Throughout this course, I can’t help but think about the relevance of mass media and the book titled “The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects” by Marshall McLuhan. Although this book might be quite old (1960s) I reckon that McLuhan’s interpretation of the Global Village era is still incredibly applicable to today’s case of mass media consumption. What sparked my interest to delve in this topic further was when the Media lecturer mentioned the term “Global Village” coined by McLuhan himself that refers to when media allows the compression of time and space through electronic technology, which lets information to move instantaneously over a wide range at certain period of time. As I have spent some time reading the book in the past, …show more content…
We march backwards into the future" Illustrating our realization to unticipated consequences from the new innovations by looking at the past. (Image from the book "The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects") McLuhan was concerned how we tend to be more focused on obvious observations, instead of the structural changes that is subtly introduced over a long period of time—in other words, the change in interpersonal dynamics (message) brought about by new innovation (medium). In that long period of time, we tend to look at the past and realize the “unanticipated consequences” from the outset of the new innovation. For instance, how the growth of mass media (e.g smartphones, Internet, news broadcasting) propagates the pervasiveness of commodification, consumerism, hegemony, and capitalism to a certain degree in society through various ways (e.g integration/homogeneity of fashion trends, media censorship, political propagandas, self-branding through social media platforms… Basically the overall content of my previous blog posts are relevant to this as they are associated with media). Furthermore, this domineering effect is further emphasized when McLuhan explained the invasiveness of mass media in our lives by saying “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” Showing that the mass media has become such a fundamental part of
Media affects everyone and everything; There is no escape. Media is everywhere and surrounds everything. Henry Jenkins and Marshall McLuhan have differing points of view as to what the meaning of media is. They both, however, have their particular ponits which they describe well. Jenkin's talks about the different types of cultures that exist, focusing on popular culture, in his essay, "What Everyone Should Know About Popular Culture.
Many of McLuhan’s ideas concerning media can be classified as technologically deterministic. He argued that several technologies, alphabetic writing and movable type, were responsible for the “detribilization” of society. By “detribilization” he was referring to the creation of the individual who is responsible for his/her own ideas. He then argued that in recent times, a “retribilization” was occurring because of the introduction of electricity-based communications technologies such as radio and television. As Playboy writes, this is the “electronics revolution that will ultimately retribalize man by restoring his sensory balance”.
The media has the ability to front line stories and control the general population’s belief by influence and exposure. Because the media has such a powerful control on society and because it controls so much of everyday life I must say that this is why I relate more to the postmodern
In his groundbreaking work, Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan posits that technologies in the “electric age” rendered it impossible for the individual to remain “aloof” anymore . Over the course of the late 19th to early 20th centuries, while an increasing presence of electric machines in daily life irrefutably signaled our nation’s arrival into the electric age, society’s “central nervous system [was] technologically extended to involve [each individual] in the whole of mankind,” McLuhan states (20). Previously disconnected, isolated individuals and groups suddenly became compressed, involved in each others’ lives, and unified into a network. As opposed to the preceding mechanical age, this was an age that sought “wholeness”-- an aspiration that McLuhan refers to as a “natural adjunct of electric technology” (21). McLuhan believes that great progress was made in the electric age; that wholeness was sought and worked towards eagerly.
McLuhan believed in technological determinism, which is “an approach that identifies technology, or technological developments, as the central causal element in processes of change” (Croteau, Hoynes, and Milan 290). In other words, McLuhan believed that new technology drives the way cultural values and social structures develop. He was interested in the cultural effects produced by electronic media; he was especially interested in the effects of televisions. McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage argued that technology has changed the way humans
The media is something that you are constantly surrounded by and almost can’t get away from. Everywhere you go there is media. For example, walking to the shop you can briefly look at your smartphone for a very brief second and find out that someone was killed around the corner from you 20 minutes ago. The media is a crazy place where sometimes it can change your perception of how things are. In this essay, we will talk about how
Newspaper, radio, film, television. These are only a few of the various forms media can take. From the moment we open our eyes to the instant we shut them, we are surrounded by media and absorb the information it hurls at us in an osmosis-like manner. The news ranges from the latest terror attack and political scandals to supposed UFO sightings and scandals involving sandals. We as an audience tend to focus more on the message the media relays rather than on the medium in which it is presented to us. “What?” is asked more than “How?” The key claim Marshall McLuhan makes in his book, The Medium is the Massage, is that the form of media influences how the message is perceived. Let’s illustrate this with a scenario: it’s eight o’clock in the morning.
There is an association between the development of mass media and social change, although the degree and direction of this association is still debated upon even after years of study into media influence. Many of the consequences, either detrimental or beneficial, which have been attributed to the mass media, are almost undoubtedly due to other tendencies within society. Few sociologists would refute the importance of the mass media, and mass communications as a whole, as being a major factor in the construction and circulation of social understanding and social imagery in modern societies. Therefore it is argued that the mass media is used as “an instrument”, both more powerful and more flexible than anything in previous existence, for influencing people into certain modes of belief and understanding within society.
McLuhan’s work with literature and culture produced the revolutionary thought that “the medium is the message.” In other words, cultures are changed not only by the “content” of technology, but also by the technology itself.
O’Shaughnessy, M., Stadler, J. (2009)Media and Society: An introduction. Dominant Ideology and Hegemony. London: Oxford.
When the media theorist Marshall McLuhan claimed that the expansion of media technologies would enable individuals to “see, hear, talk or write across greater distances and at greater speed than before” (Hodkinson, 2011, p.21) he was referring to electronic communication such as the telephone and television and before the invention and subsequent growth of the Internet. Nevertheless, McLuhan’s declaration that the world is now part of “a global village” (Hodkinson, 2011, p.21) is just as pertinent today because the Internet allows individuals to instantaneously communicate and share information with other people around the world. Understanding how individuals use this technology has implications for multicultural societies and the way that
The mass media has played a key role in shaping people’s lives. The modern society’s use of mass media including TV, radio, newspaper, as well as print media has largely influenced people’s ideas regarding themselves and the society at large. This is evident from their behavior towards themselves and their community as well as their treatment of the environment. While some experts believe that the media is to blame for most of the negative behavioral traits among the active members of society, the majority agree that the media makes people understand and develop a positive sense of association with their society within which they live, making it easy for them to identify and get their role in it.
The power of the mass media has once become so powerful that its undoubtedly significant role in the world today stays beyond any questions. It is so strong that even politics uses it as a means of governing in any country around the world. The mass media has not only political meaning but also it conveys wide knowledge concerning all possible aspects of human beings’ lives and, what is utterly true, influences on people’s points of view and their attitude to the surrounding environment. It is completely agreeable about what kind of virtues the mass media is supposed to accent. Nevertheless, it is not frequent at all that the media provides societies with such a content, which is doubtful in terms of the role consigned to it. Presenting violence and intolerance as well as shaping and manipulating public are only a few examples of how the role of mass media is misunderstood by those who define themselves as leading media makers.
Hence, any debate of the future becoming digital must take into consideration the reaction of the media to the technological innovations of the world, from the Personal Computers (PC) to the smallest Smartphone. Although mass media has increased with technological innovations, what driv...
Mass media, over the years, has had a profound effect on American society, on its