This famous phrase was coined by the godfather of modern media theory, Marshall McLuhan, in 1964, but what was he getting at? In short, he was describing the fact that the way in which a message is communicated has a material impact on how the message itself is perceived.
The BBC and Sky News understand this and know that the way they present the news is just as important as the news itself. They know that without a properly optimized medium, their news stories will not have the desired impact on their viewers and they will move on to other channels.
On the other hand, a properly optimized medium will engage, entertain and resonate with its audience and keep them watching, reading and listening along.
For interpersonal communication, we understand this concept intuitively to the point where it seems like common sense. Phrases such as "it's not what you said, it's the way you said it" are commonplace and we all know what they mean, but we typically do not take the intellectual leap to understand just how profound the relationship between the medium and the message really is.
In one study, a legal contract is presented to two different sets of lawyers in two different forms: one group receive the contract with standard legal typesetting and formatting, and the other as a professionally designed, thoughtfully composed document using columns, typography, and color. The text, of course, remains the same across both versions. Does design make a difference?
When asked for their legal comments, the first group are far more critical in their responses, while the second group are much more positive and accepting of the clauses, providing less red-line and objections.
This may sound unbelievable but consider this: if your new employer sent you an employment contract written in green, 30 point Comic Sans font, you would be extremely skeptical of the credentials of the sender and go over it with a fine-tooth comb...and rightly so!
And so we see that even in some of the most important aspects of our business and personal lives, the medium really is the message.
If we stop and think about the mediums we use to distribute our content online, can we really say that they are properly optimized for the task, or are they just old habits that have never really been challenged?
Narrated by Gillian Anderson for the Open University
