Media Logic is Dead, Long Live Media Logic

Traditional media logic is dead — make way for the new.

This art­icle will demon­strate how a new, net­worked media logic replaces old media logic.

What does this mean for us PR pro­fes­sion­als?

Having worked as a PR pro­fes­sion­al in the inter­sec­tion between tra­di­tion­al and digit­al media since 2005, I want to high­light how we must embrace change — or per­ish as a profession.

Adapt or die.

Here we go:

A Brave New Digital World

The media logic we know might be dead, but it’s quickly being replaced by new logic. We must speed up our digit­al trans­form­a­tion pro­cesses — or risk PR going out of style.

The new online media logic is poten­tially even more potent than the tra­di­tion­al mass-media logic we’ve grown accus­tomed to. 

Everyone with inter­net access is sev­er­al steps closer to real mass influ­ence — all the while, spe­cial interests can cir­cum­vent tra­di­tion­al gate­keep­ers and speak dir­ectly to their some­times massive audi­ences.

The Electronic Age and Digital-First

Human cul­ture is often described based on our access to pro­duc­tion tech­no­lo­gies (i.e. stone age, bronze age, iron age). 

Still, accord­ing to Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto School of Communication Theory, a bet­ter ana­lys­is would be to view soci­et­al devel­op­ment based on the prom­in­ence of emer­ging com­mu­nic­a­tions technologies.

Marshall McLuhan sug­gests divid­ing human civil­isa­tion into four epochs:

• Oral tribe cul­ture. Handwriting marks the begin­ning of the end of the oral tribe cul­ture. The oral tribe cul­ture per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Manuscript cul­ture. Printing marks the begin­ning of the end of the manu­script cul­ture. The manu­script cul­ture per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Gutenberg galaxy. Electricity marks the begin­ning of the end of the Gutenberg galaxy. The Gutenberg galaxy per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Electronic age. Today, we reside in the elec­tron­ic age. Likely, we haven’t yet exper­i­enced this age’s decline yet.

The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) is McLuhan’s mass media ana­lys­is, pop­ular­ising the term glob­al vil­lage.

As a PR pro­fes­sion­al and lin­guist, I sub­scribe to the concept of the elec­tron­ic age. My line of work’s main point of ana­lys­is is that soci­ety is unlikely to revert to the Gutenberg galaxy.

The PR industry must adapt to digit­al-first. Why? Because the Typographic Man is not mak­ing a comeback.

Read also: Digital-First is the Way

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In such a digit­al-first world, racing towards it, we must be pro­act­ive and always stay ahead of fast-paced developments.

What is Media Logic?

Media Logic

Contrary to pop­u­lar belief, media logic is not one single the­ory. Instead, it’s a col­lec­tion of the­or­ies about how the medi­um and its con­text influ­ence medi­ated messages.

“The dom­in­ant pro­cesses, estab­lished routines, and stand­ard­ized formats which frame and shape the pro­duc­tion of mass-media con­tent, espe­cially its rep­res­ent­a­tion or con­struc­tion of real­ity, and its man­u­fac­ture of news. Media logic inter­sects with com­mer­cial logic and polit­ic­al logic — con­flu­ences asso­ci­ated with such phe­nom­ena as tabloid­iz­a­tion and the medi­at­iz­a­tion of polit­ics. Media logic exists wherever medi­ation exists. It con­trib­utes to the shap­ing of social order in mod­ern post-indus­tri­al cul­tures.“
Source: A Dictionary of Media and Communication

Media logic is a rhetorical/​critical approach to PR. The the­or­ies often describe how the media shapes minds and is used to estab­lish power structures.

“Media logic is defined as a form of com­mu­nic­a­tion, and the pro­cess through which media trans­mit and com­mu­nic­ate inform­a­tion. The logic and guidelines become taken for gran­ted, often insti­tu­tion­al­ized, and inform social inter­ac­tion. A basic prin­ciple is that media, inform­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies, and com­mu­nic­a­tion formats can affect events and social activ­it­ies.“
Source: Media Logic ¹Altheide, D.L. (2016). Media Logic. In The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, G. Mazzoleni (Ed.).

For example, a nation­al news­pa­per should ideally pro­duce news reports from all parts of the coun­try — that’s how it should work. 

However, due to com­mer­cial imper­at­ives, new dis­tri­bu­tion mod­els, and changes in con­sumer beha­viours, the news­pa­per might lean towards pro­du­cing journ­al­ism closer to where the report­ers work, where most pay­ing read­ers live and rely more heav­ily on click-baiting.

“The pos­i­tion and size of art­icles on the front page is determ­ined by interest and import­ance, not con­tent. Unrelated reports […] are jux­ta­posed; time and space are des­troyed and the here and now are presen­ted as a single Gestalt. […] Such a format lends itself to sim­ul­tan­eity, not chro­no­logy or lin­eal­ity. Items abstrac­ted from a total situ­ation are not arranged in caus­al sequence, but presen­ted in asso­ci­ation, as raw exper­i­ence.“
Source: The New Languages (1956) ²Carpenter, E. & McLuhan, M. (1956) The new lan­guages. Chicago Review. 10(1) pp. 46 – 52.

One way to illus­trate this dis­crep­ancy is to con­sider three cent­ral aspects of media; pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­bu­tion, and media use:

As tech­no­logy shifts to digit­al and news cycles become short­er, journ­al­ists might begin to favour news stor­ies that journ­al­ists can pro­duce faster and faster.

“[…] each com­mu­nic­a­tion chan­nel codi­fies real­ity dif­fer­ently and thereby influ­ences, to a sur­pris­ing degree, the con­tent of the mes­sage com­mu­nic­ated.”
Source: The New Languages (1956) ³Carpenter, E. & McLuhan, M. (1956) The new lan­guages. Chicago Review. 10(1) pp. 46 – 52.

Learn more: Media Logic is Dead, Long Live Media Logic

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Media Logic and Network Effects

In a mass media-cent­ric soci­ety, there are few senders and many recip­i­ents. Hence, the senders’ agenda will affect many. 

In a net­work-cent­ric soci­ety, we are all senders and recip­i­ents sim­ul­tan­eously. Marshall McLuhan stated the idea that the media tends to amp­li­fy the human body; the tele­phone is an amp­li­fic­a­tion of your ears, and a note­book is an amp­li­fic­a­tion of your memory. 

Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message”

“The medi­um is the mes­sage” is a phrase coined by the Canadian philo­soph­er Marshall McLuhan in the first chapter of his not­able book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.”

Despite being one of the most influ­en­tial thinkers in media the­ory, McLuhan’s ideas are often widely mis­un­der­stood. “The medi­um is the mes­sage” is no exception.

“The medi­um is the mes­sage” does­n’t imply that con­tent or sub­stance lacks import­ance, only that the medi­um in which mes­sages are sent will sig­ni­fic­antly impact humanity.

• McLuhan pro­poses that intro­du­cing a new medi­um will impact human­ity sig­ni­fic­antly more than any­thing sub­sequently trans­mit­ted through that medium.

McLuhan views medi­ums as exten­sions of human physiology. Our abil­ity to build houses extends our human skin, as it pro­tects against the ele­ments. This added lay­er of pro­tec­tion and phys­ic­al safety frees up men­tal band­width for human interaction.

So, a house is a medi­um in McLuhan’s inter­pret­a­tion. All human tech­no­lo­gies, down to the camp­fire, are con­sidered mediums.

“McLuhan’s insight was that a medi­um affects the soci­ety in which it plays a role not by the con­tent delivered over the medi­um, but by the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the medi­um itself. […] McLuhan poin­ted to the light bulb as a clear demon­stra­tion of this concept. A light bulb does not have con­tent in the way that a news­pa­per has art­icles or a tele­vi­sion has pro­grams, yet it is a medi­um that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to cre­ate spaces dur­ing night­time that would oth­er­wise be envel­oped by dark­ness.”
— Wikipedia ⁴Marshall McLuhan. (2023, May 15). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​M​a​r​s​h​a​l​l​_​M​c​L​u​han

According to McLuhan, our abil­ity to cre­ate exten­sions of human­ity expo­nen­tially impacts our com­mu­nic­a­tion more than any mes­sage con­veyed as a result:

• A light­bulb is a medi­um (an exten­sion of the human eye).
• A house is a medi­um (an exten­sion of the human skin).
• The tele­phone is a medi­um (an exten­sion of human vocal cords).

And so on.

Why is McLuhan’s ana­lys­is neces­sary? “The medi­um is the mes­sage” is a stark remind­er that a medi­um’s format (and its lim­it­a­tions) will massively impact human soci­ety — and the mes­sages them­selves, too.

We often default to seek­ing mean­ing in mes­sages but for­get to con­sider the medi­um’s inher­ent media logic.

Learn more: Media Logic is Dead, Long Live Media Logic

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Networked media dis­places human-to-human rela­tions and group dynam­ics across time and dis­tance in a way that we can­’t even begin to see the full extent of.

There are vari­ous examples of why we must update the tra­di­tion­al think­ing around media works. And even more import­ant, is there such a thing as an “ideal” state for net­worked media? 

Services like Google and Facebook are designed to amp­li­fy word-of-mouth mech­an­ics, but can vir­al­ity (effect) ever replace news­wor­thi­ness (idea) without some­thing essen­tial get­ting lost along the way?

The media land­scape has shif­ted from being engin­eered and auto­mated. Today’s media land­scape is an algorithmic organ­ism present­ing many social media issues. 

With all of this in mind, we might just be doomed to a vari­ation of a Postman-esque dysto­pia (see also How Social Media Divides Us) where we slowly stim­u­late ourselves to death. 

I don’t think so. We have encountered sig­ni­fic­ant media shifts before, and even though these shifts fun­da­ment­ally changed how our soci­ety works, we sur­vived and adapted.

Perception Management Still Matters

Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management

No one is basing their atti­tudes and beha­viours on real­ity; we’re basing them on our per­cep­tions of real­ity.

Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974) pro­posed that our per­cep­tions of real­ity dif­fer from the actu­al real­ity. The real­ity is too vast and too com­plex for any­one to pro­cess. ⁵Lippmann, Walter. 1960. Public Opinion (1922). New York: Macmillan.

• One who effect­ively man­ages the per­cep­tions of pub­lics acts as a mor­al legis­lat­or, cap­able of shap­ing atti­tudes and beha­viours accord­ing to the cat­egor­ic­al imperative.

The research on per­cep­tion man­age­ment is focused on how organ­isa­tions can cre­ate a desired repu­ta­tion:

“The OPM [Organizational Perception Management] field focuses on the range of activ­it­ies that help organ­isa­tions estab­lish and/​or main­tain a desired repu­ta­tion (Staw et al., 1983). More spe­cific­ally, OPM research has primar­ily focused on two inter­re­lated factors: (1) the tim­ing and goals of per­cep­tion man­age­ment activ­it­ies and (2) spe­cif­ic per­cep­tion man­age­ment tac­tics (Elsbach, 2006).”
Source: Hargis, M. & Watt, John ⁶Hargis, M. & Watt, John. (2010). Organizational per­cep­tion man­age­ment: A frame­work to over­come crisis events. Organization Development Journal. 28. 73 – 87.

Today, our per­cep­tions are heav­ily influ­enced by news media and influ­en­cers, algorithms, and social graphs. Therefore, per­cep­tion man­age­ment is more crit­ic­al than ever before.

“We are all cap­tives of the pic­ture in our head — our belief that the world we have exper­i­enced is the world that really exists.”
— Walter Lippmann

Learn more: Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management

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The Future of PR: Online Influence

We need to claim the death of media logic — at least as we know it. We must har­ness the dif­fer­ences between tra­di­tion­al media logic and net­work media logic.

There should also be room for future PR pro­fes­sion­als in this brave new world. 

When Brian Solis pub­lished Putting the pub­lic back into pub­lic rela­tions in 2009, it encap­su­lated the PR zeit­geist that big data and com­mu­nic­at­ive beha­viours would increase the rel­ev­ance and import­ance of our profession.

And the media land­scape of today sure has room for tal­en­ted com­mu­nic­a­tion professionals.

Journalists and politi­cians alike are des­per­ately blam­ing tech­no­logy. Governments are push­ing tech giants to cen­sor speech. Silent miners and mass media tycoons have con­fused the selfie gen­er­a­tion. And a lot of people are hav­ing dif­fi­culties cop­ing with social media angst.

But to make ourselves use­ful, we must edu­cate ourselves as pro­fes­sion­als, media con­sumers, and producers. 

Since tra­di­tion­al media logic is mass media-cent­ric, its prin­ciples have been rendered use­less for those look­ing to har­ness the power of the social web.