Macro Media Literacy

Media Literacy, or Critical Media Literacy as it’s sometimes called, is a part of the media studies world which tends to focus on critical evaluation of the content of various media, mainly communications technologies.

Google search results yield the following:

“A commonly cited definition of “media literacy” was created at the 1992 Aspen Media Literacy Leadership Institute: Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms.” [criticalmediaproject.org]

“the “critical” in critical media literacy: a focus on identity. Critical Media Project builds upon previous media literacy efforts in several ways. Inspired by the writings of scholars like UCLA’s Douglass Kellner and Jeff Share, the emphasis on “critical” media literacy means that we focus more explicitly on analyzing the “politics of representation” in media.” [criticalmediaproject.org]

“Media literacy is the ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they’re sending.” [commensensemedia.org]

“Media literacy encompasses the practices that allow people to access, critically evaluate, and create or manipulate media.” [Wikipedia]

“Media are powerful forces in the lives of youth. Music, TV, video games, magazines and other media all have a strong influence on how we see the world, an influence that often begins in infancy. To be engaged and critical media consumers, kids need to develop skills and habits of media literacy. These skills include being able to access media on a basic level, to analyze it in a critical way based on certain key concepts, to evaluate it based on that analysis and, finally, to produce media oneself. This process of learning media literacy skills is media education.” [mediasmarts.ca]

In these examples of what we could call conventional media literacy, the focus is on the content, and specifically on the intent of the creators and purveyors of content. It’s mainly focused on building awareness around propaganda, be it political or commercial, and persuasion.

It’s generally directed toward children.

It’s content analysis, and it’s good work. Vital work, even. Certainly in the world we live in today, so over-saturated with ‘content’ of this kind, it is very important that we be critical, that we teach skills to empower people to be aware of the subtleties at play, that the ‘messages’ being directed at you are often designed to manipulate you into buying products or politics.

But — this is not the ‘message’ Marshall McLuhan was talking about when he said, in 1958, that ‘the medium is the message. This is more like saying ‘the message is the message.’ And, really, that’s fine. It’s more than fine — as I already said, conventional media literacy as it’s commonly understood is an important part of the media puzzle. But it’s not the whole puzzle, and it’s focusing on ‘the message’ at the expense, and the benefit, of ‘the medium.’

“For the “content” [‘the message’] of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.” [Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London, England: MIT Press,1964; p.18)]

While people are busy making content — even when they’re busy ‘being critical’ of content, technologies are quite busy rearranging our senses, our brains, and our societies. And they do this regardless of ‘the message’ you’re critically or uncritically occupied with.

“What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the “message” of any medium is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” [Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964, p.8]

“The meaning and effect of a medium is the sum total of all its impact upon psyche and society.” [Marshall McLuhan, letter to Harry Skornia dated July 6, 1964 in ‘Letters of Marshall McLuhan’, 1987 Oxford University Press.]

“It is now perfectly plain to me that all media are environments, all media have the effects that geographers and biologists have associated with environments in the past. … The medium is the message because the environment transforms our perceptions governing the areas of attention and neglect alike.” [Marshall McLuhan, Speech given to the Provincial Committee on the Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario, January 19, 1967. In ‘The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Contemporary Issues in Canadian Education.’ Stevenson, Stamp, Wilson, ed.’s, 1972]

Marshall McLuhan’s pioneering work in media studies doesn’t fit into the conventional media literacy framework, because it goes beyond that framework. It is a Macro Media Literacy.

I suspect a reason that McLuhan work seems absent from media literacy discussions is that people are not sure how it fits. The simple answer is that it doesn’t really fit. (Now, the ironic part is that Marshall McLuhan was a literary critic and professor for his entire career. He was quite concerned with ‘content criticism’ and his early work, for example ‘The Mechanical Bride: The Folklore of Industrial Man’ (1951), a study of advertising before television, could be considered media literacy as it’s popularly understood today.)

Macro media literacy analyzes the effect of technologies, regardless of their content, on humans. It focuses on the wider ‘psychic and social consequences,’ on the cognitive and neurological effects, the reshaping of our senses and the balance among them, and the very ‘wiring’ of our brains. It is in this manipulation that we see the major changes in people individually and collectively.

In McLuhan studies, what a ‘medium’ is or what ‘media’ are is a much broader category than in media literacy in general.

If you think about it, the horse saddle was a technology on a level with the telegraph in terms of its power in reshaping the human and human world. But I have yet to see anything like that addressed in conventional media literacy because the ‘message’ is more subtle: it’s environmental.

“Any new technology, any extension or amplification of human faculties when given material embodiement, tends to create a new environment. This is as true of clothing as of speech, or script, or wheel. … It is in the interplay between the old and the new environment that there is generated an innumerable series of problems and confusions. … As an environment it is imperceptible except in terms of its content. That is, all that’s seen or noticed is the old environment. But the effects of … the environment in altering the entire character of human sensibility and sensory ratios is ignored.” [Marshall McLuhan ‘The Relation of Environment to Anti-Environment,’ 1965]

I am suggesting that we enlarge what is conventionally considered and taught as media literacy to include both a broader understanding of what constitutes ‘media’ as well as a broader understanding of what their ‘messages’ are to include what happens when you shift attention from the content to the form, from the content creators and purveyors to the effects on the user/receiver beyond intentional persuasion and toward the more profound cognitive, sensory, and societal changes which are generally ‘unintended consequences’ or ‘side effects’ but when added up vastly overpower whatever was intended.

Andrew McLuhan,

Bloomfield

2021