Week 5: Media Ecology

Media Ecology is the study of media as an environment. It is about how media can affect human perception and understanding as well as feelings, and how media can sculpt the content and the people.

Marshall McLuhan's work on Media Ecology taught us how media determine the thoughts and actions of people and society. His famous quote ‘Medium is the Message’, which was introduced in his book ‘Understanding Media’, tells us that media is the extension of our body, as defined in the book, “… the personal and social consequences of any medium-- that is, of any extension of ourselves -- result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” (p7)

The text I will analyze is the famous prediction made by evangelical radio broadcaster Harold Camping about the Rapture, or commonly known as the Judgement Day on May 21, 2011 (BBC News, 2011). He broadcasted his predictions through the radio, the ‘hot’ medium. As described by McLuhan in his book ‘Understanding Media’: “A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in "high definition" (p24). He went on and explained “high definition” as a condition where there is high information load.

If one does not know about McLuhan, that person may argue that the ‘message’ is clearly more important than the medium itself. The ‘message’ Harold Camping told through his broadcast was the prediction of the rapture. But as quoted by Mark Federman, “McLuhan tells us that a "message" is, "the change of scale or pace or pattern" that a new invention or innovation "introduces into human affairs."…” Thus, the message of his broadcast may not be the prediction itself, but the change of public opinion and the attention towards Christianity that the prediction may brought upon. This change is apparent as his prediction has been published in various newspapers and notably online magazines such as BBC News and so on, catching attention wherever he goes. Radio is the extension of Harold Camping.

It is amazing to think that the media has the power to change the content of its message and influence our individual sense and understanding. The quote by McLuhan on ‘Medium is the Message’ may seem absurd in the past, but as new technologies emerge, the significance of the meaning receives more recognition and acknowledgement.


References:
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill

BBC News. (2011, May 21). 'Rapture' apocalypse prediction sparks atheist reaction. Retrieved February 23, 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13468131

Federman, M. (2004). What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message? Retrieved February 25, 2012 from http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/MeaningTheMediumistheMessage.pdf

Week 4: Semiotics

Semiotics, in essence, is the study of signs. We analyze texts on how they work and how we use them. The sign could be anything that consist of words, images, sounds or gestures; in which they are related with a genre in a particular medium of communication.

Let us apply this theory on the text as shown below.

The sign is the result from the combination of the component signifier with the signified. Signifiers can be interpreted as a form of sign, in which it is something that we can use our five senses to detect. In this text above, the signifiers are the human figure, shadow, dark background, wet and gloomy street, and the moon beam.

Signified is the concept derived from the signifier, but the signified can change its meaning or have different meanings. According to Barthes, however, signified is not a 'thing', but the mental representation of the 'thing'. In this example shown, the signified is the image of a stranger in the dark.

Most signs have at least one common meaning, i.e. literal meaning, which is shared amongst many people. This meaning is called the sign's denotation. On a denotation level, we can see a man walking on the wet street at a dark hour with nothing else except the moon shining down on him.

But signs also have many different 'subjective' meanings depending on how we perceive them from our experience. This is called sign's connotation. And thus, connotation refers to the representation and concept presented in a sign, and in this case, the man walking alone during the night would mean that he is fearless of the dark. Darkness brings out the fear from our inner self. In addition, the moonlight shining down on his vision connotes a path - guiding the man's state of mind, and giving him hope. While the darkness is consuming his surrounding, the man is unaffected in the essence of light.

Signs are present everywhere, even in the absence of adequate light, as shown in the example above. The silhouette, the figure and the surrounding are shown to have a strong relationship with one another to tell us what is the signified of the sign.

Reference:
Chandler, D. (2009). Semiotics For Beginners. Prifysgol Aberystwyth University. Retrieved from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html

Thwaites, Tony, Lloyd Davis & Warwick Mules (1994). Tools for Cultural Studies: An Introduction. South Melbourne: Macmillan.

Barthes, R. (1968). Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang.