Hot & Cold Media

Marshall McLuhan, new media theorist and philosopher, used his book, “The Medium and the Massage,” to separate the subject of media into two concepts, hot and cold. He writes, “Whenever hot wars are necessary these days, we conduct them in the backyards of the world with the old technologies. These wars are happenings, tragic games. It is no longer convenient, or suitable, to use the latest technologies for fighting our wars, because the latest technologies have rendered war meaningless” (McLuhan and Fiore 74). Now, many who read this may find McLuhan’s way with words describing hot and cold media a bit complex. However, understanding the concepts of hot and cold media is in fact quite easy.

Further, hot and cold media are things we use daily. For example, “A photograph is, visually, "high definition." A cartoon is "low definition," simply because very little visual information is provided. Telephone is a cool medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a small amount of information. Speech is similarly a cool medium or low definition because so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot mediums do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience (McLuhan “Media Hot and Cold”). In essence, McLuhan was illustrating that hot media gives the viewer everything. The viewer does not need to question, guess or assume because the information is given to them. Cold media requires the user to think. The information is given to them with gaps to encourage more viewer participation and intellect.

Consequently, hot and cold media is not without controversy. In fact, many view McLuhan’s point of view written in the twentieth century outdated and inaccurate. The Oxford Dictionary reads, “Arguably, in McLuhan's terms, television has grown hotter since the 1960s as its technical picture quality has improved, so these terms are relative. Critics of McLuhan's concept have argued that it reifies the medium, underestimating differences within the same medium; the degree of audience engagement does not depend primarily on the medium itself (although its affordances may play a part), but on its content and the ways in which the medium is used on specific occasions within specific contexts” (“Hot and Cool Media”). So as you can see, McLuhan’s point of views are a reflection of the times he lived in and the technology that was available. “PBS Idea Channel” emphasizes this point by stating, “In the 1960s, radio, television, and film were, arguably, much more monolithic” (“PBS Idea Channel”). He could never have imagined that television, radios, and other mediums would have become so advanced that his definitions of hot and cold have become interchangeable depending on the audience. This is exemplified with this quote, “We always bring ourselves, our experiences and expectations, to the media we interact with. To determine participation by a medium or its quality is to ignore, I think, the state of the self, the media ecosystem, and the relationship between those two things. Media is not hot or cold, but to put it McLuhan's terms - people hot up and cool down in response to the media they consume” (“PBS Idea Channel”).

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium Is The Massage. Random House, 1967.

McLuhan, Marshall. “Media Hot and Cold.” Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001. 22-32.

"PBS Idea Channel" But Wait: Are You Hot, Or Is Your Media? (TV Episode 2016) - Imdb". Imdb, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11365560/.

"Hot And Cool Media". Oxford Reference, 2020, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110810105107935. Accessed 8 Oct 2020.

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The terms hot and cold media were coined by Marshall McLuhan in his 1964 book, Understanding Media. The term is a distinction made by McLuhan between media such as print, photographs, radio, and movies (hot media) and media such as speech, cartoons, the telephone, and television (cool media).

Hot media are ‘high definition’ because they are rich in sensory data (Oxford Reference). Two examples of hot media include radio and film because “they both engage with one sense of the user to the extent that the user’s attention is only focused on the content and their participation is minimal almost secondary” (The Media Students Blog, 2018). “Cold Media” on the contrary uses a form of low definition media that engages several senses less completely that it demands a great deal of interaction from the audience. That is, the “audience must participate more because they are the ones that must fill in the gaps for the content themselves” (The Media Students Blog, 2018). This type of media is found in examples such as the television, our own phone conversations and comic books because oftentimes it requires a lot more hands on interaction with the viewer.

Cool media are ‘low definition’ because they provide less sensory data and demand more participation by the audience. Radio focuses on the sense of hearing and communicates the whole message via sound. There is no means of back and forth communication between sender and receiver. Cold media means the audience may have to fill in the blanks. A speech is an example of cold media because more participation is required. Speech requires supporting information and even interpretation in order to fully relay the message to the audience. A good example of cold media is the Internet, because it requires lots of interaction by the audience (you need to know exactly how to use it and your engagement is necessary). According to Mike Rugnetta video “But Wait: Are You Hot, Or Is It Your Media?”, the strict divide between hot and cold media is false. This is because technology is constantly evolving and in reality, some technologies are not just hot or cold. Maybe, they’re warm. McLuhan labels speech and telephone as cool media, but the phone today is much ‘hotter’ than speaking face to face. Therefore, should the telephone really be in the same category as speech? Hot media is direct, while cold media is indirect.

Baron, Dennis E. A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2009.

"Hot and Cool Media." Oxford Reference, www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110810105107935. Accessed 19 Sept. 2020

TweetingRawr. “Marshall McLuhan's Hot and Cool.” Themediastudentsblog, 3 Feb. 2018, themediastudentsblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/marshall-mcluhans-hot-and-cool/.