Media Ecology is a theory of communication that was developed by Marshall McLuhan and aims to examine the effects of these various media on our environment. Essentially, Media Ecology is the study of how different personal and social environments are created by different communication technologies.
Marshall McLuhan, the oracle of the electric age, has been called the “guru of the media” and he somehow achieved this title by studying the Ancient Greeks< /a> Sophists and obscure Renaissance humanists (Marchand 1). To properly understand why McLuhan became such an important and controversial theorist, it is necessary to consider both the most beloved and the most hated figures who share his journey. He was born in Canada and attended the University of Manitoba, where his willingness to follow the path of his beliefs sometimes made his professors see him as obstinate. McLuhan recognized the power of Canada in his works and said “Canada provides a warning system to the United States< /a> and seems to suggest the part of his specific value as a prophet and Guru from the fact that the foundation of his activities was in Canada and that he is Canadian” (Marchand 245). McLuhan then went to study at Cambridge, the university that literally painted modern and here he meets one of his own. the most famous leader I.A. Richard’s excellent English professor. McLuhan admired Richard’s “bold approach to criticizing the view that English studies is nothing more than a study of the process of communication” (Marchand 37). Richards believed that “Words do not remain fixed and almost all constructions of words are highly ambiguous” (Marchand 38). This element of Richard’s perspective on communication influenced the way in which McLuhan expressed many of his ideas using metaphors and phrases such as “The Global Village” and “The Medium Is the Message” two of his most well-known catchphrases. the theory of environmental ecology.
McLuhan used the approaches of Richards and William Empson, both of whom were considered peers of New Criticism, as an “entrée to the study of media” (Marchand 39). However, it took many years of reading and thinking before he could successfully implement his approaches. McLuhan decided, “If words were ambiguous and best studied not in terms of their ‘content’ (i.e. dictionary meaning) but in terms of their effects in some context and if the effects were often subliminal, the same would be true of other human artifacts, the wheel, in printing press, telegraph and TV” (Marchand 39). This led to the emergence of his ideas in Media Ecology and consequently many opportunities to act everything from written books, teaching as a university professor and working with television networks and magazine executives to advise business leaders.
Media Ecology is emphasized to understand the changes in society based on the ecological development of new media in technology. According to McLuhan, the introduction of new media over the centuries affects the way in which members of society communicate and interact with each other. To understand the magnitude of the impact that media has on our world, McLuhan believes that media must be considered from an ecological perspective.
Marshall McLuhan’s Table of Media History is a foundational element of Media Ecology. Media Ecology is based on a map that shows major ecological changes in media throughout human history. Media is essentially a product of technological progress. As society passes through various stages on the Media History Map, the way we communicate is influenced by the media introduced in each new era, in fact the means of communication make up the Age in which we live. The Media History Map illustrates the development from the Tribal, Literate and Print Age to the Electronic Age. Subsequently, the Digital Age, which is primarily the culmination of the Electronic Age, belongs to the 21st century in relation to Media History. New technologies have led to the development of communication that has led to various media that have established the structure of society. McLuhan believed that “graphing human use of technology could predict what society would do with a new invention” (McLuhan & Powers 1).
The phonetic alphabet, the printing press, the telegraph, the television, and the computer are all technologies and means that contribute to society’s transition from one era to the next. The Literature, Print and Electronic Age have all resulted from new media or technology. The Acoustic Era took place in the Tribal Age because the ear was the first sensory mechanism. The Visual Era occurred in the Literary Age because the eye became a major sensory organ because of the initiation of the alphabet, which changed society because of the effects it had on society. According to McLuhan, the phonetic alphabet separates us because “if you think of every human sense creating its own sense, the eye creates a space where it can be one at a time” (McLuhan & Powers 38). In addition, “the phonetic alphabet from McLuhan’s point of view” is an artifice that gives us reason, while it promotes the illusion of removing itself from the object” (McLuhan & Powers 38). Before the invention of writing, we lived in an acoustic space and writing was an acoustic visualization of space.
McLuhan mentions the pen and states in the book Counterblast that “the quill put an end to the talking goose, abolished the mystery, made architecture and towns, roads and armies and bureaucracies and the hands that filled the paper and built the city” (14). . McLuhan suggests that the transition from the Tribal Age to the Literary Age essentially changed society and initiated the rock of civilization. McLuhan claims that “the mechanization of writing mechanized the visual-acoustic metaphor on which all civilization rests; it created schools and mass education, the modern press and the telegraph” (McLuhan 15). The quintessential attribute of McLuhan’s Media History is that the claims of media affecting society and the environment in which we live all gain their credibility in the connection he makes between media in various eras and the changes that appear in it. society These are all from the new technologies, be it the alphabet, the printing press, the telegraph or the television.
The Print Age is the result of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press which is another major transition in society where books were mass produced. According to McLuhan, “Gutenberg made the whole of history available as information: the transportable book brought the world of the dead into the space of the nobleman’s library” (15). The electronic age was marked by the invention of the telegraph as society transitioned into the era of instant communication with the invention of the telegraph and then the telephone, phonograph, radio and television. All of this is the result of the Global Village, a connected electronic community where we can communicate with everyone everywhere. Radio, television and the computer make it possible for events to take place on one continent, to be known to everyone in the whole world. McLuhan’s perspective on Media Ecology is based on the effects of new media on our senses. This creates the concept of technological tools as extensions of man.
The mediums introduced in each of the Middle Ages constituted a certain extension of the sensual nature of man. Media Ecology is based on McLuhan’s idea of media as extensions thus “the book is an extension of the eye, the wheel is an extension of the foot, the garment is an extension of the skin and the electric circuit is an extension of the central nerves” (McLuhan and Fiore 40). In his book The Medium is Massagete McLuhan states that all mediums are extensions of some human capacity, psychic or physical (26). This is the zenith Media Ecology because the media by its very nature creates and influences environment and thus McLuhan’s theory is supported by the fact that the effects of social media they are perceptible, although the opposite is true, the environment created by the media and its effects are indiscernible because it is immersed in it.
The media affects our senses and therefore we perceive the ways in which our environment is controlled by the media. McLuhan suggests that “By changing the environment, the media evoke in us unique types of sensory perception, since the extension of each sense changes the way we think and act and the way we perceive the world” (McLuhan and Fiore 41). Media Ecology shows the concept of media created in a environment “All media works for us as a whole, they are so pervasive in their personal , political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences, so that they leave no part of us untouched, intact and unchanged” (McLuhan and Fiore 26).
According to McLuhan, the reason the new environment was invisible was because it “saturates the entire field of attention” (Marchand 177). In fact, the medium becomes an extension of who we are and this is easily supported by our environment, because active participation in the environment makes us ignore its effects.
The medium becomes an extension of who we are, because “however the extension is viewed by us in technological form, we need to use or perceive it in order to embrace it.” (Understanding the Media 46) Listening to the radio, reading the printed page, watching television and using the computer is to accept these extensions of ourselves in the personal system (McLuhan 46).
“Medium is the Message,” one of McLuhan’s most famous lines, actually has more than just a quote; It is a form of Media Ecology Theory. In fact, “The Medium is the Message” is McLuhan’s philosophical and theoretical approach in seeking to define the importance of the media in terms of how the personal and social world creates and shapes our reality and essentially. The medium is the Message can have two meanings according to its effect on society “Age” and “Language”. On the one hand, the medium determines the “Age” in which we live (McLuhan 23). For example: The Electronic Age is created by media such as telephones and computers. Thus McLuhan’s Media Ecology makes a true ring, although not scientifically measurable, but the reality of Media Ecology is seen in the effects of the medium.
The necessity of the fact that our environments have changed in the “Age” is evident in the various periods of the development of communication. For example: The electronic age has created an electronic environment that affects us every day. What can also be done shows that the medium is inextricably linked with the social and personal environment in which we live. The medium The second medium creates a “language” because it influences the way in which we learn to communicate. The message is therefore based on the language in the personal or social environment, which directly affects the medium, which persists in that situation. Language is content and content in the medium, so the medium is the message. In our present digital media age as YouTube online video communication has become a new language; the way we share in the “Global Village”. In fact, President-elect Obama used YouTube to share his message of change during the campaign and plans to continue using this medium of communication throughout his presidency to communicate with the country and the world.
Media Ecology falls under the Socio-Cultural tradition in the theory of communication. Communication technology is a social entity and thus “communication” is the creation and establishment of personal and social environments created by the medium. According to the socio-cultural tradition, people create and reproduce culture while they speak. From an environmental ecology perspective, the means by which people help create and maintain the social, personal, and cultural environments in which they engage in interacting with the environment. Since a medium is a mechanism of communication, the medium used creates, influences, and constitutes the social reality in which people interact.
This social reality affects the personal and social environments in which they live, and this is the foundation of the socio-cultural communication tradition. McLuhan supports this argument in his idea of the medium as a message, because “every new medium has created its own environment, which has treated the human senses with absolute cruelty” (Marchand 177). In addition, according to McLuhan, “a new medium not only added itself to what already existed, but insensibly transformed everything that already existed” (March 177). In the socio-cultural tradition, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity suggests that the way people think and act is shaped by the structure of language and culture. Media ecology essentially shows that new media theories are changing our social and personal language, so to speak, creating our environment by creating our structure . language in a social sense therefore influences the way in which we communicate. For example the advent of the internet influences our social and personal environment, members, instant messenger, social networking sites and the like. they are all media that include the hyperbolic language of texts that constitute the communication language of the Digital Age.
The nature of cultural society in media ecology is built on the premise that the language used in any particular society determines how that society communicates and interacts. Hence, the placement of Media Ecology in the socio-cultural tradition can take place according to the way we look at Marshall McLuhan’s Media History Chart and its applicability to the “linguistic reality” of society. The socio-cultural tradition supports McLuhan’s idea that the medium as language forms “the organization of daily life as society began to look like it echoes linguistics or repeats the norms of the Latin language” (Understanding Media 49). In other words, the medium of a certain age of communication influences how people think, act, and communicate. Their social and personal reality is shaped by their communication attitudes, which are directly related to the medium that dominates the age of communication in which they live. Likewise, the “medium of language” used in any culture is affected by the era in which that culture exists. For example, in the Age of Literature, language can be interpreted to be based on visual engagement in the communication process and social reality to be structured on visual factors.
Media Ecology will be appropriated to the socio-cultural tradition, because it can be properly applied to the existing Electronic and Digital Age, in which new media, like hand held devices like palm pilot, cell phones with text messaging capability, computers and software all represent the language structure of our culture that shapes how we communicate. Our social and personal environments are constructed based on electronic media, whether computer, cell phone or hand-held notes. Media Ecology is faced with many critics, because the founder Marshall’s theory McLuhan is misunderstood by many social and cultural. who sees his plans as unjust and preposterous. Raymond Williams, one of the founders of British cultural studies, initially thought that McLuhan “preceded all other scholars in analyzing print culture, but criticized McLuhan for dismissing print as an accidental factor in social development” (Grosswiler132). Williams completely dismissed McLuhan, stating that he was a technological determinist and attacked McLuhan for his “ahistorical” formalist analysis of media, which prioritizes psychological rather than social process” (Grosswiler132). According to Williams McLuhan, “technological determinism will reduce everything in history outside the media. to effect” (Grosswiler 133). Williams stated that McLuhan’s image of a “Global Village” society was “funny in description…because it elevated instant communication from the technical to the social level” and that it neglected electronic media. they are shaped by social institutions” (Grosswiler 133). Williams argues that “If the effect of the medium is the same, whoever controls or uses it, and whatever one tries to insert into the apparent contents, we can forget about ordinary politics. and the argument of culture and technology to run itself” (Grosswiler133).
Scholars of US cultural studies also had a generally negative but mixed opinion of McLuhan. James Carey, a scholar in cultural studies, rejected “making the psychology of perception a pillar of theory” (Grosswiler 134). Carey portrays McLuhan as a “poet of technology” who offers a secular speech to technology and who represents a secular, religious determinism (Grosswiler 135). Umberto Eco McLuhan’s critical theory using semiotic analysis approach. Eco refers to McLuhan as “apocalyptic who means that mass media do not transmit the mass, they are ideologies themselves” (Grosswiler 135 ).
Eco also contradicted the views that “the medium is based on the residual freedom of the audience to interpret differently” (Grosswiler 136). Eco further challenged McLuhan’s proposal and suggested that “The medium is not the message, the message becomes what the receiver makes of it, applying to it his own codes of reception, which are neither the sender nor the scholar of communications.” (Grosswiler 137). Eco also attacked McLuhan’s words and definitions. stating that McLuhan erred in arguing that metaphors are the medium that interprets experience into new forms” (Grosswiler 136).
Carey also criticized McLuhan’s “Global Village” as turning the world into one community through the annihilation of space and time and dismissed this idea as “nothing but a fantasy” (Grosswiler 142). It is clear that Carey could not foresee the Digital Age that fulfilled McLuhan’s prediction. According to Grosswiler, criticisms of McLuhan’s theories are based on the fact that “his writings did not take the usual form of scholarly communications, his books were not like books, his propositions, labels and processes were not generally expressed in ways that would facilitate verification.” (182). Most critics complained that his “methodology in the realm of poets and prophets rather than academic scholars” (Grosswiler 182). In addition, the most serious criticism of his theory was that “he did not clearly state his hypotheses and his thinking within social science research tradition” (Grosswiler 18). McLuhan drew such bitter criticism because his method was absolute and even frustrating to those who could not understand it. McLuhan challenged the ordinary intellectual mind.
Media Ecology is a good qualitative theory because it relies on interpretation and takes an inductive approach. This system also uses contextualization in relation to the underlying material. Media Ecology is based on socially constructed reality and takes an emic perspective. They create media effects and structure our social and personal life. According to McLuhan, “The media are effects of new environments that are as insensitive as water to fish, largely subliminal” (McLuhan 22). Media Ecology is also a quality because it looks for patterns. This can be seen in the effects of new technologies on the Media History Table, where the introduction of new media drives transformations in society. McLuhan also refers to patterns in the effect that the medium has on us. In the book Counterblast, “In the face of counter-information, we have nothing but pattern-cognition” (133). Examples lead to behavior and can form extensions that McLuhan talks about and this relates to the contextual aspect of qualitative theory. My keyboard and computer screen are an extension of my hands and eyes; I have to add this point by constantly checking my email on a daily basis. This example has become part of my daily routine especially because the medium of the internet has created my environment that connects me. to others
I see Media Ecology theory in action in my everyday personal and social environment. I consider myself living in the Digital Age and the effects of the new media technologies of the Digital Age are all around me. I say that my habitual need to use the computer and my cell phone on a daily basis is indicative of the fact that these media extensions have become my they are Many of my high school friends and I’ve known them since he was a teenager either live here in the US or overseas and we communicate regularly via instant messaging which is essentially our primary form of communication. My friends and I all share in the Global Village that McLuhan talks about in his Media Ecology theory. I am so immersed in my digital environment that it is invisible to me, because nature is similar in many ways.
In addition, as a communication, I produce radio broadcasts and videos, experimental shows and make them on my computer and upload them to the Internet to share with to others I like that most of the YouTube generation grew up in this Electronic Age and it is easy to assimilate into the Digital Age, because this technology comes naturally to us. My observations of the recent presidential elections also lead me to believe that the effectiveness of McLuhan’s media theory also plays an important role in our politics. The campaign on TV and the way each candidate portrayed himself and his opponent to the voters is an example of the effect of the electronic age on social perception. In his book Laws of the Media, McLuhan argued that “the sole power of the electronic media is to reproduce the content of images of people, and thereby to define their behavior and beliefs” (71).
Media Ecology, in my opinion, is one of the most interesting communication theories I have come across as far as communication students. I find it very intriguing that Marshall McLuhan was very insightful in his ideas, especially in the concept of the Global Village. He predicted a world connected by the internet and new media technologies at a time when there was no such thing as news or news or instant messaging, internet videos and blogs. Additionally, McLuhan’s focus on the media as a topic is somewhat ambitious and the concept of “Medium Message” makes sense because the theme of the media’s effects on society is inexorably true. As McLuhan poetically stated, “The ‘content’ of the medium is like juicy meat brought from the burg to distract the mind’s eye” (Levinson 37). our understanding and also the perception of the medium and the rest that are around it”. (Levinson 36) This explains the concept of media extensions of who we are, because the media in the Media History Map created the environment in which we communicate.
I find McLuhan’s remiss approach in expressing his ideas to be somewhat synonymous with his theory, since it is in itself a theory of exploration rather than explanation. McLuhan’s Media Ecology theory is quite relevant to the 21st Century because his system has become our reality. Time has proven its critics wrong because the meaning of Ecology Media is even more relevant today than it was fifteen years ago. This shows the effectiveness of the theory, because any claim is just a claim unless it can withstand the test of time. McLuhan’s Theory of Media Ecology proved to be more than just a shot in the dark as it really sheds a lot of light on the effects of the mass media we live in today.
Notes:
Marchand, Philip. “Marshall McLuhan: Medium and Message: A Biography.”
Levinson, P. “Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium.”
McLuhan and Powers. “The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (Communication and Society)”.
Grosswiler, Paul. Method is the Message: Rethinking McLuhan Through Critical Theory.”
McLuhan and Fiore. “It’s a medium of stress.”
