UNIT – 2 STUDY

MATERIAL
 Marshall McLuhan

Or
“The Medium is the Message”
 Canadian media theorist
Marshall McLuhan.

McLuhan is very famous

and his work has been
influential in Media Studies.

While McLuhan‟s work lost

ground for a number of
years, since the advent of
the internet it has gained in
popularity again.

Marshall McLuhan 1911-1980

 Even though he died
before it got going
McLuhan‟s work prove
to be amazingly
prescient regarding the
internet and new media.
 He foresaw and
predicted many of the
changes that we have
seen in recent years.
 Moreover his work
seems to offer great
insights into the power
of media technology.
Early media theory was strongly concerned
with media technology - does specific
technology cause change in a society?
 As the field developed interest shifted to the
„meaning‟ of texts – not technology but what
(and how) texts mean that is significant.
 We can broadly divide media studies into:
◦ Those who think the type of media technology is
important – „Formalists‟
◦ Those who think the content and how meaning is
made is important – „Culturalists‟
 The formalist approach, focussing upon the
qualities of the media, finds its strongest support
in the work of Mcluhan.
 McLuhan‟s ideas informed a broad swath of
theories within the embryonic field of media
studies.
 Culturalist approaches see culture as more
important.
 They came to dominate media studies for a long
time - media and cultural studies became linked.
 But the Formalists, using McLuhan and later
Baudrillard have mounted a fresh attack.
 Attended University of Manitoba, got BA in 1933 and
MA in 1934, both in English Literature.
 Went to Cambridge and got another BA in 1936,
started doing graduate work but got a job as a
teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin.
 Got his PhD from Cambridge in 1942.
 Had lecturing jobs in
◦ St Louis,
◦ Assumption College in Ontario,
◦ University of Toronto – key figure in the Toronto School
 Married in 1939 had 6 children.
 The Mechanical Bride (1951)
 The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)
 Understanding Media (1964)
 The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of
Effects (1967)
 War and Peace in the Global Village (1968)
 From Cliché to Archetype (1970)
 Laws of Media (1988) (published
posthumously by his son).
 Started the journal Explorations .
 His work is a little bit odd.
 It does not read like normal academic
text, he used what he called “the
mosaic style” short chapters that can
be read in any order – a bit like a
hypertext.
 His work is full of pithy little
statements such as “the medium is the
message” and later “the medium is the
massage” that make sense in the wider
body of his theory but which seem to
lack much rigour.
 It is very much of its time, wacky 60s
counter culture.
 McLuhan was very popular and a key
figure in US popular counter-cultural
life and was visited by many leading
cultural figures, the Beatles and he had
a cameo in the Woody Allen film Anne
Hall.
 McLuhan started out in English literature, he
followed F.R. Leavis‟ lead and started to
examine not only literary texts, the traditional
subject of study but also other media texts,
like adverts.
 His first major book, the Mechanical Bride
was on advertising, the first time anyone had
studied adverts as texts.
 From this position he the 'content' of a medium
developed the idea that
is like the juicy piece of
it was not the content of
meat carried by the
media that is important
but the form or burglar to distract the
technology of the media, watchdog of the
he turned inwards. mind...The effects of
 He began to argue that technology do not occur
technology and at the level of opinions or
specifically media leads concepts, but alter sense
to great cultural ratios or patterns of
changes. perception steadily and
without resistance. (1964)
 McLuhan proposed a schema that divided
human history into four distinct
technologically orientated „ages‟ or epochs;
◦ an oral/primitive age in which the dominant
sense was aural,
◦ a literate age in which the visual sense gained
some importance as visual artefacts rose in
importance,
◦ a print age which the visual sense dominated,
◦ an electronic age in which other senses begin to
play a greater part.
 McLuhan is understood to argue that the
system of media technology that dominated
each age, auditory, textual, print and
electronic played a considerable part in
structuring human experience.
 Media technology operates as the „prime
mover‟ in structuring human interaction and
experience of the world.
 Of the various ages it
is the „print age‟ with
which McLuhan has
the greatest
reservations as the
sensory lives of
individuals living
within it were
fragmented and
impoverished.
 The electronic age is understood to offer
salvation as it offered a new more diverse and
multi-sensory environment.
 We use more of our senses with „multi-
media‟ than we did with any other singular
media form.
 And using more senses is good, it makes us
more true to our natural state.
 Againstthis rather spurious historical
framework McLuhan developed various other
theoretical ides.
 The idea that all media borrow;
◦ systems,
◦ techniques,
◦ styles
◦ social significance
 from previous forms of media.
 All media is essentially remediation, new
combinations of old things.
 At Toronto McLuhan worked with the economic historia
Harold Innis.
 Innis argued that some media are related to time, they
are time based, clay tablets, vellum, - they last a long
time but only reach a limited number of people because
they are hard to transport while others are space based,
newspapers and other ephemera – don‟t last long but
move through space and reach many people.
 McLuhan worked from this idea that media work in
different ways.
 Indeed media work with the senses or functions of the
body.
 Media extend these functions of bits of the body.
 Thenotion that all technologies in some way seek
to extend the capabilities and senses of humans.
◦ “All media are extensions of some human faculty-psychic
or physical… The wheel is an extension of the foot. The
book is an extension of the eye...clothing, an extension of
the skin...electric circuitry, an extension of the central
nervous system.” Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, The
Medium is the Massage,
(NY: Bantam) 1967, ps. 2 6 - 4 1.
 McLuhan proposes that the „extension of senses‟
radically changes the experience of the world and
accordingly culture of those involved.
 Thus developments in technology bring about
changes in cultural form.
 McLuhan proposes that rather than focus
upon the content of media attention should
focus upon the „form‟ in which it is
delivered.
 It is the form of media rather than its
specific content that has the power to
structure relations and human action.
 New forms of media bring about new forms
of interpersonal interaction and it is this
that McLuhan contends that we should be
focusing upon.
 With the shift from visual to electronic media
societies will change.
 We will lose the individual fragmented nature
of print culture and enter a new age of the
Global village – a shared group mind.
 But this is not a good thing as systems of
control will be deep seated in the world.
 Various ways McLuhan ahs been criticised.
 He is not empirical, no real evidence, just
theory.
 His work is very un-provable and un-testable.
◦ How do we know media are the extensions of man?
◦ What experiment could prove this?
 His account of the development of media is
completely at odds with verifiable history.
 Seems nice but takes lots of liberties with
historical data.
◦ Is it universal?
◦ Do all societies follow this path?
◦ Just western ones?
 Problems with his theory being „normative‟
it takes certain conditions and says they are
how things „should‟ be.
 Heavily criticised by disability theorists, are
we lees of a person for not having all the
senses?
◦ Are blind people not as „human‟ as the rest of us?
 Based on rather questionable ideas – related
to his faith – talks of soul and the idea of
perfectibility is deeply woven into his work.
 Does technology really determine our society?
 Does it do it because it extends a sense?
 McLuhan is a very interesting figure and his
work has been re-evaluated after some years
of neglect.
 Has had a significant effect – new formalism
an interesting development.
 But it‟s of its time and very wacky, while
interesting it is hard to really evaluate.
 Has some rather problematic issues at its
core.
The Medium is the Massage

“This information is top security. When

you have read it, destroy yourself.”
- M. McLuhan
Image from: http://sk.aphelis.net/search/Tom+Gauld
 Agenda is a Planer List of Matters to be acted upon.

 It means a Plan or Goal that guides someone’s

behavior and that is often kept secret.
 When a baby starts going to school, the agenda on
which his teachers work would include entertaining
him with toys, cartoons and poems etc so that the
child could adjust in that organized environment
easily.
 When a company has to launch a new product, they
would make it’s advertisement in a colorful and
presentable way. Their entertaining advertisement
would be their agenda to promote their product.
 When a villager comes to a town or a city, he is
unaware of the environment. If we want to make him
active and confident, we would meet him with a
welcoming attitude, a smile, a handshake or a hug
so that he may feel comfortable and may approach us
anytime. All these efforts to make him comfortable
would actually be an agenda on which we are
working for the sake of his convenience.
 Mass Communication plays an important role in our
society. Its purpose is to inform the public about
current and past events.
 Mass communication is defined in “Mass Media” as
the process whereby professional communicators use
technological devices to share messages over great
distances to influence large audiences.
 Agenda setting is defined in “Mass Media” as the
process whereby the mass media determine what we
think and worry about.
 The media uses gate keeping and agenda setting to
“control our access to news, information, and
entertainment”.
 Gate keeping is a series of checkpoints that the news
has to go through before it gets to the public.

 Through this process many people have to decide

whether or not the news is to be seen or heard.
 Some gatekeepers might include reporters, writers,
and editors. After gate keeping comes agenda
setting.
 Is Phenomena ko sb se pahle
 Walter Lippmann
He was a journalist first observed this function,
in the 1920’s.
Lippmann then pointed out that the media
dominates over the creation of pictures in our head.
 He believed that the public reacts not to actual events
but to the pictures in our head. Therefore the agenda
setting process is used to remodel all the events
occurring in our environment, into a simpler model
before we deal with it.
 The Agenda Setting Function of the Mass Media was
first put forth by Maxwell McCombs and Donald
Shaw in 1960’s in Public Opinion Quarterly.
 They originally suggested that the media sets the
public agenda, in the sense that they may not exactly
tell you what to think, but they may tell you what to
think about.
 In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom
staff, and broadcasters play an important part in
shaping political reality. Readers learn not only
about a given issue, but also how much importance is
attached to that issue from the amount of information
in a news story and its position. In reflecting what
candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass
media may well determine the important issues—that
is, the media may set the “agenda’’ of the campaign.
First • enacts the common subjects
that are most important.
level

• decides what parts of the

Second subject are important.
level
 This process is divided into three parts according to
Rogers and Dearing in their book Agenda Setting
Research.

 The first part of the process is the importance of the

issues that are going to be discussed in the media.
 Second, the issues discussed in the media have an
impact over the way the public thinks, this is referred
as public agenda.

 Third, the public agenda, ultimately, influences the

policy agenda.
Following are a few factors which may affect Agenda
Setting:

1. The combination of gatekeepers, editors and

managers.
2. External influences.

These external influences may be from non- media

sources, government officials and influential
individuals.
“If the media has close relationship with the elite
society, that class will probably affect the media
agenda and the public agenda in turn”.
 It gives media, the power to establish what news we
see or hear and what part of news is important to see
or hear i.e. establishes Media Agenda.

 It retrieves the opinion of the public.

 Agenda setting is very important in the political

aspect because the public agenda influences the
policy agenda which means that candidates will try
to focus on issues that the public wants to hear about
and solve.
Spiral of
Silence
Theory
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
who formulated the theory in
Germany in 1974
 if a person thinks
their opinion is not
shared by the
majority they will
most likely either…
Express
the opinion
they think
the
majority
DOES hold
Remain Silent.
 The Spiral of Silence Theory
explains the social trend towards
isolation and silencing one’s views
when a person feels like they are
in the minority opinion.
 Noelle-
Neumann
used voting
turnout
percentages
to explain a
person’s
This willingness
reasoning to express
can be their
applied to opinion
multiple through
social voting
issues. When a person feels they decisions.
are in the minority, they feel
more inclined to stay silent.
Political Participation is affected by the Spiral
of Silence, as it is a direct expression of
opinion.

My hypothesis states that new age technology has actually

increased the spiral in terms of political participation.
Remain Silent.
People are
afraid of
being
rejected, or
isolated,
from the
group.
Because of this fear, the
minority opinion is kept
quiet, appearing to

become even less widely

suppor ted, causing less
willingness of others to express
that par ticular opinion, and eventually
silencing the opinion altogether.
 The mass media provides a picture of
the dominantly accepted social norms,
But how customs, styles of clothing,

what the
do and what to think/believe.

“majority
peopl
e know
opinion”
is?
FOR THE STUDY OF
COMMUNCIATION,
THESE CONCEPTS
MATTER TO
RESEARCHERS OF:
1. public opinion
2. the individual and
interpersonal communication
3. mass media and communication
 We are all exposed to
the mass media in at least
one way or
another
 You are using
the inter net to
view my
presentation
at this ver y
moment!
T herefore, we ar e all at risk of…

the spiral of silence

A person who is not effected
by social pressure and does
not fear isolation from the
crowd, and therefore holds a
strong, unchanging position.
 Strong enough to DEFEAT
the spiral of silence effect!
 Does this theory apply to
other cultures? Or is it
specific to its country of
origin, Germany?

Is “fear of isolation”
really the main
factor of
Is the willingness to
hypothetical express opinion in
nature of these experimental
studies studies?
appropriate to
examine spiral of
silence?
 These unanswered questions
will serve as motivation for
further research into spiral of
silence in years to come.