MessageA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWMessage Th at which an act, or work, of commu-
nication is about. For purposes of defi nition and
analysis it is sometimes necessary to treat the
message as something separable from the process
of communication; but ultimately a message can
only meaningfully be examined in the context of
other elements, all of which are interlinked and
interacting.
It is important to distinguish between the
actual signal that carries the message and the
message itself: a wink is a signal but what is its
message? Th e answer depends on many factors- for example, who is winking, to whom and in
what context? (See sign.) While message-signals
in the form of visual or aural codes may be sent,
the message may not be understood. Th us an
ambiguous smile may represent the signal that a
message is being conveyed, but the receiver may
fail to understand the message while recognizing
the signal.
The message may draw its initial shape or
purpose from the Sender or Communicator:
it will be similarly infl uenced by the nature of
the medium in which it is sent. Th e Receiver of
a message may be close at hand, in sight of the
Communicator, or some distance away. If the
message involves intrapersonal communi-
cation, the Communicator and the Receiver
may be one and the same. Both the signal and
the intended message may encounter noise, that
is physical or psychological interference that
will aff ect its meaningfulness. Th e message may
elicit feedback, which will further modify the
message and indeed create a new communica-
tion situation and new signals and messages.
We can rarely, if ever, be certain of how other
people will interpret our signals, or whether we
will ‘get our message across’. Th us the message
sent may be quite diff erent from the message
received, and while we think we are communi-
cating a single message we may, unconsciously,
be putting across all sorts of other messages too.
We are ‘selecting in’ and ‘selecting out’ a
barrage of message-carrying signals all the time,
and we give attention to them if we are motivated
to do so. Th e eff ectiveness of a message depends,
at a basic, instrumental level, on the weight it
carries in competition with other signals and
messages, but equally it depends upon the
signifi cance attached to it by the receiver(s).
This in turn depends upon the ‘set’, or
preparedness, of the receivers for the Sender/
Message/Medium. The message of a satirical
cartoon, for example, might be completely lost
if the reader knows nothing about the particular
circumstances to which the cartoon refers. Even
Mediatization Process whereby political or
indeed any public activity, having become reliant
for its audience/electorate upon the media for
its messages to be communicated, adopts the
principles and methods of media communica-
tion. In particular TV has become the medium
and channel of political communication. Conse-
quently political communication pays greater
attention to entertainment value as practised
by TV, for example personalization, simpli-
fi cation and an emphasis on using ‘media-genic’
players (see lookism) and stressing image over
content.
Media user ethics See ten commandments
for media consumers.
Media workers See workers in communica-
tion and media.
Medio communication Th at mode of commu-
nication taking place between direct, face-to-
face address and mass communication; into
this classification comes communication by
letter, e-mail, fax or telephone.
Medium The physical or technical means of
converting a communication message into a
signal capable of being transmitted along a given
channel. TV, for example, is a medium that
employs the channels of vision and sound. John
Fiske in Introduction to Communication Stud-
ies (Methuen, 1982; see 3rd edition, Routledge,
2010) divides media into three categories: (1)
Presentational media: the voice, face, body; the
spoken word, gesture; where the medium is
actually the communicator. (2) Representational
media: books, paintings, photographs, etc., using
cultural and aesthetic conventions ‘to create a
“text” of some sort’; they become independent
of the communicator, being works of commu-
nication (whereas presentational media are
acts of communication). (3) Mechanical media:
telephone, radio, TV, film, etc., and they are
transmitters of (1) and (2). Th e properties of the
medium determine the range of codes which it
can transmit, and considerably aff ect the nature
of the message and its reception.
Medium is the message One of the classic
quotes of media literature and perhaps the
best-known of Marshall McLuhan (1911–80).
‘Th e medium is the message’ is the fi rst chapter
heading in his book, Understanding Media: the
Extensions of Man (Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1964; Routledge, 2002). What is said, McLuhan
believes, is deeply conditioned by the medium
through which it said. Th e particular attributes
of any medium help to determine the mean-
ing of the communication, and no medium is
neutral. See mcluhanism.