Caroline Turner

Public Relations

Professor Butkus

10/23/14

The Medium is the Message

After studying the works of Marshal McLuhan, a teacher, philosopher, and public

influence in media and communications prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, I agree with his

theory that the medium is the message. Throughout the book, McLuhan uses many different

forms of illustration to convey his message, allowing us to apply this theory to almost anything.

This theory goes beyond solely media studies and is relevant to public relations. I agree that the

message is not in the content, but that the medium is the message, and further it is used by all

public relations to connect to groups of people. As technologies continue to grow and change,

the mediums and the messages too will change and grow with them. The public, surrounded by

media’s messages in the world today, is definitely affected and touched by these mediums.

In Marshal McLuhan’s, Understanding the Media: The Extension of Man it can be

derived that the medium is the message, and his concept of hot and cold media helps to illustrate

this point. When explaining the discourse of hot and cold media, McLuhan states that, “A hot

medium is one that extends one single sense in ‘high definition’….the state of being well filled

with data.” (McLuhan, p. 23) For example, in speech a whisper would be a cool medium because

so much has yet to be filled in by the listener; whereas a shout would be a hot medium because it

allows for less participation from the listener. McLuhan is able to apply this theory to everything

from electric light bulbs to styles of dance, the point remaining that each medium is able to

convey a different message, therefore the medium is the message. The idea of hot vs. cold media

itself involves public relations as we can apply this to study the medium we use to reach our

audience. This information is especially informative while creating a communication plan; by

segmenting and assessing the audience target group, a public relations professional may utilize

the most effective medium to reach that audience. For instance, if you are targeting an audience

of young mothers in a campaign to aid them one might look to elementary schools, blogs, and

local libraries as a more interactive source to reach the mothers; rather than a broad location such

as the newspaper or TV, which would require more participation and energy from the mother. By

using this knowledge, that the medium is the message, public relations can better utilize the right

tool to reach the audience through the most effective medium.

Focusing deeper on the theory that the medium is the message another excerpt from

McLuhan’s book, Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, further develops the

relationship between current technologies and communicating and the way public relations

engages with the public. McLuhan states that, “technological media are staples or natural

resources, exactly as are coal and cotton and oil. Anybody will concede that society whose

economy is dependent upon one or two…is going to have some obvious social patterns of

organization as a result.” From this one can gather that everything that makes up the medium

helps to convey the message itself. For instance, when appreciating art, if the canvas is colored

with red crayon, red paint, or even red blood, the color red has a whole different meaning

according to the medium. Our society uses technological media as a “natural resource” today,

and sometimes can overlook the effects this has. In this age, it is not only businesses and

corporations that are sending out information and messages, but more than ever the public

themselves are now directly engaging with these information and messages. Lacking the

traditional gatekeeper in between to relay and filter the messages, the technology of today and

the internet has opened a new world that must and it is necessary for the public to understand that

the medium is the message. It can be said similarly, it is not solely what you do, but also in the

way you do it. Public relations comes into play here, as gatekeepers are less and less playing a

role, in order to relate to the people on both ends and make connections as more companies and

people are accepting this way of thought. McLuhan then furthers this idea by including a piece

from one of my personal favorite psychologists, Carl Jung, as Jung writes, “Every Roman was

surrounded by slaves. The slave and his psychology flooded ancient Italy, and every Roman

became inwardly, and of course unwittingly, a slave. Because living constantly in the atmosphere

of slaves, he became infected through the unconscious with their psychology.” (McLuhan, p.21)

We as people are built by the institutions that raised us, and the experiences we have been

through. From this, it can be concluded that in a sense we become the messages we are

surrounded by; we become the ads that we sing along to, and we become a part of the multi-way

media that we engage in daily. As we become more integrated as a whole, it is important as a

Public Relations Professional to enhance understanding and connectivity across different groups

of people.

McLuhan would argue that the I-Phone is an extension of man. Every day it helps us to

complete ordinary tasks such as waking up, to enabling us to access the world through the

internet, only to name a couple uses. This is important in order to realize the power the I-Phone

now has. Used by one, it makes changes to that individual, but as the public and society as a

whole uses the I-Phone, it makes significant changes to us, including the messages and

information we receive. Becoming aware of the relationship between ourselves and the mediums

we use are important in order to understand the whole message itself, and to see the broader

picture. Technology does shape and shift the way we communicate with others clearly, but

sometimes it is not easily seen to the eye. Using transportation as a simple example of tracing

technological change, we can see the underlying messages that are found in the medium. The

President of the United States travelling to the podium, for example, is a small feat but yet the

medium he uses nevertheless is a message. If he flies into the podium, it can be derived that this

may be a message of emergency, or the president is excessively extravagant. If he travels by

foot, then the message could be expected to be traditional and organized, and everything is going

as expected. In public relations, as technology advances and evolves it is increasingly important

to understand the medium in order to understand the entire message as it evolves also. Moving

from print to radio, we discovered the advances in communicating through audio. Moving from

radio to TV we discovered the advances in using visual and audio communication. As a public

relations professional it is important to harness and understand the good and bad of using these

different mediums in order to reach out to the targeted audience in a positive way.

By using the lessons that McLuhan illustrates through multiple different discourses such

as his example of hot and cold media, we can see that decoding the medium is necessary to get to

the real message. We use social media, texts, emojis, images, video clips, and much more to toss

ideas to each other daily, and as technology grows so will the world of communicating. Public

Relations must grow and adapt with these technologies as they act as our most important tools

and skills to continuing understanding and connection with the public. The ideas and concepts

behind Marshal McLuhan seen in his novel continue to be, now more than ever, apparent in the

way we communicate with each other and express ourselves today.