The Digital Environment: Taking the Long View

1.Mediums and Content Interact with Mutual Effects

The questions are "How and How much do mediums matter"?

First, mediums are the technologies (for production, transmission & reception) and the socio-cultural uses to which they are put.

• A medium is not just the channel and delivery system, the means of production, the content, and the people who transmit programming.
• A medium combines these factors with the socio-political system in which the medium operates and the uses to which audience members/receivers put the medium.
• So a given medium, say online communication, is very different in differing cultural settings, for example, in America and/or in Africa, where the technological infrastructures, the socio-political systems, and the uses to which online communication are put vary widely.

Second, the influences of mediums and social forces can be visualized along a continuum:

Media Determinism-----Social Shaping-----Social Determinism

• From the media deterministic view, dominant media (such as television in America), influence and change everything.
• From the social deterministic view, media are a mirror reflection of thepeople who use the media.
• In the middle, there is a view that sees a mutual interaction between the media and its users.

Third, there are at least three (famous) ways of talking about the relationships between the medium and the message.

a. The Medium is the Message (McLuhan): The technological infrastructure (and its potentials) are the most important features. The technological environment (what one can and can't do and how it works) is the key "meaning" that gets communicated . Media content is not very important, in fact, it is not much more than a distraction from that which really matters. Mediums work on the senses and actually change the sense ratios by "extending" some and "limiting" others.

b. Mediums Shape the Message (Postman): Mediums transform content. Since each medium has "preferences," messages must be shaped in particular ways to be effective and not every message is translatable across mediums. Contemporary mass media (especially television) tend to trivialize content: "Success" in the current age is found in advertising rates and audience ratings. Therefore, contemporary dominant mediums in America rely on entertainment as the American audience far prefers it to serious (difficult) content.

c. The Medium Embodies the Message (Negroponte): Mediums give life, form, substance to messages. Messages are made of/by mediums. Opposing medium with message is an error as, in the new digital media, both medium and message are constituted by the same things: Codes, networks, production and reception technologies.

Study Objectives

• define the term "medium";
• place the influences of mediums and social forces along a continuum using the correct technical terminologies for each of three positions;
• compare and contrast the three "famous" ways of talking about mediums and messages; explain the differences/similarities among and between them;
• identify and illustrate the concepts and subparts in everyday life and/or media reports of industry developments..

Read more about it:

Jim Andrews on McLuhan
Regent University on McLuhan
Postman on Technology
Other Postman Links
Negroponte on digital emergence
Marshall McLuhan (esp. Understanding Media)
Neal Postman (Amusing ourselves to death)
Nicholas Negroponte (Being Digital)