Medium as Message, Message as Medium by Gail Fogel, Bentley Design and Usability Center, Research Associate
Medium as Message, Message as Medium
Gail Fogel, Bentley Design and Usability Center, Research Associate
A usable message is a clear one, one that effectively and efficiently conveys its meaning in a simple form. “The medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhan’s famous maxim, highlights the symbiotic relationship between a message and the medium through which it is presented. McLuhan’s theory is that the medium itself influences and shapes how the message is perceived.
The media forms that predominated society when McLuhan wrote these words in 1964 are much different than the countless media that prevail in today’s dynamic world of communication. Yet so many of the popular media today constrain or at least formulate the actual messages being sent. Even the type of message changes across media, where each inspires users to communicate differently depending on the medium itself.
Does all this mean that the message is in fact now shaped by the medium? Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters. FourSquare communication is as simple as “checking in” and broadcasting your location to others; the message becomes the act of checking in, unless the user actively chooses to include an additional note. Many users distinguish between Facebook and LinkedIn along the lines of personal versus business networking. You might have an entirely different set of followers on Google Buzz than are in your Facebook network, which will affect the type of messages shared in each. Thus, messages are inherently shaped by the specific medium, given the different audiences and each medium’s particular message structure.
So while each medium now holds its own style of messaging, there is an increasing interconnectedness between the content being projected. The communication tools at our fingertips allow us to put forth different messages to different audiences through different media. Social media links now pepper the web, allowing easy and instant communication without leaving the confines of a website. But what this means is that content is often pre-filled, where a tweet from a ShareThis link can be sent without any modification to the message.
All of these factors play a role in the shifting shape of communication today, particularly from the standpoint of the usability and clarity of messages. When messages are so much defined by the medium, and with the communication demanding so little from the user, the very usability of the medium shifts the content of the message itself. While McLuhan’s words still put forth a powerful concept, today’s new landscape of communication is such that the various media really define the type of message being shared. While the medium is central to the act of communicating, we have moved to a point where the message is inherently shaped by the specific channel through which it is broadcast. It is time to reconsider whether the medium is the message, or whether the message is now the medium.
