Media Ecology is a communication theory that was developed by Marshall McLuhan and focuses on examining the effects of these various types of media on our environments. In essence Media Ecology is the study of how various personal and social environments are created by different communication technologies.
Marshall McLuhan was referred to as a “media guru” the oracle of the electric age and he somehow achieved this title by studying ancient Greek Sophists and obscure Renaissance humanists (Marchand 1). To properly understand why McLuhan was such an influential and controversial theorist his journey in becoming both on of the most loved and hated figures in communication must be taken into consideration. He was Canadian born and attended the University of Manitoba where his inclination in following the trail of his ideas sometimes caused his professors to view him as obstinate. McLuhan acknowledged the Canadian influence in his works and mentioned that, “Canada provides an early warning system for the United States and seems to suggest that part of his specific value as a prophet and guru comes from the fact that his base of operations has been in Canada and that he is Canadian”(Marchand 245). McLuhan then went on to study at Cambridge , a university which literally pioneered modern literary criticism and here he met one of his most notable mentors I.A. Richards a distinguished English professor. McLuhan admired “the boldness of Richards’s approach to criticism view that English studies are themselves nothing but a study of the process of communication” (Marchand 37). Richards believed that “Words won’t stay put and almost all verbal constructions are highly ambiguous” (Marchand 38). It was this element of Richards’ perspective on communication that 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 phrases that encapsulate the theory of Media Ecology.
McLuhan used the approaches of Richards and William Empson both of whom were considered as the godfathers of New Criticism, as an “entrée to the study of media” (Marchand 39). However it took many years of reading and reflection before he was able to successfully fulfill their approaches. McLuhan determined that “If words were ambiguous and best studied not in terms of their “content” (i.e. dictionary meaning) but in terms of their effects in a given context and if the effects were often subliminal, the same might be true of other human artifacts, the wheel, the printing press, the telegraph and the TV” (Marchand 39). This led to the emergence of his ideas on Media Ecology and consequently many opportunities to do everything from writing books, teaching as a university professor and working with television networks and magazine executives to advising business leaders.
The emphasis of Media Ecology is geared toward identifying the changes in society based on an ecological progression of new mediums in technology. According to McLuhan the introduction of new mediums throughout the ages has affected the way in which members of a society communicate and interact. In order to understand the magnitude of impact that media has in our world McLuhan believes that media should be viewed from an ecological perspective.
The Marshall McLuhan Media Map of History is a foundational element of Media Ecology. Media Ecology is based on the map which shows the major ecological shifts in media throughout human history. Media is essentially a product of technological advancement. As society passes through the various stages in the Media Map of History the way in which we communicate is influenced by the mediums introduced in each new era in fact media creates the Communication Age in which we live. The Media Map of History illustrates a progression from the Tribal, Literate and Print Ages to the Electronic Age. Subsequently the Digital Age which is primarily the apex of the Electronic Age is relevant to the 21st century in relation to the Media Map of History. The new technologies led to a communication evolution that was influenced by inventions of various mediums that determined the structure of society. McLuhan believed that “graphing the human use of an artifact could predict what society might do with a new invention” (McLuhan & Powers 1).
The phonetic alphabet, printing press, telegraph, television and computer are all artifacts and likewise mediums that contributed to transitioning society from one era to the next. The Literary, Print and Electronic Ages all came as a result of new mediums or technologies. The Acoustic Era occurred in the Tribal Age since the ear was the primary sensory mechanism. The Visual Era occurred in the Literary Age since the eye became the major sensory organ due to the introduction of the alphabet which changed society because of the effects it had on society. According to McLuhan the phonetic alphabet makes us detached because “if you think of every human sense as creating its own space, the eye creates a space where there can only be one thing at a time” (McLuhan & Powers 38). Moreover “the phonetic alphabet from McLuhan’s perspective is an artifact that gives us a point of view since it promotes the illusion of removing oneself from the object” (McLuhan & Powers 38). Before writing was invented we lived in acoustic space and writing was the visualization of acoustic space.
McLuhan mentions the pen and in his book Counterblast states that, “A goose quill put an end to talk, abolished mystery, gave architecture and towns, brought roads and armies and bureaucracies and the hand that filled a paper built a city” (14). McLuhan is suggesting that the transition from the Tribal Age to the Literary Age essentially changed society and initiated the bedrock of civilization. McLuhan asserts that, “the mechanization of writing mechanized the visual-acoustic metaphor on which all civilization rests; it created the classroom and mass education, the modern press and telegraph”(McLuhan 15). The quintessential attribute of McLuhan’s Media Map of History is the fact that his claims of mediums affecting society and influencing the environments in which we live all get their credence in the connection he makes between the mediums in the various eras and the changes that are seen in society. All of which come as a result of the new technologies be it the alphabet, a printing press, telegraph or television.
The Print Age is a result of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press this is responsible for another major transition in society where books were mass produced. According to McLuhan “Gutenberg made all history available as classified data: the transportable book brought the world of the dead into the space of the gentleman’s library” (15). The Electronic Age marked by the invention of the telegraph transitioned society into an era of instantaneous communication with the invention of the telegraph and subsequently the telephone, phonograph, radio and television. All of which gave rise to the Global Village a worldwide community connected electronically where we can communicate with everyone, everywhere. The radio, television and computer make it possible for events taking place on one continent to become known to all of us worldwide. McLuhan’s outlook on Media Ecology is based on the effects of the new mediums on our senses. This brings into play his notion of media technologies as extensions of man.
The mediums introduced in each Media Age constituted an extension of some aspect of man’s sensory nature. 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, clothing is an extension of the skin and electric circuitry is an extension of the central nervous system” (McLuhan and Fiore 40). In his book the Medium is the Massage McLuhan states that all media are extensions of some human faculty, psychic or physical” (26). This is the zenith of Media Ecology since media by its very nature creates and influences environments and thus Mcluhan’s theory is supported by the fact that the effects media has on society are perceptible even though the opposite is true. We live in a media created environment and its effects are somewhat indiscernible because we are immersed in it. The environment is invisible yet the effect of media on us is quite incontestable.
Media affects our sense of perception therefore the way we perceive our environment is media controlled. McLuhan suggests that “Media by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions since the extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act and the way we perceive the world” (McLuhan and Fiore 41). The Media Ecology concept of a media created environment shows that “All media work us over completely; they are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected and unaltered” (McLuhan and Fiore 26).
According to McLuhan the reason the new environment was invisible is because “it saturates the whole field of attention” (Marchand 177). In effect the medium becomes an extension of who we are and our environment easily facilitates this because our active participation in the environment causes us to become unaware of its effects.
The medium becomes an extension of who we are because “to behold, use or perceive any extension of ourselves in technological form is necessarily to embrace it.” (Understanding Media 46) Listening to the radio, reading the printed page, watching the television and using the computer is to accept these extensions of ourselves into our personal system (McLuhan 46).
The “Medium Is the Message” one of McLuhan’s most notable quotes is in fact more than just a quote; it is the embodiment of the Media Ecology Theory. In fact “The Medium is The Message” is the philosophical and theoretical approach McLuhan takes in his quest to define the relevance of media in terms of how it creates and shapes our personal and social worlds and in essence our reality. The Medium is the Message can have two meanings in terms of its effect on society’s “Age” and “Language”. Firstly the medium determines the “Age” in which we live (McLuhan 23). For instance the Electronic Age is created by mediums such as the telephone and computers. Thus McLuhan’s Media Map of Ecology does ring true although it is not scientifically measurable but the reality of Media Ecology is seen in the effects of the medium.
The inevitability of the fact that our environments have changed over the “Ages” is evidenced in the various eras of communication development. For instance the Electronic Age has created an electronic environment that affects us everyday. The fact that this is even possible shows that the medium is inextricably linked to the social and personal environments in which we live. Secondly the medium creates the “language” because it influences the way in which we communicate in the environment. Therefore the message is based on the language used in the personal or social environment which is directly influenced by the medium that persists in that environment. The language is the content and the content is within the medium thus the medium is the message. In our present Digital Age mediums such as YouTube online video sharing has become a new language; a way in which we communicate in the “Global Village.” In fact President-elect Obama used You-Tube to communicate his message of change during his campaign and he 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 of communication theory. The communication technology medium is the social reality and thus “communication” is the creation and enactment of the personal and social environments created by the medium. According to the socio-cultural tradition people produce and reproduce culture as they talk. From a Media Ecology perspective mediums used by people help create and maintain the social, personal and cultural environments in which they function as they communicate in the environment. Given that the medium is the communication mechanism the medium utilized creates, influences and determines the social reality in which people interact.
This social reality affects the personal and social environments in which they live and this is the basis of the socio-cultural communication tradition. McLuhan’s argument supports this fact in his idea of the medium as the message since “every new medium created its own environment, which acted on human sensibilities in a total ruthless fashion” (Marchand 177). Moreover according to McLuhan, “A new medium did not just add itself to what already existed; it transformed, however imperceptible, whatever already existed” (Marchand 177). In the socio-cultural tradition the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity suggests that the way in which people think and act is shaped by the structure of a culture’s language. Essentially Media Ecology theory demonstrates that new mediums alter our social and personal language so to speak by creating our environment it structures our language in a social sense and therefore influences the way in which we communicate. For instance the advent of the internet influences our social and personal environments, emails, instant messenger, social networking sites and the like are all media that comprise a language of hyper text markup language which constitute the communication language of the Digital Age.
The socio- cultural nature of Media Ecology is built on the premise that 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 be applicable in terms of the way in which we look at the Marshall McLuhan’s Media Map of History and its applicability to the “linguistic reality” of society. The socio-cultural tradition supports McLuhan’s notion that the medium as a language shapes “the arrangement of daily life so that society begins to look like a linguistic echo or repeat of language norms” (Understanding Media 49). In other words the medium of a certain communication age influences the way people think, act and communicate. Their social and personal reality is formed by their communication habits which are directly related to the medium that dominates the communication age in which they live. Likewise the ‘language medium’ used in any given culture is affected by the age in which that culture exists. For instance in the Literate Age the language could be interpreted as being based on a visual engagement in the communication process and the social reality was structured based on visual factors.
Media Ecology can be appropriated to the socio-cultural tradition because it can be aptly applied to the existing Electronic and Digital Age in which new media such as hand held devices like palm pilot, cell phones with text messaging capability, computers and software all represent the structure of our cultural language that shapes how we communicate. Our social and personal environments are constructed based on the electronic medium whether it’s a computer, cell phone or hand held device. Media Ecology is subject to many criticisms largely because the founder of the theory Marshall McLuhan is misunderstood by many social and cultural scholars who viewed his ideas as outrageous and preposterous. Raymond Williams one of the founders of British cultural studies initially thought that McLuhan was “ahead of all other scholars in analyzing print culture but he criticized McLuhan for isolating print as a casual factor in social development” (Grosswiler132). Williams completely dismissed McLuhan by claiming that he is a technological determinist and attacked McLuhan for his ‘ahistorical’ formalist analysis of media which prefaces psychic rather than social processes” (Grosswiler132). According to Williams Mcluhan’s “technological determinism reduces everything in history outside of media to an effect” (Grosswiler 133). Williams stated that McLuhan’s image of society as a “Global Village” was “ludicrous as a description…because it elevated instant communication from a technical to a social level and ignored the fact that electronic media are shaped by social institutions” (Grosswiler 133). Williams’ argument is that, “If the effect of the medium is the same, whoever controls or uses it, and whatever apparent content he may try to insert, then we can forget ordinary political and cultural argument and let the technology run itself” (Grosswiler133).
Scholars of US cultural studies also had a generally negative but mixed opinion of McLuhan. James Carey a cultural studies scholar rejected “the making of the psychology of perception into the mainstay of the theory” (Grosswiler 134). Carey depicts McLuhan as a “poet of technology who offers a secular prayer to technology and who represents a secularized, religious determinism” (Grosswiler 135). Umberto Eco criticized McLuhan’s theory using a semiotic analysis approach. Eco referred to McLuhan as an “apocalyptic who implies that the mass media do not transmit ideologies; they are themselves an ideology” (Grosswiler 135).
Eco also opposed the ideas that “the medium is the message based on the residual freedom of the audience to interpret it in a different way” (Grosswiler 136). Eco further challenged McLuhan’s thesis 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 those of the sender nor those of the scholar of communications” (Grosswiler 137). Eco also attacked McLuhan’s terms and definitions stating that McLuhan was wrong in arguing that media are metaphors that translate experience into new forms” (Grosswiler 136).
Carey also critiqued McLuhan’s “Global Village” as a world turned into a single community through the annihilation of space and time and dismissed this notion as “nothing other than a fantasy” (Grosswiler 142). Obviously Carey could not foresee the Digital Age which fulfilled McLuhan’s prediction. According to Grosswiler criticisms of McLuhan’s theory are based on the fact that “his writings did not take the usual form of communications studies, his books didn’t look like books, his premises, labels and processes were usually not phrased in ways that facilitated testing” (182). Most critics complained that his “methodology seemed to put him in the realm of poets and prophets rather than academic scholars” (Grosswiler 182). Moreover the most compelling criticism of his theory was that he “did not state his hypotheses clearly and did not establish his thinking within the framework of a social science research tradition” (Grosswiler 18). McLuhan drew such harsh criticism because his method was untraditional and even frustrating to those who failed to comprehend it. McLuhan challenged the ordinary intellectual mind.
Media Ecology is a good qualitative theory because it is based on interpretation and takes on an inductive approach. This theory also uses contextualization in relation to subject matter. Media Ecology is based on reality that is socially constructed and takes on an emic point of view. The effects of the medium create and structure our social and personal world. According to McLuhan, “Media effects are new environments as imperceptible as water to fish, subliminal for the most part” (McLuhan 22). Media Ecology is also qualitative because it searches for patterns. This can be seen in the effects of new technologies in the Media Map of History where the introduction of new mediums serves as transformational mechanisms in society. McLuhan also refers to patterns in the effect that the medium has on us. In his book Counterblast, “Faced with information overload we have no alternative but pattern-recognition” (133). Patterns lead to habits and can form the extensions that McLuhan speaks of and this looks at the contextual aspect of qualitative theory. The extension of my hands and eyes are the keyboard and screen of my computer; case in point I have the addiction of constantly checking my email on a daily basis. This has become a pattern in my daily routine primarily because the medium of the internet has created my environment that keeps me connected to others.
I see the Media Ecology theory in action in my personal and social environment everyday. I consider myself to be living in the Digital Age and the effects of the new media technologies of the Digital Age are all around me. I would say that my habitual need for using the computer and my cell phone on an almost daily basis is indicative of the fact that these mediums have become my extensions. Many of my high school friends and those I knew since I has a teenager live either here in the U.S. or overseas and we communicate regularly via instant messenger which is essentially our primary mode of communication. My friends and I are all participants in the Global Village that McLuhan speaks about in his Media Ecology theory. I am so immersed in my digital environment that it is invisible to me because it is like second nature in many respects.
Moreover as a communication broadcasting student I produce and create videos, experimental shows and make them on my computer and upload them to the internet to share with others. I like most of the YouTube generation have grown up into this Electronic Age and easily assimilated into the Digital Era because this technology comes naturally to us. My observations of the recent presidential elections also lead me to believe the efficacy of McLuhan’s theory that medium plays an important role even in our politics. The campaign ads on TV and the way in which each candidate depicted themselves and their opponent to influence the voters is an example of the effect of the medium of the Electronic Age on social perception. In his book Laws of Media McLuhan discussed the, “unique power of the electronic media is to shape the content of people’s imagery, and in that particular way determine their behavior and their views” (71).
Media Ecology in my opinion is one of the most interesting communication theories that I have encountered thus far as a communication student. I find it very intriguing because Marshall McLuhan is very insightful in his ideas, especially his notion of the Global Village. He predicted a world connected by the internet and new media technologies in a time when there was no such thing as email or instant messaging or even online news, internet videos and blogs. Additionally McLuhan’s focus on the medium as content is somewhat intriguing and his notion that the “Medium is the Message” makes sense because the evidence of the effects of media in society is inexorably true. As McLuhan poetically stated, “The ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind” (Levinson 37). McLuhan attempts to, “shift our focus from content to medium derived from his concern that content grabs our attention to the detriment of our understanding and even perception of the medium and all else around it.” ( Levinson 36) This explains his notion of mediums as extensions of who we are because the mediums in Media Map of History created the environment that affect the way in which we communicate.
I find McLuhan’s untraditional approach in expressing his ideas as somewhat synonymous with his theory since it is in itself a theory of exploration rather than just explanation. McLuhan’s Media Ecology theory is quite relevant to the 21st Century because his reasoning has become our reality. Time has proven his critics wrong because the significance of Media Ecology is even more pertinent today than it was fifteen years ago. This shows the efficacy of the theory because any claim is just a claim unless it can withstand the test of time. McLuhan’s Media Ecology theory has proven to be more than just a shot in the dark it has truly shed much light on the effects of media in the society in which we live today.
References:
Marchand, Philip. “Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and The Messenger : 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. “The Medium is the Massage.”
