Variation of Communication and Media Discussion
For the introductory assignment, you are invited to choose from one of two options. An example of each option is attached below as a rough guide, not as something to directly emulate. Option 1. Content, channel, creature John Durham Peters’ essay gives us a useful framework for understanding how broad and varied both “communication” and “media” can be. A medium is any arrangement of “content” (what), “channel” (how), and “creature” (to and by whom). A medium can be something as recent as Twitch.tv (content: live recordings of people’s gameplay; channel: the Internet & our devices; creature: livestreamers and their audiences), and something as natural and elemental as our circulatory system (content: blood and oxygen; channel: vessels; creature: to and from various parts of the body). With this framework in mind, use Powerpoint or Google Slides to create a visual diagram (feel free to find & use online images) with an attending one paragraph description (200 words) of something that we wouldn’t normally consider “media”. Here are some potential options: Covid-19 test (as explained here: https://theconversation.com/covid-19-tests-how-they-work-and-whats-in-development-134479) Last night’s dinner A tomato plant Option 2. Remediation “The ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium” – McLuhan As Jay Bolter & David Grusin describe, “remediation” is the process through which ‘new’ media are integrated into existing media systems. According to these authors, this happens through a mix of “immediacy” (where the new medium erases all elements of its ‘medianess’) and “hypermediacy” (where the new medium is overtly and explicitly displaying its connections to other media). To take Youtube as an example, it uses both immediacy (the idea that you can ‘connect’ with anyone on the planet by seeing what they’ve seen & recorded) and hypermediacy (the use of “channels” to describe different compilations of clips, as if we are watching old-school network TV). Using Google Slides or Powerpoint, choose one movie scene, or TV episode, or video game and consider how it is incorporating “hypermediated” and “immediate” elements (or ‘logics’). Draw from screenshots of your example, and focus more on showing rather than telling. Use captions / text boxes to annotate (provide brief explanations for) your images.
