Photos by Sarah Liu

I would say I am an ignorant person when it comes to news. I joined this class both to apply my interest in media as a theory and to widen my understanding of current media and news as a practice. Because I am not politically involved, I didn’t really care which news channels I downloaded from the Apple Store. I followed along the “5 Apps to Never Miss a Headline” and downloaded CNN, New York Times, and Washington Post because I know they are top-notch in the news industry. I also downloaded the more conservative Fox News because it serves as a political counterbalance to the other three, which are more liberal.

Every day, I would receive “hot-topic” or “breaking” news in my notifications. If a certain topic was written on by several news channels, then I knew it was a big deal, but otherwise, I wouldn’t care as much. Most of the time, I would not even open up the article, and would merely read the headline. On February 3rd, I was slightly annoyed to receive three notifications from three different news apps on the same topic in two minute intervals. But I was nevertheless able to extract different pieces of information and piece it together.

In all three headlines, I learned that the Patriots beat the Rams in the Super Bowl with a score of 13 to 3, for their sixth year. From CNN’s headline, I learned that the Patriots are from New England while the Rams are from Los Angeles. I did not understand what was meant by the “lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever.” It seems that the CNN and Washington Post description were more objective compared to NYTimes, which contained very colored words such as “pretty” and “held off,” perhaps because it was a commentary piece rather than a more objective report.

The combination of these three headlines appearing about the same time in my notifications was sufficient “news” for someone like me who was not at all interested in the Super Bowl. Perhaps this is a problem unique to me, for I find that there are too many media resources for me to take any news seriously. As noted before, I do not have a political stance, thus I, all the more, want to take in more news sources with varying political perspectives than only one or two (that fit my political ideology) with the anxiety that I would not get the whole picture of a situation if I didn’t do this. Because I don’t think I am ever satisfied with reading second-hand information, I do not find news useful or interesting, but rather twisted and perplexing.

The ubiquity of news information ironically reduces its significance both as a communication medium and as a content producer. The ubiquity of differing (political) perspectives in news reporting reduces everything to chaos. I am not saying that I don’t cherish voices, but if news were to provide objective information, then there is, of course, no need for all of these different platforms. The fact that this is no longer its aim, or rather, cannot possibly be its aim in the modern age, manifests its deterioration from inside out. I would have been more enticed by news information if apps were just invented, in which I am willing to engage in the news content because of my technological fascination with the invention of apps rather than because of my interest in the material itself.

Marshall McLuhan’s paper on “The Medium is the Message” may explain my anxieties. McLuhan claims that the “medium is the message” in which the “personal and social consequences 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, or by any new technology” (McLuhan 1). A good example to illustrate this definition is provided below:

Leonard Doob, in his report Communication in Africa, tells of one African who took great pains to listen each evening to the BBC news, even though he could understand nothing of it. Just to be in the presence of those sounds at 7 P.M. each day was important for him. His attitude to speech was like ours to melody—the resonant intonation was meaning enough. (McLuhan 9)

It seems that McLuhan believes the mere presence, or introduction, of a new technology impacts our understanding of the content without us actually understanding the content, and even if the content conveyed through the technology is comprehensible, we inevitably feel the power of the medium. But for me, and perhaps many others, using apps and reading news online have become such an integrated part of our lives that it has faded away as a spectacle with much significance, in which I no longer ascribe, or want to ascribe, significance to it when I digest it. This phenomenon may be due to the idea that the “‘content’ of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech” (McLuhan 8). The “content” is made banal by its ubiquity, and there is nothing special about how the information is relayed. Thus, the message of the medium is lost, and news communication in our age has, to an extent, become trapped in current media expression and technology.

To further expound my frustration about news in media, McLuhan provides a very precise explanation of the consequences of our prolonged exposure to new technologies:

For the man in a literate and homogenized society ceases to be sensitive to the diverse and discontinuous life of forms. He acquires the illusion of the third dimension and the “private point of view” as part of his Narcissus fixation, and is quite shut off from Blake’s awareness or that of the Psalmist, that we become what we behold. (McLuhan 9)

Here, McLuhan references William Blake and the Book of Psalms to convey a contrary idea: the more we experience of the world, the more we develop our own, internal understanding of it. When we use a piece of technology that we have used many times, we are no longer amazed by its capabilities and understand that we are using it for its ability to provide us the services that we need. There is an inherent struggle between what technology gives to us and what we choose to take in. As such, I believe that we lose sensitivity first to form and second to diversity of perspectives and opinions.

According to Raymond Williams’ writing on “The Technology and the Society,” there are several cause and effect relationships between society and technology. To note two important kinds, while social change may induce technological advancement, another possibility is technological determinism (Williams, 293), in which new technologies induce social change and progress. Among these changes are “new needs” or demand, as McLuhan calls it:

Perhaps the most obvious “closure” or psychic consequence of any new technology is just the demand for it. (McLuhan 15)

What speaks to me the most is that when demand arises out of the technological innovation, our fascination with the technology itself declines. It is no longer regarded as a spectacle or a revered product, but an everyday, common thing made to fulfill the “new needs” it has inadvertently created for society. Although Williams includes societal “progress” as a result of technological innovation, there is reason to question it in the context of our modern society and in the context of news media.

McLuhan proposes that we can escape when are tired by the effects of new technologies on our minds:

Today when we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from the bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human expression, we have only to visit a society where that particular form has not been felt, or a historical period in which it was unknown. (McLuhan 9)

Indeed, I agree with the former part of the passage, in that I feel the bias in news articles and the pressure of them coming to me all at once. However, I don’t think the latter part is achievable, especially in our age, and perhaps McLuhan is only providing his utopian vision as an alternative, mental outlet. In another part of the paper, McLuhan beautifully explains my anxieties:

The effect of radio is visual, the effect of the photo is auditory. Each new impact shifts the ratios among all the senses. What we seek today is either a means of controlling these shifts in the sense-ratios of the psychic and social outlook, or a means of avoiding them altogether. (McLuhan 13)

It wouldn’t work for me to delete these news apps, because I would have shut myself down only to this part of society, and would not have necessarily escaped to a society before its inception. There is a futility within using these apps, receiving news information, evaluating the information, and then thinking to myself what is the truth and if all this is important at all.

Works Cited

• McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium is the Message.” Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. MIT Press, 1994.
• Williams, Raymond. “The Technology and the Society.” Television: Technology and Cultural Form. Hanover, Wesleyan University Press, 1992, pp. 3-25.