“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. A video that we watched in our lectorial highlighted this phrase and showed it through the medium of film but emphasise on “Youtube”.

He asks the question what does it actually mean to watch TV? What does it mean? When I think about it, television is really just a lot of audio and visual shots that make you feel different emotions. If that’s advertisements or watching a tv show. They both act as mediums that evoke a message, this message may be to feel the feelings that they want you too. For example, a McDonalds burger advertisements uses the audio and visual to emphasise the fresh ingredients that make up this new burger that tastes awesome! Advertisements are good for television and when you think about it they are the underlining factor that makes tv survive. Or what else would there be? Like everyone craves for no ad television. But im sure if you watched 3 hours of constant show to show that you’d crave for the ads.

Online video is a new medium, with its own message. But the message isn’t clear enough to say, because the message is always different from one individual to the next. With one youtuber talking about the negative effects of pollution and then ones talking about the new make up just come out for teens. If you look at it, youtubers really are just ads with opinions. Obviously there are other youtubers that do other stuff, but its interesting to think about it that way. Online video also is watched totally different to how we watch TV. Always on the mouse, always on the keyboard, a couple metres away from the screen and connected. This is compared to watching television where your on the tv remote for a bit until you find a channel that is your fancy and leave it. Online video is the message.