Medium

The material used by an artist, composer or writer to create their piece of work. Each medium is different because you can do different things with different mediums. A medium can be format for composing something such as a podcast, blog, or a newspaper and a medium is also the tool the artist uses to compose in their desired format, such as a paintbrush, marble block, pencil, and computer. The medium is also the device the receiver uses to view the media such as a book, television, or radio.

After a comparison of the different definitions of Medium in his article Lecture: Of Mediums, Media, and Materiality, John Walter defines a medium as , “...a medium is any intermediary channel or mode through which we convey meaning.” (Walter). It is also important to note that different types of mediums have different affordances and constraints due to their materiality, what the media is made of: which determine a lot of things about the piece produced such who can view it and how long it can last like a message written on a stone monument or a web article (Watson). Historically, mediums have changed, and we have arrived in an era where the mediums we have allow us to view many different types of media. Radio allows people to give their own opinions and it is a platform to distribute their rhetoric. Another choice of medium would be Youtube which has a plethora of people aiming to give their rhetoric (persuasive opinions) on all kinds of topics. It is possible that the way information is communicated can be argued to be more important than the information itself. McLuhan’s theory is that the channel that a message is communicated is more important than the meaning or content of the message. “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which means communicate than by the content of the communication” says Marshall McLuhan.

For example, someone who gets a news story from twitter might not take it as seriously as someone who hears that same story from a news broadcast. People take action using information they saw on social media. The channel in which the message was relayed is important in validating the content. The Medium used to send a message may vary from body language to “forms of mass communication such as newspapers, television, and the internet.” (Nordquist, 2020). As Dan says, “This is merely to say that the personal and social consequence of any medium-that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves...:” (folding ideas “understanding media” pg.7) Media affect the way people live. Yumna Samie relays this point the best by using a photograph as an example in her Youtube video. An old photo was taken with the intention of passing it down to showcase fond memories. That message might be lost due to the wear and tear of the photo and due to the fact that the memories that photo represented may not be apparent to whoever receives the photograph. The only medium we used to have was sound. The medium is just as important as the message because it can alter how a person perceives it, or it can distort the meaning of the message. The medium also affects how the final piece of work comes out, think of water colors compared to acrylic and pencil compared to computers.