“Medium is the Message”
March 14, 2009
I love learning. Now that I am in the working world, I have to admit I miss school. Not only due to the great breaks for spring, summer and winter, but for the constant introduction to new knowledge – really geeky, I know.
Luckily for me I work at an agency which continues to teach me everyday. While I am learning from my colleagues, I have also discovered new applications to the theories I learned at UD. Marshall McLuhan’s theory of the “Medium is the Message” came to mind this week.
As I dive deeper and deeper into social media and discuss its application with others, I am learning the medium is the message. Although one could group social media into one medium, I would prefer to break each space into its own medium.
Each space has its own benefits and drawbacks. The reasons why users congregate in one space over another is significant.
Therefore when providing social media recommendations to any client the first questions I ask are: What are your objectives? Who are you trying to reach and why?
The draw of social media may cause a desire to jump into every space. (Love is blind. J) But through research of where the target(s) live and adding my understanding of the benefits of the spaces, I am able to provide a strong recommendation for a social media strategy.
Do you see McLuhan’s theory in social media? Do you categorize each space as its own media?
May 7, 2009 at 11:30 pm
The walls of the individual medium are falling down all around us. And actually, I see a paradigm shift that is making the choice of medium more irrelevant daily. My readings (magazines, news papers, email, blogs, articles, stories…) all role up to the same place and are read from wherever I direct them to go electronically. Social media is forcing other traditional slower types of mediums to become faster or die out. If you look at the kids in high school today, they are not even using email because that is considered too slow. They are all about the texting and IMing. I see a huge convergence of mediums where the email/blog/IM/news story/book all become a huge ongoing conversation using supper abbreviated language as an extension of our every day conversation. Do you think McLuhan envisioned the multi-medium platform with his theory?