Importances of choosing medium

In my opinion, McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” is actually referring to humans’ understanding of a message would be affected or determined by the medium that delivered the message to them, thus “Medium” itself becomes a repackaged content which combined by the original message and the special characteristics of the medium.

I agree with McLuhan’s idea to a large extent, as I think that a message could have decreasing reality when it get delivered through medium, descending from hot medium to cold medium. It’s because when more participation and imagination required in order to understand the message, the message loses its reality as the definition of the meanings become lower.

By using the student association election in my secondary school as an example, the two proposed cabinets tried to use different mediums for promotion while actually their service and welfare are very similar as everybody knows there are not much a secondary school’s student association can do. I have realised that different mediums they used could deliver a totally different understandings to students.

Cabinet A were giving speech in the canteen while Cabinet B were distributing printed materials around, the message delivered by the speaker of Cabinet A had been repackaged by the speaker’s own understanding, emotions and presentation skills while the printed materials of Cabinet B had stated the same message very clearly and originally. The medium of Cabinet B used allowed students to understand the message more easily by enhancing only ‘one’ single sense which simply reading text while Cabinet A required students to pay lots attention and simultaneous comprehension of all parts in order to understand. (270 words)

Student : Mak Ka Tsun