Message forms found in print, visual, online, musical, social media, etc. determine the ways where the message/s will be understood. That was the claim of Marshall McLuhan in 1964. He went on to become one of the best messengers of the central theory behind “the medium is the message” which he also coined, thanks to his book Understanding Media. Yes, it catapulted him to fame. But 21st-century academics need not be like him because their reward lies in their own work when they analyze the potential pedagogical benefits of both the medium and message, especially now that we live in a fake news era.
Rebuttals to McLuhan’s claim were written and spoken in the 1970s, ’80s, ‘90s, and 2000s. Youtube features anti-McLuhan readers (as well as pro-). It is also worth noting that he had a “few” neutral readers (Goldberg, 1968). Let us take some of those contradictions here.
In 2016 Natalie at bard.edu: “From this perspective, the author easily falls into an analysis implicit with a superiority complex. From McLuhan’s claims to Western technologies’ influence on the non-West, questions around different forms of literacies, especially as informed by differences in culture, history, and political economies, is worth consideration as an addition to the conversation. This allows room to question the influence and significance of non-Western technologies on the emergence and development of Western technology.”
From Banerski, Abramczuk & Biele (2020), “3D or not 3D? Evaluation of the effectiveness of 3D-enhanced warning messages for communication in crisis situations”, Safety Science, they wrote: “Another favorable finding is related to the level of motivation to act. The most effective warning messages for Self-Protective Motivation were the 3D and Blank warning messages. Both of these forms of communication are more. The Static group exposed to the classic ‘TV-like’ message was the only one that did not experience an increase in motivation to undertake self-protective measures, in comparison to the control group that was exposed to no warning message. These results suggest that experimenting with non-conventional warning message formats is recommended.”
From Moseley, Dobalian & Hatch (2005), “The problem with advance directives: Maybe it is the medium, not the message”, Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, they penned: “In order to ascertain what treatment the patient would have desired, physicians often rely on written advance directives and designated surrogate decision-makers. Unfortunately, both approaches suffer from numerous shortcomings that ultimately limit their usefulness. Although several strategies have been proposed to improve their value, problems nevertheless remain when relying upon written advance directives. We submit that the problem is the medium, not the message—that written advance directives and/or reliance on surrogate decision-makers are fundamentally inadequate. We hypothesize that videotaped advance directives (VADs) can better communicate the specifics, depth, strength and passion of a patient’s wishes, more closely approximating the communication that occurs when a physician discusses these issues directly with a patient. VADs may thus enhance the physician’s understanding of the patient’s wishes. VADs may also ease family conflict and save physician’s considerable time by helping family members reach a stronger consensus on the patient’s wishes, and do so in a timelier manner.”
From “The message is the medium: immaterialism and McLuhan’s Poetic Excess”, Atlantic Journal of Communication, Niall Stephens (2019) compellingly put it: “Against interpretations of Marshall McLuhan as philosophical materialist, I argue that Understanding Media and its tagline, the medium is the message, show McLuhan to be an immaterialist: a poetic, intuitive thinker, at least as interested in immaterial as in material aspects of the world. From a pragmatic perspective, or one requiring attention to both poetic and technical modes of understanding, McLuhan’s approach—offering a torrent of flashing insights and neglecting the process of empirically assessing these insights—is described as poetic excess. This is a double-edged sword, alienating many readers even as it inspires others. McLuhan’s poetic excess is a rhetorical reminder of the value and power of poetic thinking, and simultaneously of its insufficiency for the fullest understanding. Pleading that his poetic texts should be read rhetorically rather than literally, I argue we should forgive McLuhan’s worst affronts to technical, materialist rationality. McLuhan’s immaterialist epistemology, inseparable from the content of his insights, is a valuable part of his distinctive and foundational contribution to media studies.”
From 2007 to 2015 when I was continents away from my family being a Saudi Arabia-based overseas Filipino worker, I also did not believe that the medium is the message in whole or in part. My webcam conversations with my mag-ina (now mag-iina) during these years were almost always full of messages and emotions. Imagine my son’s fancy: If the webcam is the message, “my father is a phone.”
It is safe to say that the message delivery is as important as the message.
But words take longer to write than to speak, and a gun also speaks, which is a classic case of the medium being the message. Hence, we do not let television or Netflix do the talking. We make sure our children and our students understand gun safety. We take time to talk to young people about gun violence. In other words, communication is much more than media or channels of communication.
Listen to Paul’s timeless piece in 1 Corinthians 15:2: “It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place.”
Albert Einstein said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity.” OK. So we question Marshall’s Law.
Three brief concluding statements are in order: Firstly, we cannot underestimate the power of communication in our university life, especially now that it faces disruptive trends. Structured by digital technologies, blended learning in higher education may get a lot of attention from the media as the latter readily offers content (message). Secondly, the medium is not the message. We merely have the tendency to overlook the message’s importance at times, not using the communication channel’s full potential. This prompts us to also study the medium (media studies). Thirdly, by employing the right medium, educators are given the opportunity to provide students with timely assistance in cases of poor performance. Forming the message clearly leads to desired results, but any wrong message cannot be corrected by the right medium.
Albert Garcia’s award-winning photograph of Mt. Pinatubo with fellow photojournalists fleeing its intensifying eruption talks about the danger in 1991 and in the future. The medium and the message are both powerful in that one frame. Perilous times call for timely rebuttals. We do that with persevering prayer. We do that with a message.
DC Alviar
Professor DC Alviar serves as a member of the steering committee of the Philippine International Studies Organization (PHISO). He was part of National University’s community extension project that imparted the five disciplines of a learning organization (Senge, 1990) to communities in a local government unit. He writes and edits local reports for Mega Scene. He graduated with a master’s degree in development communication from the University of the Philippines Open University in Los Baños. He recently defended a dissertation proposal for his doctorate degree in communication at the same graduate school under a Philippine government scholarship grant. He was editor-in-chief of his high school paper Ang Ugat and the Adamson News.
