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Analyzing A Work of Media Through McLuhan's Theory

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Analyzing A Work of Media Through McLuhan's Theory

Marshal McLuhan is remembered as one of the most well-regarded communication philosophers

because of his controversial thinking. In our current society, media ecology, knowledge of

communication, and its connection to human conditioning, such as communication, perception,

and social cognition, are two of the most important concepts. "The medium is the message" is

one of McLuhan's most famous phrases, and he uses it to clarify the assertion. McLuhan's

Understanding Media dates back to the 1960s, yet its ideas appear to be relevant today. Indeed,

despite the work's predictive nature, it is apparent that most of its arguments suit our current

understanding of the media. McLuhan's perspective is the most critical factor because his

analysis of electronic media and communication in contemporary society provides a broader

theory of the current median.

McLuhan predicted that the next medium would extend people's awareness, like

television and its content, rather than an environment. Using the medium as an extension of one's

self-awareness will revolutionize the art of television (Deshaye 2019). The expression of

McLuhan can be used to frame the American bandstand and how his claims justified the goal of

the American dance and music programs. A variety of television shows based on Dick Clark's

American Bandstand feature music and dance performances by various artists. In general,

McLuhan said that people were more interested in the show on television than its message.

Dick's show was famous because it played well-known tunes and interviewed music legends.

"She loves you" was the first Beatles song Dick Clark played when he invited the group on stage

for the first time in the show. While only scoring 73 out of a possible 100, the song was

nevertheless popular with listeners, as it came in third place out of the five songs performed that

day on the show.

McLuhan's theory of media as the medium could have been proven on that day since

viewers reacted differently to the Beatles. Many Beatle fans were more interested in what the

stars would indicate when they were seen than when they were heard, which piqued their sexual

curiosity (Horn 2018). Notably, McLuhan's criticism of the American bandstand was

misunderstood and misinterpreted. Music and dance classes did not teach people about music but

rewarded their attempts to create music for others. On the other hand, viewers were firmly

established that the shows constituted the message.

Over the past decades, people have utilized media, especially watched television or

listened to the radio to learn. Since then, they have transformed into creators, creating their

information in the twenty-first century. McLuhan said that people are affected by how they

receive information from the media rather than by the material itself. Any medium's substance,

according to McLuhan, can obscure the medium's nature (Islas,2016). People nowadays

communicate through various channels because technological advances have led to the

development of media. The McLuhan theory effects will be examined in this essay. As a result of

modern technology, our memory spans have decreased; studies show that 140-character tweets

have replaced news reporting. Using emojis instead of words has become the norm in

contemporary communication. Some children use remote controllers to silence their fighting

parents because of the media's effect on their synapses and way of thinking.

In this regard, it is still helpful to use McLuhan's maxim method to understand today's

media landscape. McLuhan believed that the media's cultural impact profoundly affected our

social surroundings and our senses. While the material is essential, McLuhan argues that the

structure and type of media are more critical. Media, according to McLuhan, has an impact on

both the content and the audience (Lamberti, 2012). Incorporating it allows viewers to grasp how
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media is used in today's culture. According to this method, a message's structure and presentation

are the essential variables in its success. To put it simply, this means that before a message can

be effectively conveyed, it first needs to catch the audience's eye (Guins, 2014). This concept

illustrates how the medium via which a message is delivered has a significant impact on the

message's effectiveness. As a result of the proliferation of many types of media in the twentieth

and twenty-first centuries, the press must build a medium that can cater to a particular audience

at a specific time. McLuhan's media theory currently explains how mass media select the best

medium for a given message to maximize its impact.

The sole constant in McLuhan's view of development was the social interconnection of

technology, which he never neglected. With the advancement of technology and its importance

in our daily lives, the idea has continued to grow (Ou Yang, 2016). Today, technology has

become so pervasive in our lives that even contemplating a world without the latest electronic

gadgets is nearly impossible. Everything from the way we conduct business today to the last

minute of our lives is influenced by technology, and it cannot be left out of the "equation." This

argument has led to a considerable examination of McLuhan's philosophy in communication

change.

McLuhan's idea of transformation is illustrated in the topic of postmodern culture

throughout the world. When we talk about globalization, we tend to talk about the efficacy of

communication networks as a subtext. Our cognitive and psychological foundations have been

extended by the technology that connects us to the rest of the world in many ways (McLuhan,

1999). McLuhan's human expansion includes using vehicle feet as a substitute for our own,

allowing us to move faster and more efficiently. If contemporary society is any indication,

McLuhan's prediction of the end of the world as we know it is only the beginning of what we
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might expect in the future (Alemoh, 2011). It suffices to say that this is a valid statement because

of how quickly communication technology is evolving and its impact on power shifting.

Understanding the medium of communication is critical to the success of any

project.

McLuhan's view on communication medium can be seen as the physical description of

the communication form itself. Media presentation can be untangled if one understands media

instruments, says McLuhan, who continues by saying that "the medium is the message." Using

the medium as our subject, he explains that "1) We become what we see and, 2) We construct

our tools, and, after that, our tools shape us." Both the subject and the medium are

indistinguishable in McLuhan's worldview. Even though the two are intertwined, technology is

rarely mentioned while discussing either issue.

Moreover, because it serves as the primary study of communication methods,

understanding the medium is critical. However, some other academics have argued that the study

needs to be refocused. This debate is primarily due to McLuhan's time constraints, which

severely restricted his research (Alemoh, 2011). Other notable aspects of this subject include

excluding it from exploring different disciplines, such as communication and sociology. Though

McLuhan's emphasis on the technological revolution as his primary study subject has been

widely criticized, it is time to reevaluate his position as we all know the importance technology

plays in our daily lives.

The Influence of McLuhan's Strategic Communication Philosophy on the Future

Development of the Field

Understanding Media and The Idea of Modern Architect are two of the most critical

aspects of McLuhan's work. One of the most extensively discussed theories in communication

study is that of media comprehension. There are several aspects to the subject, including

postmodern culture, human expansion, the personal and social effects of technology (such as the

media), "Hot" and "Cool" media, as well as the global village. According to McLuhan's theory of

"hot" and "cool" media, the degree of affecting participation in a medium can lead to a variety of

mixed media results (Ou Yang, 2016). Tv news, for example, may draw more viewers than radio

and newspapers, which require a little more work to fill in details.

The visual culture conveys the global village's context. As predicted by Marshall

McLuhan, humans have made the transition from an era of individual identification to one more

characterized by collective perception. As a result, a new generation of architects has emerged to

create hyper-realities that are both virtual and transient in response to technological

advancements (Logan, 2011). According to modern architects, one of the most compelling

justifications is that our perceptions of space and time are constantly shifting and changing. The

slogan "The Medium is the Message" coined by Marshall McLuhan is an accurate description of

media structure, yet this is not the only problem in his ideology. Researchers like Raymond

Williams have blasted McLuhan's too simple use of the word "medium" in his writings. Because

of his focus on technology, Williams, a cultural studies theorist from Wales, accused him of

being a "technical determinist."

Emerging' from technical research and tests, Williams says, functional determinism

transforms the area or culture from which it came. Notably, this is the nature of the modern

world: always being ready to adjust to new technologies as they emerge. While McLuhan

believes that our way of life is based on adopting any new media form, Williams argues that new
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technology does not have actual social significance until it is adapted to existing social and

economic circumstances (Guins, 2014). In addition, McLuhan's formalist media analysis could

not justify the methods of influence, political economics, institutional organization, and daily

living in the 21st century. The message's original intent is lost because of his medium hypothesis,

which ignores the significance of the message and instead concentrates entirely on the medium.

A human cannot see the media as something distinct and unique because the medium itself is the

message itself.

McLuhan's approach to media understanding can be examined through the medium of

television. A significant shift in the way people get information has been made possible by

television since its advent in the early twentieth century. For example, after watching the most

current episode of a television show, users can now speak with others worldwide who have also

seen the show. This medium has had a profound impact on society since its inception, and the

social features of television reflect this. From a critical point of view, there is a lack of challenge

to the notion of this powerful impact in the field of media theory. This unifying synesthetic

influence was brought about by the television picture, according to McLuhan. It has been easier

to access multiple programs like color television, which has expanded human contact and

engagement as this media medium has evolved (Chaparro- Dominguez et al., 2020). While

black-and-white services had previously been limited to a few providers, this allowed people to

have more control over what they saw in their daily routines. However, some media theorists and

cultural analysts argued that the influence of television programming generated a politically

illiterate culture, which in turn undermines democracy. Because viewers care more about what

they see than what they hear, this confirms McLuhan's theory that the media is the message.
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Despite McLuhan's extensive research into the evolution of information, the fundamental

premise of his philosophy has remained largely unexplored. McLuhan's work is shown to have a

crucial part in solving most of our contemporary strategic communication and technology-based

concerns. This data indicates that Marshall McLuhan's philosophy is a vital foundation for our

views about the digital age and the burgeoning culture of cyberspace (Lamberti, 2012). In this

regard, there should be a paradigm shift in technology architecture that also determines our

cultural adaption in society to analyze this issue properly. In McLuhan's idea, media are

extensions of ourselves, which is the greatest place to begin when describing him. Using Internet

social media as a subtopic, McLuhan highlights the amputation and extension of this digital

technology platform. Digital media has made ideological meaning and audience management

much easier for audiences. People utilize the Internet as an extension of their mental faculties.

Accessibility is the Internet's greatest asset. Unlike television, where most videos must be

precisely and professionally created, users can acquire professional content via services like

"BBC iPlayer" or download texts from torrent sites on the Internet.

"The Medium is the Message" explains that the medium by which a message is

interpreted determines the user's interpretation of the message. If a medium transmits

information that would otherwise be inaccessible, it may be the message itself. When it comes to

the media, McLuhan's media approach revealed that society was utterly unconscious of how the

medium and the message intertwined, leading them to be utterly dependent on the material and

indifferent to the media's more profound meaning. As seen by the variety of media forms

appearing in today's society, his approach for analyzing the media remains relevant, despite his

theory's claim that the message is less important than the medium. Even if McLuhan's
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communication theories were flawed, they nonetheless predicted how technology would affect

people's reactions to information based on how it was received.

References

Alemoh, T. A. (2011). Revisiting the Marshall McLuhan Metaphor: The Medium is the

Message. International Journal of Communication and Performing Arts, 3(1).

Chaparro-Domínguez, M. Á., & Repiso, R. (2020). Diffusion and impact of Marshall

McLuhan's published work in the Web of Science. Malaysian Journal of Library &

Information Science, 25(1), 67-81.

Deshaye, J. (2019). The Medium Is the Message Is the Metaphor: Cool Reason and the Young

Intellectual Public of Marshall McLuhan. Canadian Journal of Communication, 44(1).

Guins, R. (2014). The Present Went This-A-Way: Marshall McLuhan's Understanding

Media: The Extensions of Man@ 50. journal of visual culture, 13(1), 3-12.

Horn, M. Rudy Kousbroek on Marshall McLuhan. Canadian Journal of Netherlandic

Studies Revue canadienne d’études néerlandaises, 38(2017-2018), 15-25.

Islas, O. (2016). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), the foundations

of Marshall McLuhan's tetrad. Explorations in Media Ecology, 15(1), 81-91.

Lamberti, E. (2012). Marshall McLuhan's Mosaic: Probing the literary origins of media

studies. University of Toronto Press.

Logan, R. K. (2011). Figure/ground: cracking the McLuhan code. Revista da

Associação Nacional dos

McLuhan, M. (1999). The medium and the light: Reflections on religion and media. Eugene,

OR: Stoddart. ISBN: 9780415027960.

Ou Yang, S. (2016). Returning to the philosophical roots of sociomateriality: how M. Heidegger

and M. McLuhan questioned information communication technology. ACM SIGMIS

Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, 47(4), 93-105.