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. …show more content…
He asserts that with the invention of television, writing can basically be eliminated (125). There’s no use for it anymore, after all. What can be more engaging than a form of media that stimulates the senses so? Despite the beliefs of those who lived in the 60s and 70s, the twenty-first century is unfortunately not home to the world of the Jetsons. Writing is still a very powerful form of media, for the very book that this essay is centered around is still influential, forty-nine years later! However, books and newspapers are not our sole source of the written word. Online blogs, articles, and newsletters now exist. Television and books have merged into one: the Internet. Revolutions, riots, and rebellions don’t just happen in our living rooms now, they happen on the go with us. On the subway, when we’re waiting in line at Subway, at our friend’s house as he talks about how he’s “way into subs.” The Internet is now our primary source of information. Evolution doesn’t only just occur in nature. Nonetheless, The Medium is the Massage was published in 1967, and several of McLuhan’s points were ahead of their time and remain relevant today. The most notable of points was made within the first few pages of the book where McLuhan delves into the fact that from the moment we are born to the moment we die we are under constant surveillance and that privacy essentially no …show more content…
McLuhan included a quote written backwards that requires the reader to look in a mirror in order to read it (53-54), as well as a passage written upside down (55-56). Unlike most books, particularly the ones that are mandatory to read in school, this one isn’t tedious. It’s engaging, almost as McLuhan affirms television to be. Although, what makes the book different from others at this time is its use of visuals; there is some sort of graphic on every page. Most times there is no explanation for a photograph, we have to ask ourselves, “Why did he include this particular photo? What is he trying to tell us?” For example, on page 129 we see a black and white photograph of the Carver theatre in Birmingham, Alabama, and above the marquee reads, “Suspense! Excitement! Susan Hayward’s ‘Back Street’ and ‘Damn the Defiant.’” At first, this might seem like a photograph of the matinee of the day, but on the next page we see the picture in its entirety. The Carver theater becomes the background, and in the foreground is a black woman being apprehended by white police officers (130). “Damn the defiant,” the officers must be thinking, exemplifying the mood of the photograph perfectly. What McLuhan demonstrates on these two pages is that while “seeing is believing,” we can’t always trust with our eyes when others control what we do and do not see. This happens today with various news stations. Some are more liberal
Media, the plural form of medium, describes various ways in which we communicate in society. A phone call, email, radio, computer, news on TV, etc. are all forms of media. In our society today, the media plays a significantly large role in influencing society negatively, twisting one’s perspective of the truth. In author Brooke Gladstone’s, The Influencing Machine, she discusses how media is looked at as an “influencing machine,” that’s controlling the mind of its viewers. Throughout the reading, Gladstone guides her readers through perceptions of media and how it influences them to get readers to understand the truth about media and the manipulation behind it.
Clive Thompson is a journalist, blogger and writer. He mainly focuses his writing on science and technology but this one chapter from his book Smarter than you think, “Public thinking,” has put a spin on writing and technology. Multiple times he talks about writing in many different forms. For example, he speaks of writing on blogs, on internet short stories (or fan fiction novels), in schools, in studies, and even on a regular basis. Thomson is trying to explain to his readers how writing, and the sharing of information across the internet, is beneficial to our society and ones well-being. In my readings of Thompson’s excerpt, I will examine Thomson’s examples and show how they are relevant and that it is beneficial.
...forming the reader of what happened to the main character, George Wilson, after his act hit the news. All any person could see was either: A) He was using his constitutional right to defend his home and B) He was a white pasty man who took pleasure in killing blacks. The creativeness Sherman Alexie used to show how Americans are quick to assume he was white just because his skin was a couple shades lighter than expected is amazing. George was so consumed by the death of the kid he killed, he didn’t notice at first what people were saying. News teams were calling him white. The irony of this story is George was not white; he in fact is a registered member of a Native American tribe. This story shows a prime example that society in the United States are fast to judge and base assumptions strictly off of appearance; which is what Sherman Alexie was trying to pin out.
Although the discrepancy in time period between the novel and selected archival documents is substantial—approximately seventy years, in fact, as the three historical materials roughly date back to 1960s—public opinion regarding these controversial topics altered negligibly during this lengthy interval, an unfortunate reality that demonstrates the slow progression of civil rights history. Even into the contemporary moment, interracial relationships in particular remain a contentious subject in various conservative pockets of the nation. This time-related concession addressed, the first historical article that I wish to collate with Harper's novel is a photograph entitled Edgar and Randy Williamson; 1964. The ostensible whiteness of the young boys depicted is challenged by the image's accompanying caption: "The boys were deemed 1/16 or 1/32 black and were therefore barred from their local white and black schools" (citation). The curator's meticulous selection of the word "deemed" is significant here, because such a usage connotes the very arbitrary nature of such a racial designation; this ambiguity is further revealed by the imprecise ruling that the boys may be either "1/16 or 1/32 black." Such imprecision begs the question: how can an individual be
Namely, he gets his message across to his audience with the use of imagery. Even so, he says that when he’s out walking the streets of Brooklyn at night, he finds that women “set their faces on neutral”, place their purses “across their chest bandolier style”, and “forge ahead as though bracing themselves from being talked” (Staples 543). With this use of imagery, Staples is able to place an image in the reader’s head of a young women walking the streets- alone, tense, and skittish- all because of man who, unbeknownst, means no harm to her. This denotes the theme of racial profiling in society because it shows the woman’s fear of an African American walking the streets, whom of which has not made one advance or threatening move towards the woman. The woman’s ability to assume the worst in the blink of an eye shows how society has been drilled with the influence of stereotypes and racial profiling. This leads to the fact that an innocent man is being ridiculed for the color of his skin while he had done nothing to cause such actions. Moreover, the description of the woman’s reaction to Staples makes the audience pity him because of his innocence in the cruel and unfair situation and unwillingness to be anybody other than an innocent bystander. Additionally, Staples’ use
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.
McLuhan’s writings have opened up a forum for much discussion and academic study, and have laid the foundation for an area of study on communication mediums. In an interview with Playboy magazine, McLuhan argues that “man must, as a simple survival strategy, become aware of what is happening to him, despite the attendant pain of such comprehension” (Playboy). McLuhan states that his work has the “purpose of trying to understand our technological environment and its psychic and social consequences” (Playboy).
Whether man is escaping his plight through alcohol, through climbing mountains in an SUV, penetrating nature in a BMW convertible, or finding warmth in nicotine addiction, certain truths remain: the illusions created by the media reshape culture and consequently reshape the truths we perceive through the many levels of meaning hidden in their core. How much courage and wisdom will it take for men and women to rebel against these media executives who force-feed images promoting subservience to wealth and position in order to keep their pockets full. Studying media forces a re-examination of all that we see — just as Oscar Wilde suggests: ìTo look at a thing is very different from seeing a thingÖî
For years, the population has been exposed to different forms of media. Newspapers, magazines, television, films, radio, and more recently the Internet are ways of promoting ideas, spreading news, and advertising products.
Media, in its largest sense, hypothetically is one small page in the large "book of life". However, nineteenth century society has based an entire chapter of their lives on what happens in every medium used for communication. Through the creation of radio and of television in the late 1940's, and the modernization of newspapers and magazines, specifically, American culture has devoted themselves to a mass communications lifestyle in which they base most of their well being upon.
Marshall McLuhan is best known for coining the phrase “The Medium is the message”. He believed that society today is centred around electronic media. On the other hand David Riesman who’s most famous book is entitled “Lonely Crowd” centred his research around characteristics of American society. What these two men have in common is that they both believed that society could be separated into three distinct phases. Riesman believed that there were three distinct character types, tradition-directed, inner-directed and other-directed. While McLuhan believed that there were three types of society which he called oral societies, written societies and electronic societies. Riesman believed the inquiries into the relationship between social structure and social character. The question central to Riesman was what type of person was being formed in the emerging capitalist societies in the developed nations. McLuhan was theorist of literature whose ideas about media and global culture stimulated discussion among social the...
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.
Ong, Walter. “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought.” Writing Material. Ed. Evelyn Tribble. New York. 2003. 315-335.
Everyday we encounter the media in some form. It could be waking up to the sound of the radio, or passing billboards in the streets or simply just watching television. They are a lot of different forms of media, for example, verbal or written media, visual media and aural media. Examples of media would include newspapers, magazines, film, radio, television, billboard advertisements as well as the internet. Media studies came about because of the developments in mass communication and it provokes the generation of exigent questions about what we think we know as well how we came about knowing it. There are always changes in the media and the term “media” refers to the many ways of physically forming meanings as well and carrying them. The term “media studies” on the other hand, means different courses priorities different media; different theories and different learning outcomes (Bazalgette, 2000).
Media is the most powerful sector of an economy. It is a tool to maintain a balanced society which is characterized by well informed people, effective democracy and social justice. In fact, media has unparallel influence on all aspects of human life in modern times.