Blog Post #5
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.
With this in mind, McLuhan has certain reservations regarding the extension of human senses through electronic technology (Herman, 2022). Using a generally technological deterministic approach, he views electronic media’s ability to enhance global connectivity as inherently affecting how we think and reconfiguring our social practices. Thus, I predict that McLuhan would view the rise of social media as a communicative tool in our culture as a significant force in how we now think, collaborate, and behave. As such, McLuhan may interpret the spreading of the Freedom Convoy’s beliefs and the formation of the actual protests as heavily influenced by social media’s ability to extend human senses through the digital landscape. I think he would view the collective adoption of these beliefs as a product of viewing social media posts from a distance. Meaning, the ability to pick and choose the information that you see online allows individuals to form ways of thinking within their created social environment. Ultimately, I believe McLuhan could view the organization of the protests as a consequence of the Freedom Convoy’s beliefs circulating over social media and fostering a sense of collective belonging.
Overall, I argue that McLuhan would view social media’s role in spreading awareness of the Freedom Convoy's cause as a form of cool media. This is because social media’s combining forms of text (written, video, images, etc) engages multiple senses and demands higher audience participation. This more enhanced level of participation is significant as it asks the receiver to complete the gaps between the medium’s presented information. Therefore, I feel this is representative of how individuals formed their support for the Freedom Convoy movement as social media allows the audience to have more subjective interpretations of the content. Thus, I believe that McLuhan would view the formation of the Freedom Convoy protest as a result of social media’s cool media characteristics.
Question:
How do you think the circulation of the Freedom Convoy movement on social media facilitated its transition into real-life protests?
Hi Taylor, I agree with your statement that the involvement of social media was a representation of cool media because these platforms required users to be a prosumer and there were individuals creating the content to share while others were simply viewers on social media watching this movement takeover the internet. In regard to your question, I think the circulation of the Freedom Convoy movement on social media facilitated its transition into real-life protests because it was so effective at spreading awareness. Social media was a catalyst for spreading information meaning the more people that knew about the protest the more likely that there would be more people showing up to take action in person. Social media essentially made it easier for people to connect with one another and spread the word quicker in regard to logistics of the protest. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteGreat post Taylor! I agree with your stance that McLuhan would view social media's role in the Freedom Convoy as a cool media. The Freedom Convoy engages multiple sense, and demands high audience participation, which are characteristics of cool media.
ReplyDeleteAnswering your discussion question, I believe the circulation of the Freedom Convoy movement on social media facilitated its transition into real-life protests due to social medias ability to spread information across vast distances. As mentioned in the Osman reading social media was seen as the "central nervous system of the convoy" (Osman, 2022), connecting organizers, fundraising, and spreading the convoy ideology. Although the convoy was feeding a lot of misinformation to the public, social media was the powerhouse used to manipulate many audiences. This successful manipulation allowed for the convoy to form a tribe of people possessing a similar belief, which resulted in facilitating its transition into real-life protests.