Saturday, July 24, 2010
Week 7:2 Medium is the Message
In Chapter 11 we get a chance to learn about communication in mass medium. I have to agree with Marshall McLuhan in his belief "the medium is the message," especially since I am a graphic designer. If your choice of medium is not proper for the message it will not be able to reach the target group. As believed by McLuhan's theory, "each medium has its own internal logic and each affects how we experience the world." (Trenholm, 307). There are so many mediums to choose from these days, it is possible to create successful messages which reach broad spans of people. However, knowing who your target group is and the purpose of the message, can influence what is the right medium in your situation. I have to disagree partially when it comes to McLuhan's belief in television as a cool medium. I don't know if the use of the term cool to describe "that viewers fill in detail" even applies properly. It is confusing in my opinion. I think that televisioin is a very powerful medium that can influence how we think, what we think about, and even teach us characteristics and behaviors. Any thing we look at, view, or read is going to create cognitive reactions. But the channels we use and the mediums that are put to use will definately affect the message and how it is received.
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I too thought that the choice of medium is important when getting a message across to a target group. In my discussion, I talked about the idea of advertising a new chocolate bar on TV or the newspaper as opposed to the radio, so it grabs the target group (kids) attention. McLuhan's use of "cool medium" does seem to be confusing and a little out dated. I agree with you that we create cognitive reactions based on what we see, read or hear. I think he was trying to say that we need to put more EFFORT to understand what we see or hear through television, since some messages are fact, some fiction and some fiction made to look like facts!!! I think many of us in the class found this confusing.
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