Marshall McLuhan Research Articles

Fungible Citizenship

Fungible Citizenship

Evolution of the media: map of a discipline under construction. A review

The vertiginous explosion of new forms and experiences of communication that have emerged in the last 30 years cannot be compared with other moments in the history of humanity. The rapid transformation of the media ecosystem and the technological sphere in general is putting old scientific theories and models to the test. The very idea of “ecosystem” or widely used concepts such as “emergence” (of new media) or “adaptation” or even “extinction” (of old media), albeit metaphorically, point in the same direction: the development of an evolutionary theory of media change. This review article aims to map the different approaches and contributions that come together in an evolutionary theory of the media, understood for all purposes as a transdisciplinary work-in-progress. The article opens with a reflection on the processes of theoretical construction, continues with a map of Media Ecology –a “field of inquiry” inspired by the works of Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman– and concludes this first approach with the authors who worked on the evolutionary dimension of media change. It could be said that the evolutionary theory of the media already exists, but it is scattered in countless texts and investigations waiting to be articulated. The article concludes with a first identikit of the Evolution of the Media, understood as a theoretical field under construction but more than necessary to understand the past and contemporary transformations of the media ecosystem.

Alex Kitnick, Distant Early Warning: Marshall McLuhan and the Transformation of the Avant-Garde, reviewed by Emily Collins

Alex Kitnick, <i>Distant Early Warning: Marshall McLuhan and the Transformation of the Avant-Garde</i>, reviewed by Emily Collins

Welcome to the glitch and make some noise: Understanding media through audio hacking

This article describes the experimental examination of various audio devices and their storage media, such as the radio, the tape recorder and the CD player, in the context of interdisciplinary university courses in arts and humanities, particularly cultural studies, with a focus on music production, sound studies and audio culture. Glitches and intrinsic noises become perceptible as aesthetic material by means of hacking and modifying audio technology failures. Following Marshall McLuhan’s concept of media, it is clear that the audio technology itself, not just the transmitted content of a piece of music or radio programme, is the message. Examples of diverse aesthetic strategies that account for various artists’ positions are presented in detail. These strategies have been the subject of a seminar that has been held several times at two different universities in Germany, addressing interdisciplinary groups of students. Unconventional, hands-on approaches to the different media devices have been evaluated positively by the participants.

Role of Netflix in Highlighting the Consequences of Bullying Among Teenagers: A Case Study of 13 Reasons Why

This research study entitled Role of Netflix in Highlighting the Consequences of Bullying among Teenagers: A Case Study of 13 Reasons Why aims to investigate the role of media purposely Netflix in highlighting the consequences of bullying among teenagers. The qualitative study has been conducted by the researcher using an analytical methodology. As a theoretical framework, the researcher has considered Marshal McLuhan’s theory “Medium is the Message.” For exploring the impacts of bullying,13 Reasons Why (Netflix season) has been taken as a case study as this season emphasizes highlighting the strong impacts of bullying on protagonist Hannah Baker. Findings suggested that Netflix via 13 Reasons Why plays a role of critical impact in creating apprehension regarding the impacts of bullying among teenagers. It features various sorts and hurtful outcomes of bullying. It additionally brought into the spotlight the reasons for turning into a bully. Lastly, it suggested strategies against this social evil among teenagers. Recommendations of the study is centered on the need to examine the developing culture of bullying among teenagers (college and university students) and to hold sessions for the awareness about bullying to prevent the youth from the dangerous impacts of it.

Prosthetic Symbiosis

Prosthetic Symbiosis

Predicting Social Behavior of Tribes and Misinformation

IT WAS the 1960s into the early 1970s. The Cambridge-trained professor, enamored of his puns and often insensitive to criticism, rambled on in his own somewhat disjointed way. To some, he imparted wise parables, whereas many of his academic peers considered him a bit of an eccentric crackpot. Nonetheless, his insight, obtuse as it was at the time, seems to have an enduring, if not a still highly debatable quality.1 In fact, Dr. Marshall McLuhan predicted the notion of the Internet in 1964, almost two decades before it became a newborn reality.2

Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn

Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn

XR technologies and experience-based learning

Since the first industrial revolution, a specific mechanical paradigm of teaching and learning has dominated western education tradition, known as concept-based teaching and learning. This paradigm has reverberated and affected research, curriculum design, and teaching practices since the early 1960s, as well as nourishing important ideas for current discussions on the importance of factual information in curricula (Medwell et al., 2019). One of the issues with this type of knowledge transfer is that it has a reductionist and linear mindset which leads to disconnected knowledge generation, and additionally, misses on transferring tacit knowledge and any knowledge with ‘qualia’ (i.e. ‘subjective’) quality on it (Crane, 2012; Jackson, 1982, 1986). The conventional roles of the student, the instructor, the learning environment, and the learning tools and technologies must be rethought in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, cognitive philosophers such as Andy Clark and David Chalmers describe technology as a kind of scaffolding of the mind, with technology operating as instruments that we use to extend our mind (Clark &amp; Chalmers, 1998). They are a part of us, in the same way, a spider's web is a part of the spider. We are tool-making animals that have been in a symbiotic/reciprocal feedback loop with technology since the beginning of stone tools. If technology is the real skin of our species and the extension of our nervous system and human cognition, then it should work for us and help us grow and have a better understanding of the world around us. Yet the tendency in education today under the concept-based teaching paradigm is rather the opposite, where technology can easily make learners more distracted and less aware of the surrounding subjective and experiential world (Kurniawan et al., 2021).&#x0D; &#x0D; If we want to react to today's calls for a better future, we not only need to focus on integrated and transversal knowledge development and transfer, but also on the real role, potential and opportunities that new immersive technologies, such as mixed reality (XR), can and should have in education. In this context, education ought to once again become interdisciplinary, founded on strong critical ethics and philosophical study of new alternative educational paradigms, with new epistemologies and technologies reflecting humanity's process of change and transition while reconnecting with old and ancient knowledge and methods of doing (Taheri &amp; Aguayo, 2021). In the past, knowledge was seen to be a 'whole' obtained via journeys throughout people's lives, where individuals learned by doing and experiencing every facet of knowledge (Yazdi, 1992). Not all knowledge was thought to be transferable by teaching concepts; profound understanding of the world was only conceivable if one embarked on a long journey in life while learning (Netton, 2013).&#x0D; &#x0D; In this presentation, we suggest that education ought to embrace experience-based learning as a reacting paradigm to the dominant reductionist concept-based teaching paradigm. We see XR technologies in education having the potential to facilitate experience-based learning, where learners and XR technologies can become ‘one entity’ together, to explore, understand, and experience the learning process in self-determined ways. Such an approach requires new educational design epistemologies centred on the body and the embodiment of the experience within real-to-virtual learning environments. Here, the epistemology from the Santiago school of cognition (Aguayo, 2021; Maturana &amp; Varela, 1980), which includes concepts like embodiment, embodied cognition, and enaction, may inform and drive the development of an experience-based type of immersive learning design based on an enactive, self-led user experience. As the philosopher, Marshall McLuhan famously said: "We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us" (Culkin, 1967, p. 53).

SOCIAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL JUSTICE IN NIGERIA: AN APPRAISAL

In recent times, it has become a common knowledge that there are people who are cut off from the flow of information and further isolated from the pull of discussions made possible by digital media. This study, therefore, sought to examine the perception of Southeast residents towards the issues of digital justice in the media space of the country. This study is anchored on the technological determinism theory which was propounded by Marshall McLuhan in 1964. This study adopted the mixed-method research design which deals with the collection of quantitative and qualitative data. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (2017), the population of the southeast is 21,955,400. The sample size of 384 was arrived at using Wimmer and Dominick Online Sample Size Calculator. For the qualitative aspect of the study (in-depth interview), 10 respondents were purposively sampled. Furthermore, the questionnaire and interview guide were the instruments of data collection. The findings of the study revealed that there was a high rate of social media usage among residents in Southeast, Nigeria. Further analysis of data revealed that, at a mean average of 3.0, respondents agree that there are cases of digital injustice in southeast Nigeria. Findings of the study also indicated that, at a mean average of 3.1, respondents identified inadequate telecommunication services, poor network, and lack of knowledge as challenges affecting the actualization of digital justice in the southeast, Nigeria. The researcher concludes that the actualization of digital justice may not be actualized until the residents are given access to digital infrastructure, quality data networks, cheaper social media-enabled gadgets, and cheaper data services. It is recommended that more effort should be put in place by both government and private telecommunication companies to ensure that everybody is connected to digital media.

Mass media as a factor influencing the concepts semantic field

Abstract: The given study focuses on the media influence on the worldview representation determined by the audience-induced changes in the semantic field of a concept. The aim of our research is to examine the media’s effect on the core of the semantic field regarding the concept of conflict and single out the methods employed by a journalist to alter the semantic field of concepts and influence the audience’s worldview. Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, Marshall McLuhan’s media theory, and Lasswell’s theoretical foundations on the potentiality of media to influence the audience’s preferences are theoretical foundations for researching in this area. I conducted a four-stage study to define the way media content affects change the concept meaning by analysing the multidimensional concept «conflict» as an example. I exploited free listing methods, which were refined to accomplish my goal, data collection, and analysis methods as diagnostic instruments and conducted the survey among 88 students of the State University of Telecommunication (Kyiv, Ukraine). The experimental studies showed that even after a short period of intense media impact, a tested subject admitted the significant change in his point of view on the current events. The obtained results give grounds for further quantitative research to scrutinize the media impact on the audience’s worldview. Keywords: mass media influence; semantic field; conflict, alter the concept’s meaning; audience’s worldview

The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan's Age of Modern Print Media by Nathan Shockey

Reviewed by: The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan's Age of Modern Print Media by Nathan Shockey Seth Jacobowitz The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan's Age of Modern Print Media. By Nathan Shockey. Columbia University Press, 2020. 336 pages. ISBN: 9780231194280 (hardcover; also available as e-book). Nathan Shockey's The Typographic Imagination makes the latest contribution to studies of modern print culture in Japan by exploring how a new regime of reading, writing, and thinking was inaugurated at the dawn of mass culture (1890s–1930s) through widely affordable and available books and magazines. In many respects, this is a meticulous work of scholarship, brimming with a wealth of analytical and anecdotal perspectives about the state actors, publishers, intellectuals, and writers who, in Shockey's formulation, understood typographic print to be "a powerful heuristic means and method for their efforts to reconstruct the modern world, regardless of ideological orientation" (p. 3). In contrast to earlier research publications that emphasized the linkages between the rise of a new vernacular language and realist literature for the conception of modern subjectivity, Shockey insists upon recognizing the commodification of mass-produced print matter as a material basis for rethinking the marketplace of ideas and social relations. The book is divided into two parts, each consisting of three chapters. Part 1 sets the frame for the supersession of existing xylographic forms by typographic book and magazine publishing, which shepherded knowledge production, dissemination, and lively debate to a newly constituted national audience. Shockey is at his finest weaving together a seamless account of how three of the leading publishing houses—Hakubunkan, Iwanami, and Kōdansha—delivered print to the masses as what he calls a "staple commodity" (p. 5). Part 2 shifts gears to assess a handful of topics within a still-evolving media ecology through a close reading of avant-gardist literary theory and texts by Yokomitsu Riichi and the Shinkankaku-ha (Neo-Perceptionists); a survey of orthographic reform, Romanization, and Esperanto movements as Japan grappled with script as a "fundamental, atomistic building block of consciousness" (p. 159); and lastly, a study of how Marxist thinkers and Communist activists worked through the medium of print capitalism despite the hostility of the imperial state. [End Page 145] In his introduction, Shockey defines his three-part methodology drawn from the Toronto school of communications theory of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan; histories of the Western book by Elizabeth Eisenstein, Adrian Johns, and Roger Chartier; and work on modern literature and media studies by a dozen or so figures based in Japan, including, most prominently, Kōno Kensuke, Hyōdō Hiromi, Suzuki Sadami, Komori Yōichi, Nagamine Shigetoshi, and Toeda Hirokazu. Inexplicably lost somewhere along the way, however, is the lion's share of recent American scholarship on modern Japanese literature and print culture in English, which Shockey only glancingly signals. This odd maneuver diminishes the ability of The Typographic Imagination to participate in a larger conversation. In actual practice, the "typographic imagination" appears closer to a sociology of print culture consistent with Pierre Bourdieu's notion of socially ingrained skills, dispositions, and behavioral patterns. Shockey combines Bourdieu's habitus with Harry Harootunian's call in Overcome by Modernity (Princeton University Press, 2000) to investigate everyday life under the conditions of mass culture: "This book explores the habituation of modern forms of reading and writing in Japan from the last years of the nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth as the rapid growth of the typographic publishing industry made mass-produced print media an inexorable part of everyday life" (p. 2). Curiously, neither Bourdieu nor Harootunian are mentioned in this volume. They are simply included in the bibliography, as are the American Japanologists. Harootunian's emphasis on everyday life under the conditions of mass culture took cues not only from thinkers of the Frankfurt and Chicago schools, but also from the groundbreaking work of prewar Japanese sociologists (Kon Wajirō, Gonda Yasunosuke), Marxist intellectuals (Tosaka Jun, Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke), and detective fiction writers (Edogawa Ranpo). Shockey, conversely, ascribes historical agency to mostly top-down accounts of actions by the state, major publishing houses, and literary elites such as Kawabata Yasunari and Yokomitsu...

Komposition im Medienwandel. Operationsketten als kompositorische Strategien bei Peter Ablinger, Bernd Thewes und Isabel Mundry

The article conceives of composition within the context of a cultural media history. For a better understanding of compositional processes, the media situation of the respective historical period must be considered. The text develops a media perspective of contemporary composition and explores the influence of media practice on compositional processes. This perspective is developed by introducing three compositions that are performed in a traditional concert-situation. Common to all three pieces is a concept based on multiple operational chains that describe processes of medial transfer. Peter Ablinger’s Das Orchester for CD and orchestra (2005) uses computer technology to filter sounds recorded in the city of Graz, Austria into an orchestral piece. His work is media-reflexive since it highlights the disparaties between the medial sound carrier (the sound recording) and the orchestra. Bernd Thewes also uses filtering technology in his Die siebende Gestalt. SPEECH REMIX nach Jakob Böhme for orchestra (2007). Unlike Ablinger, Thewes strives for a compositional situation in which technically supported sound generation and free compositional invention do not diverge. While he interacts with the technical media, subjective decisions within the compositional process are not excluded. Isabel Mundry’s Sandschleifen for string trio, percussion and piano (2003) is equally based on a multiple operational chain, although Mundry does not use technical equipment. The piece transfers a text into music; the text again transfers a picture into words. Mundry stresses the subjective aspects of composition. However, the discussion of her work induces the discussion to what extent her term for compositional transfer-processes “touching” [Abtasten], reminiscent of phonography, betrays a disposition informed by medial technique. The three discussed pieces are examples of the integration of medial transfer – with all its possibilities, its gaps, breaks and limits – into the compositional structure. They exploit new media techniques to create aesthetic experience. This is an important contribution by the arts to contemporary culture understood as media culture. Marshall McLuhan’s argument that the use of media is usually unconscious remains valid. The arts, with their media-reflexive potential, contribute to a better understanding of media. This suggests the necessity of a media-reflexive turn in music theory and musicology.

Consideraciones acerca de la educación, lectoescritura y aprendizaje en los tiempos de pandemia

Times of pandemic have definitively altered the global education landscape. In Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man&nbsp; he speaks of various moments through which the transmission of information has passed and in this essay I want to make a parallel between the characteristics expressed by McLuhan and those that we are living today.

Hierarchical knowledge, or why does one reference matter and the other does not?

‘It all started with us being fed up of hearing Marshall McLuhan's name once too often in our Visual Communication MA at the Royal College of Art. We wish we could have kept a tally of how many times his name came up.’1 This is how our book Not a Reference Yet starts. In this text we are going back to the beginning of our venture and what got us started. Simply put, we noticed a missing gap in the references we were looking for. Digging a little deeper, we started to see the mechanisms in place that stop a reference from being found or even to exist in the first place. We are both graphic designers and, in this research, we focus on our own industry, however, this problem seems to be fairly universal and applies to many industries – especially those in which representation plays a big role.

К ТЕОРИИ ТЕМНЫХ МЕДИА

The concept of dark media, justified by Eugene Thacker, fully fits into today studies of the contingent. This article aimed to explore the potential of classical media theory to clarify the functional boundaries of this concept. I prove that it is possible to substantiate dark media as a phenomenon only by recognizing the connection between the main and auxiliary media, and then showing how this connection contributes to the transition from clear to dark media and vice versa. Building on the theory of corporeal media dating back to Giambattista Vico, critically rethinking the formalizing media theory from Wolfgang Riepl to Marshall McLuhan, I refine the concept of dark media as opposed not only to the concept of clarity, but also to the concept of the historical age, the concept of the class of messages and the concept of a group of interrelated practices, including practice of writing, each time undermining the influence claims of these concepts.

The Beauty of the Fragment Reconstituted in the Great Wall

Max Hattler’s short abstract animations demonstrate an awareness of the form’s historic 1920’s European Abstract Animation precedents, is informed by the structurally focused minimalism of the 60’s and re-tools pre-cinema toys. Yet his work speaks to the contemporary technological environment he occupies and experiences directly. His move to Hong Kong and his recent Serial Parallels is also a predictive probe into future media environments. Hattler’s digital architectures are designed to make sense of the technological situation of speed and information overload which Vilem Flusser marks as amnesic and Marshall McLuhan identifies as an acoustic space readable through pattern recognition. His practice makes productive use of the flexible and modular qualities of contemporary digital image-making technologies for both production and publication purposes.

Is the Past a Prologue? Construing Future Possibilities amidst Present Perditions in a Continuing Time of Crisis

In my last invited LUMEN plenary presentation, drafted at the beginning of a (too) long COVID-19 year, I spoke on “Logos, Pathos and Ethical Practices across Selves, Time and Space in a Pandemic Era,” drawing for my theoretical inspiration from thinkers (and statements) by thinkers such as psychologist George Kelly, social theorist Kenneth Boulding, literary social scholar Kenneth Burke, and media theorist Marshall McLuhan. Now, sometime later, I elaborate the themes for our WLC through their sharp eyes. Beginning from these select insights (among others), I will elaborate from the vantage point of a time that creates for all a “turning point” (stasis or crisis) on those bridges “within us” (marked within “the realms of individual affective motivation and cognitive thought,” and outline how we can together form scripts for “effective and ethical public action,” given the ambitions of the conference organizers. I take this to be necessary to productively survey “the interferences between the new theoretical approaches and the social and educational practice, taking into account the need for an ethical resizing of the social action”).

Connecting the Dots in a Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Rhetoric of the Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative” and U.S. Westward Expansion

This paper contrasts the current Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) against the opening of the U.S. west in the 19th century using the principles of Western rhetoric as basis for interpretation. Most specifically, Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad is used for initial clarification along with explanation of how further understanding can be realized via Fantasy Theme Analysis to better appreciate the expression of rhetorical vision. Recognition of how BRI can be understood differently, depending on the cultural context, is stressed. This is couched in the contextual framing of mass media influences as explained by Marshall McLuhan.

McLuhan on Shakespeare and Shakespeare as McLuhan

Over 400 years ago, during the early days of the print revolution, William Shakespeare offered insights into the media environment of his times. Though he was a poet and playwright, his observations were strikingly similar to those of Marshall McLuhan in the twentieth century. In every one of his plays there appear media references: books, letters, reading and writing. This essay examines how he viewed the impact of literacy and printing on both individuals and the society at large.