Critiques and limitations of the medium theory

The most common critiques of the medium theory is that it is a form of “technological determinism” that ignores human agency. McLuhan the major theorist on the medium theory summarised during the 1950s the approach to studying the modern technique, with the metaphoric approach, by referring to Paul Levinson (1997) “soil doesn’t guarantee which plants will grow there, but it influences which plants blossom or wilt there”. This idea is extended further to attribute to the theory as one which involves deliberate human decisions and planning’s which not only sharpen but improve the use of technology.

Another criticism of the medium theory is the theory is mostly and predominantly content focused meaning it can pay insufficient attention to how the media as a whole through the implicit meanings can create specific meanings and undulate the spread of the media’s content and what the audience will perceive and take out of the text’s aimed at them.

The Medium theory also ignores the manipulations of production elements and the effects that it can have on a narratives internal relationships which the characters and events on screen (Meyrowitz 1998). The production worth being the variables such as TV framing on individual shots, camera angles, selective focus, casting and with these elements doesn’t count the audience of great importance.

The theory can tend to ignore the economic and political forces which has a major input in the spread and influence of the mass media. This attribution relates to the hidden purposeful messages within the media created by the socio-political groups/organisations. This can be shown in the selling of their products, in promoting their ideologies in opposition to a community medium to be for the greater good, instead of making a profit and self promotion to gain more power.  Therefore although some information may be aimed at adults this doesn’t prevent children to share much of this information that has been aimed at the older generations. The information that is pitched, through the medium theory fails to highlight the fact that the news is presented to adults by adults in corporate-controlled media positions as established in the reading by Meyrowitz.

However, more recent medium theories have been sensitive to this power of the media propaganda and to the ways in which new media has founded and continually created opportunities for the traditional “disinformation systems” as concluded by Meyrowitz.

What the medium theory ultimately needs to do is reshape existing society through expansion with new technology and new media but not stumble in not acknowledging,  different human relations, human technologies and the technological interactions people have with eachother via new media and how this has gradually shaped the use of the media in the 21st century.