Media; Media technology; range
Communication, as an independent discipline, has a history of only a few decades, but as a social phenomenon, communication is synchronized with the emergence of human society. Moreover, the media, like senders and receivers, all appear as the most basic elements of communication and are the means and carriers of information transmission and acceptance. In the initial communication history, the media took the form of sound, language and some simple symbols. With the development of science and technology, the technical content of media is getting higher and higher. With the invention of modern printing press, communication has a modern significance for the first time, and it has begun to go beyond the limits of previous human imagination, get rid of the constraints of timeliness and regionality, and make every individual on the earth fall into the huge whirlpool of modern media. With the continuous development of the industrial revolution, radio, television and other media are also competing to leap onto the communication stage. Moreover, the emergence of every kind of media has greatly affected the living conditions of human beings, and even has a great relationship with the changes of human society and the development of civilization. In particular, the invention and maturity of television play a greater role, which also makes the practical significance of media technology analysis stand out quickly and clearly. Raymond Henry Williams, McLuhan and Meyrowitz, the famous theoretical masters in media analysis theory, all have their own unique theoretical arguments.
In the last decade of the 20th century, science and technology changed with each passing day, and information technology was updated faster. Digital technology, optical fiber satellite communication technology and computer network technology shine brightly. On the basis of the gradual integration and coordination of all these technologies, the world-wide Internet has risen rapidly and become an unprecedented new medium in human history. It not only breaks the geographical restrictions and national boundaries, but also breaks the barriers of various symbol forms such as words, sounds and images, and unifies various levels and types of communication such as individual one-way communication (self-communication), interpersonal communication, organizational communication and mass communication. The tentacles of its influence are also extending to all aspects of human social life and infiltrating into every corner of the world. For the media, these changes contain new challenges and opportunities. For the field of communication studies, these exciting changes constitute the driving force to promote media analysis and research. On the one hand, the profound analysis and interpretation of new technologies, new media, new environment and new practices in information communication cannot be separated from the guidance of communication theory. On the other hand, the endless new changes in the field of communication have put a series of new communication research topics, such as the relationship between high-tech information dissemination and social development, in front of academic circles. Combining theoretical research with applied research of communication, gaining enlightenment from predecessors' achievements and pursuing the enrichment of communication theory and practice are the dual tasks entrusted to the communication community by the times. Media analysis, as a research department with media technology as its core, pays attention to the relationship between media analysis and its development and human social changes, which provides an excellent starting point for this kind of research.
When it comes to media analysis theory, the first name that many people think of is McLuhan. As everyone knows, McLuhan's media analysis theory was deeply influenced by innis, and he himself called innis a "mentor". As early as the early 1950s, innis extensively analyzed various forms and technical means of human communication in his monographs "Empire and Communication" and "Deviation of Communication System", and put forward a media theory linking communication technology and its development with the changes of human society and the development history of civilization. Compared with McLuhan's media analysis theory, innis's media theory came out more than ten years earlier.
From the early 1940s, in the last 10 year of his life, innis put communication at the core of human history, and formed his media theory on this basis. This theory holds that all civilizations depend on the control of space and time span, which is related to the temporal and spatial tendency of the media, so the rise and fall of civilization is closely related to the dominant media. Innis believes that any medium has time deviation or space deviation, that is to say, the medium has a tendency of long-term preservation but difficult to transport, or has a tendency of easy transportation but difficult to preserve, the former is easy to control the time span; Such as parchment and stone. Innis called it "a media biased towards time"; The latter facilitates the control of space, such as light paper, which innis called "a medium biased towards space". According to innis's point of view, as far as the relationship between the two media and the right structure is concerned, "time-biased media" is helpful to establish authority and form a hierarchical social system; "Space-oriented media" is helpful to the remote management and trade of vast areas, to the expansion of imperial territory, and to the formation of a centralized social system with weak hierarchy. The influence of the balance between time bias and space bias of the media on social stability should also be discussed. According to his media theory, two kinds of authority and knowledge monopoly based on time-biased communication means or space-biased communication means-religion or national government, morality or technology-are the main driving forces for the rise and fall of empires and civilizations. This theory also regards time deviation and space deviation as dialectical unity, and holds that blindly leaning towards time and space will cause social instability, and a stable society cannot be separated from the mechanism of maintaining the balance between time deviation and space deviation.
An important feature of innis's media theory is the author's suspicion of scientific and technological rationality. Although we should attach great importance to the role of the development history of media technology in the history of civilization, he did not see the hope of solving the following important problems in modern civilization from the appearance of new media: how to develop moral power to compete with the power released by material science in order to maintain social balance. For example, in his book Prejudice of Communication System, innis made the following comments on the hidden problems in knowledge mechanization: "Mechanization emphasizes complexity and chaos, which leads to monopoly in the field of knowledge. For any civilization, if it does not succumb to the influence of this knowledge monopoly, it is extremely important to conduct some critical investigations and make critical reports. Freedom of thought is in danger of being destroyed by the mechanization of science, technology and knowledge and the accompanying western civilization. " Perhaps innis's pessimism and nostalgia for science and technology is not desirable. However, his critical thinking on modern western civilization, which overemphasizes the power of material science and technology and ignores the power of morality, is indeed something that every intellectual accustomed to independent thinking must respect.
If innis is a pioneer in thinking about linking media technology with the development history of human civilization, then McLuhan is a key figure in continuing to explore this field and establishing a research tradition focusing on media technology in the field of communication. Mcluhan's media theory, with a series of bold and novel arguments, quickly attracted the attention of western academic circles. Not only that, he also set off a Maxwell storm between the American media and the public.
Analysis on the spread of media technology comes from
One of McLuhan's most important arguments should be "media is information", which is the title of an important book co-authored by McLuhan and another scholar, and also the thought-provoking theme of his media theory. Maxwell expounded the argument that "media is information" from two aspects of function and effect. First of all, Maxwell understood the "content" from the perspective of the function of media technology, and put forward that the "content" of any media is always another media. "Words are the contents of words, just as words are the contents of printing. Print the contents of the telegram. If someone wants to ask,' so what is the content of the speech?' Then it is necessary to answer,' it is the actual process of thought, and it is nonverbal in itself' ". In addition, McLuhan also understands "content" from the perspective of social influence and effect of media technology, and thinks that once a new media appears, no matter what information it conveys, this media itself will cause some changes in society, which is its content, that is, the information it brings to human society.
Another important viewpoint of McLuhan is his theory that "media is an extension of human body". He compared media technology to the extension of human body or human senses and put forward the concept of "sensory balance". He pointed out that the use of different communication technologies will affect the organization perceived by human beings. For example, writing and printing media are the extension of the visual organs-eyes, broadcasting is the extension of the hearing organs-ears, and television is the extension of the whole body sensory organs. According to the evolution of the dominant mode of communication in human history, Marx divided human society into three main periods: oral communication period, written communication period and electronic communication period. In each period, the interaction between human senses and ways of thinking has its own characteristics. Corresponding to this is tribal culture, which breaks away from tribal culture and returns to tribal culture. He believes that people's feelings need to be balanced. Once any kind of feeling dominates, the role of other feelings will be alienated, and such an individual will not be sound. The emergence of electronic communication will make people move towards harmony again and make people's feelings reach a balanced state again. In addition, wheat is also known as "cold medium and hot medium".
They put media technology in the background of the development history of human civilization, emphasized the role of media technology itself, and created a new research tradition of communication science paying attention to media technology. This is an important historical position of this theory of duet. However, their theory also has an important defect: it falls into the paradox of technological determinism. Their media theories all overemphasize the role of media technology and call media description the biggest driving force leading to social change. Therefore, it was criticized by academic circles as falling into the extreme of technological determinism. This is what we must be vigilant when reading their works and absorbing their essence. In addition, in their writing, they often fail to clearly define some basic definitions, which leads to logical confusion in their thinking when they pursue an exaggerated style. This also needs the reader's attention.
In sharp contrast with these two men, Raymond Henry Williams, a famous British scholar, a theoretical pioneer of social and cultural schools in western critical schools and a cultural critic of western Marxism. Williams devoted himself to cultural studies all his life. For him, the study of mass media is an important part. In his view, cultural research is to study the relationship between the components of the whole lifestyle. First of all, he believes that the study of media culture should use a holistic, historical and dynamic perspective. In his view, cultural phenomena (including media culture) are closely related to all social phenomena, and its changes involve all social phenomena, including changes in internal structure, which is an endless movement process. "At any time, it includes both a response to modernity and a continuation of history." Secondly, he linked cultural research with social system, trying to explore the relationship between cultural products and social system. This can be seen from his following viewpoints: First, emphasizing the process of social communication is the process of historical establishment and evolution of meaning and definition in society, and communication is closely related to social systems and customs. Secondly, it points out that the commercial form of mass communication is not a free mode of mass communication as some people boast, but a mode in which the commercial system actually controls society. Thirdly, it points out the complexity of cultural phenomena and the sociality of various problems in media culture. He opposes the simple dichotomy of either or to look at social and cultural issues. There are some problems in popular culture, such as poor content, but they are not isolated. He advocates treating them as social problems, which has complicated social reasons, including: contempt for the real popular cultural traditions in the past; As a great achievement of human culture, the great cultural tradition has been monopolized by a few people; Speculators took advantage of this.
Regarding the relationship between the development of media technology and society, Williams criticized the theories of two masters who occupy a prominent position in the field of communication, one is lasswell's communication mode, and the other is McLuhan's media theory. Williams is quite dissatisfied with lasswell's way of communication. He believes that this model ignores the "intention" that is crucial to the real social and cultural process. If we ignore the purpose of communication, it is equivalent to ignoring all the real social and cultural processes. This involves the intention and interest that the communication process points to. He further pointed out that the real intentions of western media are often quite different from those publicly declared by the relevant authorities, and are quite different from those imagined in the general social process. Only by analyzing the intention correctly can we have a deeper understanding of the internal system of western media.
Williams also criticized McLuhan's media theory from the following aspects. First of all, he thinks that Maxwell's media theory has no social trace and cannot explain the correlation between different media characteristics and specific historical and cultural situations and intentions. Although Maxwell's theory pays attention to the non-specificity of different media, it only gives them psychological functions in a hypothetical way. Secondly, Maxwell's theory not only recognizes the present situation of western social culture, but also recognizes the inherent tendency of this social and cultural situation. In other words, it lacks rational criticism of the western social and cultural situation and its development trend. Finally, there is still serious logical confusion in Mai's theory.
While criticizing the two, Williams also talked about his views on the relationship between media cultural intention and social science and technology development: First, all technologies are created and developed to help known human practice, which is a basic intentional factor, but it is not the only one. Second, many times, technology often produces unexpected uses and effects, and they are also true corrections to the initial heart. Third, real decision-making is a process, a social process involving the whole reality, which is restricted by various factors.
In a word, media technology is an important aspect of media development, which can often cause great changes in the mode of communication, thus leading to great changes in society itself. Therefore, media technology is not only a technical definition, but also its social significance deserves further study by more people of insight.