CS COMMUNICATION SKILLS I

KABARAK UNIVERSITY

Private Bag - 20157 KABARAK, KENYA

www.kabarak.ac.ke
COMMUNICATION SKILLS I (COMS 110)

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Group 4 Research Work
October 11th , 2021
Lecturer: Dr. Everlyn O. Suleh

MARSHALL McLUHAN MODEL OF COMMUNICATION

(THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE)

Biography of Professor Herbert Marshall McLuhan

Birth
Prof. Marshall McLuhan was a media/ communication theorist, moreover a Canadian philosopher. He lived
between July 21st, 1911 to December 31st ,1980. Born to Elsie Naomi (a teacher and an actress) and Herbert
Ernest McLuhan(a Methodist) in Edmonton, Alberta, and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Alma mater
McLuhan attended the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He embarked on a career in
teaching in several universities in the USA and Canada as a professor of English before moving to University of
Toronto in the year 1946 at the age of 35, spending his final years there.

Main interests
Media, mass media.

Renowned for the ideas

“The Medium Is The Message”, “Global Village”, “Tetrad of media effects” and “Hot and Cool Media”.

Authorship
During his years in Saint Louis University (1937 to 1944) McLuhan worked on his doctoral dissertation and his
manuscript that was later on published in 1956 as the book_ “The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial
Man”.

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He was also the author of the “The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man” in 1962.

Death
In December 31, 1980 (aged 69), Marshall McLuhan suffered from a stroke and died in his sleep as reported by
the family on January 1, 1981. (“The New York Times”- 1981: section 1, page 1 by Alden Whitman)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Marshall McLuhan Model of Communication

Overview

Prof. Marshall McLuhan uses the term message to signify content and character. The content of the medium is a
message which can be overlooked very easily. Prof. McLuhan proposes that a communication medium it’s self,
not the message it contains, should be focused more in the study of communication.

Explanation

He shows that artifacts as media affect any society by their characteristics, or content.
McLuhan says, “Indeed, it is only too typical that the content of any medium blinds us to the character of the
medium”. For McLuhan, it was the medium that shaped and controlled the scale and form of human interaction/
association and action.

For the sake of understanding the medium as the message it’s self, he proposed that the content of any medium
is always another medium, for example, Speech is the content of writing whereas writing is the content of print,
and print itself is the content of telegraph.

He argues that “content” of a medium is more focused on because it gives valuable information; but in the
process, we largely rely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over a long
period of time.

The way that we send and receive information is important than the information itself.
Medium alters perception leading to the change of culture.

Prof. Marshall McLuhan says:

-It doesn’t matter what you say on the telephone, it has a huge service and that is the medium;
-The environment affects everybody, what you say affects very few same with radio, etc.
-What you print is nothing compared to the effect of the printed word.
-The printed word sets up a paradigm, a structure of words which affects everybody in very drastic ways.
-It doesn’t matter what you print as long as you go on with that form of activity.

The effect of TV is quite independent of the program i.e huge technology involved in TV that surrounds your
physical environment is vast.

If you trigger this mass media that we use, you are triggering an entire population.

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The General idea in his words

I have discovered very many things about media and education. It is now perfectly plain to me that all media are
environments. As environments, all media have all the effects that geographers and biologists have associated
with environments in the past. Environments shape their occupants. One person, complaining about my
observation that “the medium is the message,” simply said: “McLuhan means that the medium has no content.”

It is obvious that the user or content of any medium is completely conformed to the character of this man-made
environment.

The medium is the message raises an argument the medium its self conveys more impact on the society than the
message in the content of the medium.

For instance each medium shifts the power to communicate and influence the content and character of the
medium.
Take these illustrations as an example to the given idea:

WORD OF MOUTH

Since history information has been passed from person-person through conversation/ talk. Although, it was
unreliable since information was susceptible to distortion. Communities that depended on word of mouth were

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regarded primitive as complex societies regarded far much accurate knowledge and information exchange.

PRINT MEDIUM

Innovation of print allowed for publication of books, newspapers and later on even magazines expanding
distribution of knowledge, propaganda and news.

ELECTRONIC MEDIUM

For instance television, allows for information to be distributed through a one-way channel in real time. This
further led to regulations that limited a number of broadcast TV programs hence creating shared experiences
and relatively unified culture at level of nations..

SO THE MAIN QUESTIONS THAT RISE ARE:

-What does this model enhance?
-What does it obsolete/ remove in the process?
-What it reverses?
-What it brings back/ retrieve?

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References:
a)Wikipedia- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
b)
Youtube:
https://youtu.be/ImaH51F4HBw- Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977 part 1 v 3
https://youtu.be/a11DEFm0WCw- Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977 part 2 v 3
https://youtu.be/CtpX8A7Q2pE- Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977 part 3 v 3

c)
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/26841583.pdf - Eric McLuhan (2008); University of Toronto, Canada- Marshall
McLuhan’s Theory of Communication: The Yegg.
d)
https://simplicable.com/en/medium-is-the-message -Simplicable.com, Retieved October 1, 2021.

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Acknowledgment

The following work is an aggregate of the ideas of the following members who contributed in handing
references and delivering the wording for this paper:

Group leader - Simon Chege - CS/MG/0904/09/21

Lincoln Theophilus Owiti - CS/M/1443/09/21
Joseph Mbagara Kimani - CS/MG/2570/09/21
Moses Sande - CS/M/1209/09/21
Trevor Ewart - CS/MG/1904/09/21
Abigael Wanza - CS/MG/2010/09/21
Chryste Perri - CS/MG/3185/09/21
Clinton John Ouko - CS/MG/1126/09/21
Jose
Mark
Louis
Owen
Wendy
Bedan
Dorcas
Glenn