1. “The medium is the message” is a phrase used by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the medium itself should be perceived as the message. The content that a particular medium carries should not be the focus, rather the medium itself is of greater importance. This is because the characteristics of a given medium often define the way it effects society. The “message” is the personal and social consequences of a given medium. An example using the medium of television is helpful. A television, according to McLuhan, is not only the medium, but the message as well. Televisions are a visual medium. They tell stories and engage their audiences through visual displays. Therefore, the characteristic of being a visual medium becomes imbedded in the message itself. Since televisions need to engage their audience through stimulating visual displays, this affects the message or the content. So, take for example, a news story: Michael Jackson died. On the television, while the news is breaking, the program may play clips of Michael being rushed to the hospital. After it is discovered that Michael died, they may play clips from his music videos or controversial life. In a newspaper, however, the content or means of displaying the content is going to be different. A newspaper cannot play visual clips, so they would likely rely on more in depth reporting. Their story may go deeper into the causes of his death, or try to explain, in words, his success as a musical performer or controversial life. This exemplifies how the exact same story (Michael Jackson dying) is displayed differently on either given medium. Therefore, the medium plays a big role in shaping the message; the medium is the message. Furthermore, he said the medium is the massage as well. That is, through the content of the medium, we become distracted and do not realize the greater social implications of a particular medium. The content “massages” us into apathy.
2. Movies as a medium act as a message in many different ways. To clarify, when I say message here, I mean personal and social consequences of movies as a medium. Of course there are several ways that movies influence people. For example, one thing characteristic of movies, is that it puts somewhat strict time constraints on how long it takes for a story to be told. Most movies are around two hours, and it has become the preference of society to attend movies that are around two hours in duration. Of course, there is no law limiting movies to a certain time, but this is simply how the medium works. People go to a movie and expect the entire story to be told within around a two hour timeframe. It seems plausible that many stories would take longer than two hours to convey all that the particular story has to convey. However, these time constraints undoubtedly affect the content. What is the message or societal implications? Perhaps that society begins to prefer condensed versions of stories that fit within the time constraints rather than getting the in depth details. Another example is the absent mindedness that comes along with movie watching. As the popular saying goes, “I’m just going to ‘veg’ out and watch the television.” Movies do not take a lot of mental concentration, yet they do often take up a lot of our time. The message here, then, could be that society is becoming stupefied by movies which do not stimulate any positive cognitive functions. The messages of the web could be countless as well. One salient message is that it tends to play to our notions of instant gratification. With the internet, and especially search engines such as Google, you can easily blast through research and find answers to questions almost instantaneously. A wider societal consequence could be that this is quickly undermining the virtues of patience and diligence. Also, the internet could possibly be detrimental to our attention spans. Since so much information is constantly bombarding people on the net, it is easy to quickly click through sites, take in vast amounts and disparate pieces of information, rather than stick to a since subject and take in all the important details. A positive aspect of the web as a message is the fact that it has given everyday members of society a voice. Through websites such as twitter and youtube people can let their opinions be heard. This could have galvanizing affects on our civil society and democracy. Today, for example, Barack Obama is responding to web posts by citizens in his health care town hall meeting.
4. E-mail has many profound messages as well. As a device for communication it allows people to send direct and detailed information to whomever they please (so long as they have their e-mail address). This can have many societal consequences. One consequence is that it increases the speed with which we can orchestrate group communication. People in the work place can send out electronic memos to everyone in the building. Consequently, information is shared more quickly and efficiently. Therefore, each worker is more quickly and efficiently informed and should presumably have greater output as a result. Another consequence however is that society as a whole is likely to replace direct person to person contact with email. For example, the president of my fraternity recently started having e-meetings, where instead of attending chapter at the fraternity house, he simply e-mails out all of the points he wanted to discuss. For many people this is very convenient—they don’t have to quit watching Sunday night television to come to the meeting—but many say that it breaks the intimate communication shared amongst physically present peers. The medium of social networking represents a strong message as well. One commonly referred to societal consequence of the social network facebook is that it can be detrimental to those seeking employment. Employers, it is said, have been known to request to see potential employees’ facebook accounts. Often these accounts contain pictures of the employee engaged in various acts of debauchery, and upon viewing them, the employers opt against hiring the potential employee. Another message through social networking is the connectedness that it can help maintain. For example, I went abroad and studied in Argentina for a few months. While I was there I met many people from all over the world. Facebook and myspace have helped me to keep in touch with all of these people on a much more intimate level than I would be if it did not exist. So the broader message here could be that social networking as a medium is conducive to an increased interconnectedness amongst friends from all over the world.
5. If I owned a newspaper right now I would take quick action to save it. The first thing I would do is hire reporters who were specialists in the particular fields that my newspaper is reporting on. For example, for the crime beat, I may hire someone who has a degree in criminal justice; or for the entertainment section I would hire journalists who have spent a long time immersed in things such as theatre, pop culture, cinema, travel and the like. These people would be seen as experts in their particular field. I would then allow them to not only report on a story in the traditional-objective fashion of a news reporter, but I would have them give analysis as well. So, instead of merely a story about Obama giving a speech on health care, they would write the story and then follow it with some informed and insightful analysis. As we have learned this semester, the competition for the news is quickly rising. It is going to be hard to profit only from news gathering because news gathering has become easy. With the internet, news is dispersed quickly and cheaply, so the origins are not quite as important. The only way to give my paper an edge then, will be to provide insightful analysis. This will set my paper apart from the rest of the news sources. Second of all, I would require each of my reporters to shoot some sort of multimedia with any story they are doing — this could include a video, slideshow, graph or the like — and they would need to post it to our freshly created internet site. The site would be much like MSNBC.com: extremely engaging and interactive. We would include slide shows, allow people to comment, and have videos and graphs explaining complex stories. We would monitize the site through several different types of advertisements. For example, if a person wants to watch a video, a quick commercial will play right before the video begins. Also, we will have sponsored question and answer sessions with our reporters who are experts. So, citizens who may be concerned with the aforementioned Obama health care plan can get online and ask questions at a predetermined time. For example, It could be called The Harris Hospital Town Meeting for the health care. Our experts would be on video chat, or in a chat room, that is sponsored and heavily advertised on by Harris Hospital, and concerned persons can get on and ask them questions. All of this will be hosted on our site. The site will be mostly free. However, if a person wants to access the analysis of certain stories they will have to pay a “circulation fee.” This fee, will grant them access to all of the analysis, and will be paid once every 3 months. The fee would be around $10. Also, for those who still prefer a newspaper to be held in their hands, they too can pay a circulation fee which will allow the paper to be delivered to them. The paper will include all of the analysis. The important thing is that the analysis, not the news, comes at a price. So, the news on the site is free to the public, but hopefully, if it is presented in an attractive way, it will lure people towards the expert analysis. We will also have extensive social networking accounts on myspace, facebook and Twitter. Each of these will be used to help leverage the news site, and try to draw people towards the analysis. The expert reporters will be the background, and will themselves be advertised. Each week we will have a “featured expert-reporter,” where patrons of our news paper and site can learn about the person feeding them the news. Hopefully, this will help to generate followings around certain reporters within the paper. They will be followed and read much like your tradition opinion columnist. Each reporter will also be responsible in promoting themselves; they must have active twitter, myspace, and facebook accounts which they post on regularly. They will be instructed to post comments and links on twitter which should allure people back towards our news site. All of these facets working together should hopefully generate enough buzz around my newspaper that it will maintain its profitability.
6. TV news and TV campaign advertising affect the political process in many ways and on many different levels. TV news is the medium that supplanted other forms of informing the public within years of its inception. So, it has a very direct effect because most people are informed through television. Therefore, such important political feats as garnering public support for bills going through congress, campaigning, and public policy debates have all come to rely on the television. TV news affects the political process in that certain networks are said to be biased on partisan lines. It is often held as general knowledge that Fox is a conservative station while CNN is more liberal. This means people who watch Fox news are likely to become further entrenched conservatives, while the opposite is true of CNN. Furthermore, TV news is a very visually dependent medium. To convey a story on television it needs to have a visually stimulating component. Therefore, television usually employs the usage of talking heads on the television screen or can resort to argumentative debates on certain political issues. It is often the case that in depth accounts of important political occurrences and policies are often pushed aside in TV news. In their place are the more shallow and sensational aspects. Above everything else, television news exists to connect public consumers to advertisers. A consequence of this is that television news is in a race for ratings. The news station with the highest ratings is most attractive for advertisers. Therefore, there is great incentive to sensationalize news and show stories that pander to the publics’ emotional side. Stories about celebrities or crime often take precedence over politics. This can possibly result in a poorly informed public, which undoubtedly affects a democratic political system which relies on an informed public. As we saw in the 1952 election campaigns between Eisenhower and Stevenson, the television is a very important campaign advertising tool. Eisenhower’s intelligent use of electronic campaigning through quick spot commercials and officious jingles likely helped him to gain much popularity. Since Eisenhower’s success, TV ads have been used throughout the entire latter half of the 20th century and throughout the beginning of the 21st to battle for public support. What has resulted is that candidates have been dropping exorbitant amounts of money on television ads, and the cost of campaigning has sharply risen. However, television advertising is absolutely necessary because it reaches such a wide audience. So the political process and the medium of television advertising have become intertwined, so that no candidate could possibly win an election without paying dearly for television advertising.
