Medium theory “focuses on such characteristics of each medium and how each medium (or each type of media) physically, socially and psychologically distinct from other media” – Murphie & Potts (2002)

As the definition suggests, media theory allows us to answer the question of “what is media?” in three philosophical concepts:
– Media as conduit (textual analysis)
– Media as languages (affordances)
– Media as environments (medium analysis)

We once had a strong belief in the Transmission Model where the message from the sender to the receiver was linear and irreversible, but since the conception of technological advances and media convergence it has proven that this model is almost obsolete.

Technological determinism refers to the belief that technology is the agent of social change. If we take a trip down memory lane, there was once a time where Walkman’s were once the must-have item in portable music devices, until the iPod revolutionised the capacity and portability of the way we listen to music a few decades later. Can you believe that the World Wide Web is only twenty-six-years-old?!

Even though they seem to be major game changers in the technological world, we can’t determine technology to be the sole “agent of social change”. In fact, we must take the cautionary note that “the structure of technological revolutions is neither simple, technologically determined, nor everywhere the same, either historically or culturally”. So even though, Facebook, the smartphone, the Cloud and any other digital device have impacted our social climate and lives in general, there’s other factors that need to be considered.