Monday, November 12, 2012

Messages and Mediums


The message in a medium is just as important as the message being broadcast. The listeners will receive a message differently if it comes from an online ad, a television commercial, an email, or radio. Because of this, the messages being sent through a specific medium are tailored around it, making sure to send the message appropriate to the medium. Radio, for example, won’t try to show you something, whereas television won’t focus on telling it to you, rather the other way around. In this way, the medium is the message, as the same message in each medium will be drastically different, both in expression as well as reception.

As for television being a “cool medium,” it does require the viewer to fill in details about what they’re watching. The viewer comes up with reasons behind certain actions that may not seem to be obvious, or they extrapolate a possible ending of the show through the clues and foreshadowing throughout. Additionally, they create theories for future episodes, with those that have an on-going story, based on the information given to them.

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