Revisiting The Marshall Mcluhan Metaphor “The Medium Is The Message”

Abstract

In the communication process, the medium certainly holds a place of importance, but could this be taken to mean that the medium is more important than the message that is passed through it? This is the crux of Marshall McLuhan's argument that the medium impacts on the society much more than the message does. In this paper, we differ with McLuhan on the grounds that the medium, outside the message, cannot produce any effect on society. However, as a point of convergence with his postulation, this paper admits that every medium introduced to society usually engenders noticeable changes in the communication behaviour of its users.