Blog Post #5: Dylan Gowanlock

     In the early stages of 2022 many upset Canadians took to the capital in a protesting effort. The initial convoy movement was started to oppose vaccination requirements for crossing the U.S. border, but it later became a protest against COVID-19 requirements in general. A rally on Parliament Hill on January 29, 2022, brought together hundreds of vehicles that had formed convoys from various locations on January 22 and traveled through several Canadian provinces. Thousands of protesters on foot joined the convoys. Provincial capitals and border crossings with the United States were blocked by several offshoot protests. Unions and the trucking industry slammed the convoy. The majority of protesters, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, had no connection to trucking. Multiple weapons were seized near a blockade in Coutts, Alberta, and four men were charged with conspiring to kill Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers. Officials were concerned about some protesters' connections to far-right extremist groups, including those that advocated for violence, and that some of them called for the overthrow of Canada's federal government. What has been interesting to learn is that social media played a pivotal role in allowing these ideas to flow and made the connection of those that are a part of the convoy to be much easier.

    "Social media was used to raise funds, connect organizers and spread their message. It was also used to contrast the accounts of traditional media outlets and provide a different view of what was happening on the ground" (Osman, 2022). This quote really stuck out to me as I feel that it results in what Marshall McLuhan would call cool media as opposed to hot. Because of the quality of the information and the amount of participation required for the Freedom Convoy to garner any kind of national and international attention, I believe that McLuhan would view those directly involved with the convoy as an example of cool media of television rather than hot media of radio. Due to the lack of data or information on the gathering, media coverage of the freedom convoy was also very "cool." The freedom convoy presents significantly less evidence than the direct medium of radio or television and encourages much more audience participation in formulating their theories.


Questions:

Should, in your opinion, the government be more explicitly tied with social media companies and their surveillance to ensure public safety?

Can you think of any other public or political events that social media has had a large impact on?  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post #4: Applying McLuhan's Hot and Cool Theory to Podcasting

Image
  Hi everyone!  For this blog post, I am interested in outlining Marshall Mcluhan’s Hot and Cool media theory. In particular, this post will use his theory to dissect the similarities and differences between how radio and podcasting are typically consumed in contemporary culture. Ultimately, the goal of this post is to illustrate how modern-day podcasting’s technological affordances allow for a more cool communicative method in comparison to traditional radio broadcasting.   McLuhan's Hot and Cool media theory categorizes different media forms based on how the receiver experiences its content. Specifically, for McLuhan, different media forms demand varying degrees of audience participation which impacts how one extracts meaning. Hot media is largely defined by its “high definition” as it focuses on one singular sense (ex: auditory, visual, etc). This intensification of a single sense facilitates the demand of a viewer’s attention as it does not leave much context to ...
Read more

The Freedom Convoy as Hot or Cool Media / Zach Tyrrell

A prominent idea in Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 book Understanding Media is looking at media as either hot or cold. Hot media demands a viewer's attention whereas cold media requires conscious participation by the medium’s consumer. Examples of hot media include; photographs, print, and radio. On the contrary cold media includes the; telephone, seminars and television. To reiterate, the differentiating factor between the two is audience involvement.  The freedom convoy took the nation by storm in early 2022. As most of you probably know, the freedom convoy was a nationwide protest against the vaccine mandate instituted by Trudeau’s government. The convoy made its way to Ottawa as hundreds protested outside of the Parliament building for a number of weeks. So, is the freedom convoy hot or cold media? I personally feel that it is difficult to categorize the convoy as one or the other which therefore makes it a combination of both. As we know hot media demand’s a viewer's attention a...
Read more

Blog Post #5

Image
Hi everyone!  Before I answer this week’s blog prompt, I want to establish a few key points of McLuhan’s medium theory in order to predict how he would interpret social media as a communicative medium. As we have discussed in our class, McLuhan’s approach to interpreting different media forms focuses on how they construct a social environment that can vary the meaning and sense of the information that is being communicated. Particularly, McLuhan explains that a medium can be seen as an extension of our human senses. This causes different media to favour certain senses which influences how we interpret meaning within the barriers of that sense. For example, since radio privileges the sense of hearing, this then causes receivers of its message to perceive its message within the limitations of hearing. Thus, this idea of media as an extension of human senses has certain implications regarding how different media can shape our social environments and cultural communicative practices....
Read more