The rate at which women are being sexualized in modern media has increased exponentially by comparison to that of men. All things considered, this unequal sexualization promotes women’s negative social image and enforces their lower hierarchical stance. This is partially exhibited by the wage gap that exists between men and women working the same jobs. Men get paid more for the same job, exemplifying the social position that women are placed

“Television is one of the most influential forms of media because it is so pervasive…” (Lee, Shaw 258). Media plays a major part in our lives. Society is said to watch an upward of five hours of television a day. Based on the cultivation theory, “heavy viewers of media are more likely to believe that what they see on TV is considered reality” (Martins). So it is no surprise that what we see in the media we also believe is considered “normal” for gender and when somebody tries to step outside the box we consider that different and not right. The media is constantly reinforcing gender norms by the overuse of sexualizing women in the media and presenting men as a dominant, powerful figure. This is common not only among adults but also children. Like we observed in class even children’s commercials are gendered and products are presented in totally different ways for boys and girls. An example of this is in a Lego commercial. The boy’s commercials are presented with dark colors and sounds and they

Media is always an alternative story. Media is no longer being a part of the culture, but it creates cultures. In "Convergence Culture", Jenkins’s claim that “when people take media into their hands, the results can be wonderfully creative; they can also be bad news for all involved” (para. 39). Indeed, media brought human so many benefits and profit. However, like what Jenkin said, they can be the problem for the society. For me, if put two sides of the media’s outcome in the balance it would always be equal. Due to the development of technology, from first black-white television to the smart phone with many functions. With the phone on hand, people can connect to everyone, watch, listen, and learn. So who would control our activities on

In The Medium Is the Message by Marshall McLuhan, he explores new media in its most original, basic and pure way as an object, furthermore, he use the idea of the medium itself carries the message rather than the message, furthermore, to analyze how new media influence in the society. At the end, McLuhan explain the role of broadcast television (as a new medium) and how television itself become a “fixed charge” in people’s day-to-day living which we simply cannot live without it. (Marshall McLuhan 1962, p.209) Base on Mcluhan’s notion of how a medium formed in the past, if the idea still apply to the mass communication media nowaday as the media themselves shape the society regardless of the content it carries, or there is a new relation

In 1970, he published The Consumer Society, which he shed light on the subject and object of consumption, around which contemporary societies are organized. A few years later, he published Simulacra and Simulation, and implemented the hyper reality, by which objects are to be false and hidden from the truth. Baudrillard, an early admirer of McLuhan, expands his research and analysis on McLuhan’s idea that the ‘the medium is the message’ - distancing and separating from the Marxism. By “ the medium is the message”, McLuhans describes that the ‘real message that the radio and television deliver…is not in the images that it transmits but rather the new mode of perception that it imposes on traditional group and family structure’ (Baudrillard 1983:187). In other words, it is, in fact, through the medium which a message shaped the perception of people, and not vice-versa. McLuhans warned us about the new medium effects, which it is often something unheard of in the early 18th century, since the medium, itself, influences society. Therefore, media and its medium mediate our experience without us noticing it, and Baudrillard alarms us about it.

Marshall McLuhan believed that the medium through which a message is received played a vital role in its effect on society and individuals, and should be studied in hand with the content it is carrying. He was one of the first writers to bring forth attention to the presence of communication tools, “...their characteristics, and how they work, rather than just to the messages these technologies transmitted” (Tremblay, 2012). In his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man he wrote that a medium is an extension of ourselves.