Medium is the message. / "Encoding & Decoding*." (Eric, Chris and Audrey)

In McLuhan’s study on media communication, he proposes the idea that the medium is the message, therefore the message does not transmit as much information than the medium itself… everything depends and is referring to the medium. The author underlines the important role of media, were as the reception and the perception of the message could be completely changed by the medium and the respond modified not by the content (message) but certainly but the medium, because the content of a medium is always another medium. In the second reading, "Encoding/Decoding", the author Stuart Hall explains there are mixed messages. You have the medium and the message where the meaning of the message, to Hall, resides between the "producer" and the "reader". Even though the "encoding" part is done by the producer (he encodes it into a way that he himself perceives something), then the reader "decodes" the author's message into a different message. The communication process is built on a structure (production, distribution, consumption, distribution and reproduction) that describe the progression of the message into society based on cultural dominant signs that have to lay on a certain degree of reciprocity when encoded. When the decoder reads the message the in the way the producer intended people to, then the producer's been successful in transmitting the message. If the decoder doesn't however, if there is a "misunderstanding", then Hall states that it results from a "lack of equivalence" between the producer and the decoder.

According to McLuhan the media can change the whole communication process of the message, this idea is completely true but disagree on a point, were as we think the message is more important than the medium itself, the statement is the main source of reflection, not the medium… yes of course it has a strong influence on the message but it is not the essence of it all. One could say that media distort the essence of the message but I would say that, knowing what we know now about the communication world, transmitters must be, and most certainly are aware of that and they will play on the way the receptor will perceive the message to get the right perception. It is a complete industry of money making, therefore we as decoder stand in a place were we do not have any power on the encoding… we are in the process and as a mass like Hall says, live in universal unconsciousness and a world of universal symbols.

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