As Edward T. Hall observes in The Silent Language (1959. Doubleday & Co., New York), the study of communication is inextricably linked to the study of culture, and the study of culture to
communication.
For the better part of this century, a growing number of researchers and theorists in different fields have reinforced the view that communication is profoundly implicated in all processes
of culture. Anthropologists (Hall, Malinowski), historians (White, Eisenstein), psychologists (Watzlawick, Beavins-Bavelas, Jackson), linguists (Goody), economists (Innis), and others have created a growing
body of literature which has become a core curriculum for a new field of study: media ecology.
Media ecology is essentially the study of information environments. A central concern of media ecology is to
examine how the structure of a medium effects the information that it conveys, and how the structure of such information shapes our thought processes. As such, media ecology can be seen as a branch of
philosophy, a philosophy of communication, whose concern is to investigate the epistemologies created and fostered by different media.
How does the structure of a medium effect the information that it
conveys, and how can the structure of information shape our thought processes? This is a difficult question and a good starting point, as there are many ways these things occur, generally invisible to us and
so generally below the level of consciousness. In an effort to "make the invisible visible," media ecologists have identified a set of principles, a system of "structural analysis," to
help us to "step out of the picture" of which we are a part and see it more objectively. These principles detail characteristics of all media and allow us to see how and why one medium effects us
differently than another. And this is, of course, the underlying (and usually unspoken) rationale for the study of communication generally and mass communication specifically: all media are not alike. It is
not necessary to make a qualitative judgment (e.g., "books are 'better' than television"), although it certainly doesn't impede one's freedom to do so if he or she wishes. The point is, simply,
that different media treat information (and us) differently.
Let us then take a look at some of the characteristics of media by which we can judge these differences.
First, media differ in their form.
Form can be divided into two areas for investigation: symbolic form and physical form. Symbolic form refers to the characteristics of the code in which a medium conveys information (symbols, signs, gestures,
icons, etc.) and the structures in which the information is conveyed (propositional or presentational). Physical form refers to the characteristics of the technology that conveys the code, and the physical
requirements for encoding, transmitting, storing, retrieving and decoding information.
The symbolic form of the book is very different from the symbolic form of, say, television (I do not mean to
specifically "pick on" television, but rather to contrast two media which structure information in radically different ways with radically different results). The symbolic form of the book is the
written word, and more specifically the alphabetically written word. The symbolic form of television is somewhat more complex: it consists of spoken words, of course, on an aural channel, and sometimes
visually we see written words. But by and large the word is overpowered by other channels of information conveyed through the television medium. We have visual images, colors, movement, etc., on the level of
visual information, and sound effects, music, etc., on the aural level. Visually, too, we see not only things and people, but things and people in relationship. We see people in interaction with one another
and with the world around them. We can see their posture, read their kinesthetic cues (gesturing while performing or remaining more or less emotionless, etc.), proxemic cues (are they in situations of
intimate contact with their world and the people in it, or leaving physical and emotional distance, etc.), and pick up other paralinguistic cues (facial expression, tone of voice, loudness or softness of
voice, speed of speech, etc.). In short, the act of television viewing is a multisensory experience, which mimics the experience of real life.
The book (and any product of literate culture) structures
information propositionally. That is to say that the coin of common currency of the book is spoken language. Book information is subject to the same structure, rules, and logic of grammar, syntax, etc., as
spoken language. This structure is linear and sequential, one idea following, and dependent upon, another. Syntactically, book information is organized into recognizable patterns which are easily
interpretable and understandable (to those who have been trained in such structures), the most simple of which, subject/predicate/object, can yield patterns far more complex to deal with ideas far more
complicated.
Furthermore, spoken language consists of spoken words. Words are abstract symbols, sounds to which humans have arbitrarily assigned meaning. Written words share this characteristic with
spoken words, but added this is the fact that these abstract aural symbols are themselves mediated into abstract visual symbols. The complexity of this situation suggests that it will take years and years of
training, practice, and study to assimilate such a system of communication.
Propositionally structured information is relatively clear and unambiguous. This is not to say that it cannot be
misused, either deliberately or accidentally, but that the statement, 
"the monkey is hanging from the tree" is more clear and unambiguous than the illustration at right. That picture might mean "the monkey is hanging
from the tree," or it might mean "the monkey is hanging from the branch." Indeed, seeing the look on the monkey's face, it would not be indefensible to
suggest that "the monkey is lonely" or lost, or hungry, or his arm is getting sore. There's just no way to be certain on the basis of this picture. However,
the linguistic statement "the monkey is hanging from the tree" probably means just that. While it would not be impossible to come up with alternate interpretations of a linguistic
statement (e.g., your friend's nickname is "the monkey," changing entirely the meaning of the sentence), the very nature of its structure raises the level of certainty one can have in
interpreting it.
The very clarity and un-ambiguity of propositionally structured information is, paradoxically, probably due to the abstract nature of linguistic symbols. Spoken words, as
we've noted, are but abstract aural symbols. And written words are abstract aural symbols "encased" in abstract visual symbols. Because they bear no relationship, except
an entirely arbitrary and consensual one, to reality (that is to say, we must all agree to a definition), word-symbols are fairly clear and unambiguous.
By contrast, it should be clear now that television is a medium which structures information strongly presentationally, since it so strongly avoids abstraction and instead
presents an image to us very much like reality itself. And presentationally structured information, like life itself, is much more open to interpretation exactly because of the removal of abstraction.
Other differences between propositional and presentational structures in symbolic form include a high degree of linearity and sequence in the former and spontaneity,
instantaneity, or simultaneity in the latter; dependence on intellect in the former as opposed to an appeal to emotions in the latter; and while propositionally structured
information generally demands a high degree of training and education to be able to use and interpret symbols, presentationally structured information is generally universally available and understandable.
Which brings us to the question of a medium's physical form. To state the case as briefly as possible, the question of physical form comes down to being a question of hardware.
Some media have a simple physical form, and some are highly technologically complex. The significance of this apparently innocent difference will become apparent as we look
to the next set of differences among media.
The second characteristic to investigate is that of a medium's conditions of attendance.
Asking the following questions can identify these conditions: a] To whom does this medium make information available? b] Under what circumstances does one gain access
to this information? c] What pre-requisite skills or knowledge are necessary to make meaning of this information?
The first question suggests that we turn our attention to the medium's physical form, the
third to its symbolic form, and the second to both.
a] To whom does a medium make information available? This is a question, largely, of
hardware. A medium can be small, simple, even invisible (e.g., speech), and so, ultimately, inexpensive. Or a medium can be big, complex, and extremely expensive
(there seems to be a direct relationship between technological complexity and expense). Obviously, the less complex and less expensive media are more universally available than
the more complex and expensive ones.
But wait, you might say--what could be more universally available than television, and
television is fairly complex and relatively expensive. True enough. But just because just about everyone has a television, don't make the mistake of thinking that this means
everyone uses the television to communicate. If you and I want to communicate (in the truest sense of the word), we can meet in person and speak, write each other letters, call
each other on the phone, even e-mail each other. But when we turn on the television, we become receivers of messages, not really communicators.
The physical form of the television medium is so complex, there are so many pieces of technology involved--cameras, lights, microphones, video switchers, audio mixers, VCRs,
editors, character generators, distribution amplifiers, broadcast transmitters (and this is all before it comes into our homes!)--that only the tremendously wealthy, and usually
tremendously wealthy corporations, have control of the transmitting end of the communication process. The poor, the humble, the lowly (US) are destined to be only a small part of the receiving end.
So whether or not a person will have the means (usually economic) to use a particular medium, or will have free access to both the sending and receiving portions of the
communication act, are functions of a medium's conditions of attendance dependent upon physical form.
b] Under what circumstances does one gain access to this information? Every medium
comes with its own set of "operating instructions," as it were, which more or less dictate when, where, and how we will use them. The book and television differ in a number of
significant ways: the physical form of the book makes it usable just about anywhere, while that of the television limits our viewing to certain indoor venues (yes, I know this is changing...).
The book can be taken on the train or in a car or bus, it can be read at an airport, or at a sporting event. But many people don't like to read under those circumstances. These
are not the best conditions for reading. For my part, I know that I like to read in a controlled environment, one that is cut off from distractions and noise. I like to sit
comfortably in a quiet room, which is dark, except for the light that illuminates the page. Of course, I do read on the train or subway (I once had a friend who told me she liked to
read while driving, but I don't recommend it), or in other environments unlike the one I prefer, but I find that the greater the level of distraction, the greater the likelihood that I
will have to re-read the page when I finish it and realize I don't know what I just read!
We do not have this problem, generally speaking, with television. Whereas the book is
content-intensive, television is context-intensive . We don't generally watch television to learn something; we watch it to do something (I'm aware of the paradox present in the
minds of those of you who see television-watching as the antithesis of action). We watch television to relax, to be lulled, to be entertained, to be amused, to be titillated, to be
aroused, in short to effect us on an emotional, rather than an intellectual, level. And if we should doze off in the middle of a comedy, or soap, or a mystery, and wake up at the
ending, we don't ever really feel like we've missed anything. We simply do not have to attend to television the way we must attend to books.
This is not to say that television cannot teach us (PBS's Civil War documentary by Ken Burns was one of the best educational productions of any type on its subject), but that it
does not choose to. This is a function of television's physical form: such a technologically complex, labor intensive medium naturally has to make money, and content-intensive
programming has not historically been profitable.
Another difference concerning conditions of attendance relates to a fact we noted
earlier: a two-year-old will watch television, but will not read a book. In fact, most 10-year-olds would watch television before they would read, for instance, the collected
works of John Donne. Content, once again, and the desire to gain from specific content, is far more crucial to the book than to television. This fact is well known to anyone who
has ever traveled to a foreign-speaking country. I recently traveled to Poland for some friends' wedding and had the opportunity to watch a good deal of Polish television. I
know some Polish but am far from fluent. Yet I found I could watch a comedy, or drama, or soap opera, or even the news, and follow the story-line, and understand what
was happening, and interpret the actors' meanings, if not their words. This point allows us to look at the third question:
c] Does the recipient of the information have the prerequisite skills or knowledge to make use of the information? This question refers directly to symbolic form, for some
media demand a certain level of skills and a certain amount of background or contextual information in order to successfully interpret, and find meaning in, symbols.
The book, as we've continually seen, is not an easy medium to use. In fact, it's downright difficult. Someone with no training and/or education in the rudiments of literacy will
find it entirely indecipherable. And even then, when a young child learns how to read, and perhaps is even a fairly good reader for his or her age, we cannot expect them to
handle pieces of literature whose content is aimed at one with far a greater range and number of life experiences. A 10-year-old, no matter how good a reader she is, will
probably not get much out of a text on, say, quantum physics. Nor is she likely to fully comprehend, let alone appreciate, a novel by Gore Vidal.
Television, however, has few, if any, prerequisites. It is a curriculum unto itself. One does not have to learn how to watch television, any more than one has to learn how to watch
the real world. This does not mean that there cannot be content on television which is above a very young child, any more than there cannot be content in life that is above a
young child. It means simply that it doesn't matter as much with television if a person doesn't have all the prerequisite skills or knowledge to fully make use of the information
contain in a program. Being context-intensive, the very act of watching television is nearly as important as any content that the television might present.
The third characteristic difference among media concerns the flow of information. Because of their differences in form, media differ in their speed of dissemination,
quantity or volume of information disseminated and direction of information flow.
Until very recently, information was physically connected to a medium. Writing was
connected to the piece of paper which carried it, a voice connected to a human body, etc. Information could move no faster than the medium that conveyed it. About a century
and a half ago, however, Samuel Finley Breese Morse developed the telegraph and in the bargain accomplished something which continues to have profound consequences for the
process of communication: the "disembodiment" of information. With the advent of electronic media, information is no longer embodied in some physical medium, but rather
is modulated on some magnetic wave or translated into a digital code. The medium no longer moves; it moves the information, and does so at the speed of light (give or take a
couple of miles per second). Even while we have electronic media which move information with unimaginable speed, we still have older media which move information
rather slowly, and we need to investigate how these different types of media influence how we think about information differently.
Some media move a great deal of information. Others move relatively little. Most people look at newspapers and say, "when I want a lot of information, a lot of background, a
lot of detail, I read the newspaper." We believe that print gives us more information because the paper can give more space to an important story than television can give it
time. And in fact, newspapers give us far more textual information about any given story than television can afford to give us. The average newspaper story (roughly 24-32
column inches) consists of anywhere from one to three thousand words and takes several minutes to read. The average television story is roughly a minute long and consists of less than a hundred words.
Clearly, print gives us more information, right? This is not necessarily so. Print is a single-level, single-sensory medium, and all of the detail we are given comes from one
linguistic channel. Television, on the other hand, is multi-level and multi-sensory, and while there may be fewer words used to tell a story or describe a scene, much of the
story-telling in television derives from the images themselves. So, if we are viewing a report on a four-alarm fire, we can see the building itself, see the pandemonium, the
look of fear on the faces of apartment-dwellers, the sweat and soot on the faces of firemen; in addition, we hear the sirens, the yelling of police, perhaps the terrified
screams of tenants trapped on an upper floor. Which medium gives us more information? The answer is no longer clear. The point is that we must think hard about this question when comparing different media.
Information can flow in many different directions. It can flow in one direction, two directions, or in all directions simultaneously. Bi-directionality is easy to picture. Two
people sitting together, chatting, engaged in conversation, sharing ideas; this is our most obvious and common example of bi-directional information flow. The telephone is also a
medium that encourages the bi-directional flow of information. A classroom (my classroom, at least) is a venue for the multi-directional flow of information. Group
discussion of topics, debates, bull-sessions, etc.; anywhere groups of people share and discuss ideas you will find multi-directional information flow. The Internet is developing
into a powerful new tool for the multi-directional flow of information. One of the defining characteristics of multi-directionality, however, is that there is no center; no
authority. Without a strict protocol or set of guidelines for such a situation, chaos can reign, and communication will be impeded, rather than facilitated. But at the same time
it is the very lack of a center that allows for the free, multi-directional flow of information.
I point these things out for a reason: most people mistake the mass media for being
multi-directional, when in fact they are the most strongly uni-directional of all. We see people all over the country, all over the world, watching the same programs and movies,
listening to the same music, reading newspapers whose reports are supplied by the same news agencies, and it appears that we have a multi-directional flow of information. But
shift your focus for a moment from the society (us) to the medium; ask yourself how much information is being transmitted, and how much is being received in return? Mass
media are strongly uni-directional, that direction being from a center, out. Very little information returns to that center. As we noted earlier, we all watch television, but very
few people get to make television (and the vast majority who make television are functionaries, not decision-makers).
It is the centered-ness (if you will) of mass media, the ability to saturate a society with information emanating from one central authority, which allows for stability, but
hampers the free, multi-directional flow of information.
The fourth characteristic we shall look at returns our attention to a medium's physical
form. Because of differences in their physical form, different media have different temporal and spatial biases. This idea comes to us from the work of the Canadian
economist and communication theorist, Harold Adams Innis. Innis states that media focus our attention, are biased in one of two ways: towards time or towards space.
Time-biased media are those that more efficiently store information than transmit it. Space-biased media are those that more efficiently transmit information than store it.
Time-biased media, according to Innis, are heavy, durable, not prone to corruption or degradation by the elements, and not easily transportable. Space-biased media are light,
easily transportable, prone to degradation and not very durable. He points out examples of each in history: the pyramids in ancient Egypt, monuments to the sacred life (and
after-life) of pharaoh, were meant to proclaim his greatness to posterity; the printing press, which took writing and mechanized it, transforming the book into the first mass
medium and allowing for the mass distribution of information over vast areas.
What Innis mentions only in passing, and too few observers notice, is the profound
influence a medium's bias has on a culture's epistemology. Space-biased and time-biased media tend to be most efficiently used with different categories of information.
Time-biased cultures (i.e., those cultures primarily dependent upon time-biased media) tend to put a great deal of emphasis on information that is eternal and unchanging. This
is only natural because you would not dedicate to stone (for example) a piece of information that will be outdated and useless tomorrow. Space-biased cultures tend to
focus attention on information that is more dynamic and changing. Such a culture has at its disposal a medium that allows them to administer large-scare organizations across
wide areas. So space-biased cultures tend to be more dynamic and changing themselves than time-biased cultures. Time-biased cultures, by contrast, are more traditional and conservative.
Time-biased cultures put there stock in myth, tradition, folklore; in concerns of religion or spirituality; in pursuits that touch upon the questions of time: not just human time,
but eternal time--the afterlife. They are generally politically decentralized and unstable, but culturally quite cohesive. Such information/thought structures encourage a social
structure wherein we will find amongst the strongest of the social institutions religion and or some sort of priesthood, poetry and the bards/folklorists who keep traditions
alive and spread them, historians, musicians, and artists.
Space-biased cultures emphasize and are dominated by organized institutions that build
upon the utility of space-biased media: government, commerce, and the military--all institutions intimately concerned with space. These cultures are generally highly
politically and economically centralized, though potentially culturally impoverished. Space-biased media give such cultures the impetus and wherewithal to create empire.
Finally, because of their differences in symbolic form, different media have different sensory biases. Simply put, some media "train us" to perceive with our eyes, or our ears,
etc., while some media are multi-sensory. Once again, it is not a matter of which isolation or combination of our senses is "better," but rather that we recognize that if we
allow one sense or set of senses to predominate, we are in a different situation than if we function with a more or less balanced sensorium.
