What came first? The media or the message?

Kaleb Brunson
4 min readOct 25, 2021

Canadian media scholar, Marshall McLuhan, developed a viewpoint called Technological Determinism to explain how technology plays a role in how we communicate. To McLuhan, according to the Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, “technologies of mass media make sure culture transmission in a social fabric which ultimately changes man’s social behavior.” Essentially, we make tools (phones, computers, televisions, etc.) and they in turn shape us. As all ideas, McLuhan’s views include both strong points and limitations.

Image: Fbotero (2016)

One major strength of McLuhan’s model is idea of the electric paradigm. Essentially, this extends that a person can consume multiple electronic media at the same time, in a way that is limited or impossible through print media. For example, someone could watch television and talk on the phone at the same time, while it would be impossible to read a book and a magazine at the same time.

Image: IZQuotes (2014)

Another strength of McLuhan was the idea of a global village that we are all a part of and process information all together. While a man can give a speech in London, if it is broadcasted via television or the internet, we can all receive and comprehend it. To McLuhan, this process of making the world smaller leads to our creation of a global village. Mass Communication Theory describe this phenomenon as “we have conquered the globe without older technology, eliminating the concept of space with virtual extensions of our extremities…lets the voices of great minds reach across time to speak to us today.”

A final strength of McLuhan’s ideas is his prediction of a cooling down of media. This “cooler” medium can be seen today through social media compared to the hands-off “hot” media like television and film. With hot media, consumers cannot do much to add to the experiences, they are a passive audience. The cooling down of media allows consumers to be active participants through their consumption. Social media provides a strong example of this concept. A Tik Tok user can chose to just watch videos, or they can comment and post their own content. McLuhan made a strong prediction in his perceived “cooling down” of media. The Economist did a short piece on how singer Olivia Rodrigo utilized the strengths of Tik Tok to go viral through her songwriting and how they determined each other.

Image: Tik Tok (2021)

While there are many strengths to McLuhan’s views there are also limitations to his work as well. One main critique of technological determinism is that technology never forces itself on members of society, according the Mass Communication Theory. McLuhan may not have been able to foresee algorithms or the full extent of how technology would permeate modern-life, but it is not always a choice to consume media from technology.

Another limitation, while strong at the time, is the idea of a global village. The extent of technology in modern times has created more of a “global household” where you could interact with nearly anyone else on the planet from your house. This deep reach by modern technology was not fully visible to McLuhan in the 1960’s but the concepts of a “global village” still remain understandable even without providing a full explanation of modern times.

Image: CRI (2014)

A final limit is that the medium is the message. While it is interesting to categorize society based on the tool of their primary form of media consumption, I would argue that the message is just as, if not more, important than the medium. Especially with the continued advancement of technology paired with the rise of fake news, it is very important what the message is that audiences are consumed. These messages shape the audience in a way significantly more important than the vehicle.

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Kaleb Brunson

UF Master’s Student — Global Strategic Communication. Passionate about politics, public policy, corporate social responsibility, and adventures with my Corgi.