Monthly Archives: September 2025

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Handwritten Letters: What is Evoked When Kindnesses Endure?

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“Handwritten Letters Sketches Drawings I” by Frida Kahlo, courtesy of Vancouver Fine Art Gallery.

Introduction

In my accordion folder, next to a tab of identification documents and another of printed photographs, I store handwritten letters from friends and family. Specifically, I have kept every letter received– whether in a flashy card or on a plain piece of lined paper– since the summer before I left home for university. I do this because I feel bad letting go of them, but also because they bring comfort to me. When I take out the letters and read the thoughts of people I know (or have known) crystallized into deeply personal messages, I better understand those people. A lot of the time, people are more comfortable writing something than they might be saying it in-person. In this post I will attempt to explain how my sentimentality around these letters is evoked through their materiality, and the thoughts of others contained in them are mediated by writing.

Letters and Materiality

Bill Brown opens his essay on materiality in Critical Terms for Media Studies by questioning the material difference between a thought and a thorn that’s stuck in your finger. The thorn is obviously made up of matter; it is atoms arranged in a way that shapes the thorn. It is the shape of the thorn colliding with the atoms in your finger that causes pain and draws your attention to the urgent material nature of the thorn. It can be argued that thoughts are also material if you choose to look at them as “the effect of synapses within a neural network”, Brown says (49). However, the debate as to whether or not thoughts are material represents the kind of question that is secondary to a discussion of materiality. 

Describing the materiality of something is not an assessment of yes/no on its concreteness. As Brown put it, “When you admire the materiality of a sweater, you’re acknowledging something about its look and feel, not simply its existence as a physical object” (49). So materiality then is a qualitative assessment of something that’s based in the senses. In the case of the sweater, the sense of touch is evoked because of how a sweater makes contact with the body. The sense of sight is also involved, because the clothing we wear is often a signal of personal aesthetics and identity.

Now I’m going to tell you what I like about the materiality of birthday cards, best wishes cards, nice-to-have-gotten-to-know-you cards, and letters of admiration. 

  1. Handwriting. I like that with my grandparents’ handwriting, I have to decipher their cursive almost like I’m reading in a second language. My roommate recently told me that he can not read in cursive, as he was never taught to do so in primary school. There’s something almost antique by now about handwriting which is produced in cursive by default. Reading cursive teaches me patience, and feels like a way of adjusting to a communication practice of my grandparents’ day– even if on the smallest of scales. It reminds me that when I send my grandpa a hasty text message with zero punctuation, he is the one who must adjust to my communication style. Empathy and critical thinking– both ways of looking at the bigger picture– are evoked in me through working to comprehend handwriting.
  2. Voice. Just as people’s writing reflects their inner thoughts and perceptions, the way they communicate in a letter often maps easily to their personality. When I re-read letters from my dad, the voice reading it in my head belongs to him. That a choice of words, tone, or even the content of a message could evoke someone’s speaking voice in the mind I find incredible. Some people are more formal when they write than they are in conversation. In that case, my imagination goes as far as to conjure an image of that person giving a speech that they wrote, in order to find their voice within the writing. Most of the time though, in the context of a hand-written card, someone close to you will write in a way that makes their voice ring clearly through the noise of form.
  3. Persistence. Through the collection of paper– an often ephemeral and disposable material– I feel as though I have trapped in time a series of intimate pieces that any one given letter-writer may never have expected to be a part of. This is the part of the practice of saving letters that is self-serving. The record which was assembled from one-to-one messages becomes an archive of many unrelated notes with one commonality; they are directed towards a single recipient. Is the point of my keeping these notes only for the sake of using them on a rainy day? Another benefit of letter-keeping is that the archive offers a timeline of my personal history, experiences, and milestones by evoking memory. Just as flipping through printed photos facilitates my recollection of events, situations, and time periods, the letters facilitate a process of looking back upon a former time. The notes were written in now-time– yet as I read them today they influence and re-assemble my memory, which mediates the past. The “concreteness” of letters from a bygone time feels paradoxical– almost like they are relics which have survived through time.

Writing as a Medium Today

Each of these aspects of a letter’s materiality can be connected to theoretical frameworks, from language and communication to time and space. However, since their overarching medium is writing, I’ll describe what hand-written letters mediate by extending Lydia Liu’s scholarship on “Writing” in Critical Terms for Media Studies.

When thinking about why we even call non-cursive handwriting “print”, I was introduced to the idea of Print English in Liu’s essay. With the invention of the printing press, the English alphabet was transformed from a 26 character system, to a 27 character system (the new character being a space).  “Printed English is an ideographical alphabet with a definable statistical structure. As a post-phonetic system, it functions as a conceptual interface between natural language and machine language”, Liu explains (318). “The centrality of printed symbols for technology has something to do with the fact that, to use Friedrich A. Kittler’s words, ‘in contrast to the flow of handwriting, we now have discrete elements separated by spaces’” (320). I think there’s something really fascinating about how, if we call non-fluid “print” handwriting an effect of the printing press, people’s handwriting with each generation is coming to resemble (or following) the way that our technologies produce language.

In terms of both the “voice” found in handwritten letters and their persistence as a record through time, the following quote from Lydia Liu applies: 

“In the age of informatics and computer technology, writing increasingly penetrates the biomechanics of human speech to the extent that sound, including speech, is now being turned into an artifact, a notable example being text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. The colossal amount of written and printed record and electronic information stored in data banks, libraries, museums, archival centers, and global communication networks further indicates how much the technologies of writing and print have evolved to shape modern life and the future of humanity” (310).

The first sentence here seems to say that writing is by now such a dominant form of communication that there are tools for converting it back into a “vocalized” form. Of course, text-to-speech has a voice that is de-personalised because it is a machine which speaks through a complex algorithm. This idea can be expanded to include artificial intelligence, which produces extremely generalized writing, to the point that we get an uncanny feeling when a real person delivers an AI-generated speech. Needless to say, the specific way a person we know puts together a sentence– especially given the statistically infinite possibilities– creates the “sound” of their writing. This sensory quality (I’ll extrapolate from Liu) is increasingly the “artifact” in the writing.

Lastly, the sheer amount of communications records we have globally today is a critical infrastructure of daily life. There would be no way to do research, return a package, or quote an old text sent to your grandpa without the storage of data. However, with digitization, physical records are created less and less frequently. Many of the physical documents and artifacts stored within our institutions of record-keeping are only material because of their age. To collect writing done on paper is to maintain a kind of archive of interpersonal connections throughout one’s life. Even the letters from people who are not in my life any longer, or the letter I wrote to myself two years ago during Jumpstart are valuable to me. Their material aspects evoke the people who wrote them, making those people feel real. The letters mediate my knowing people, and their knowing me.

Works Cited

Brown, Bill. “Materiality.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 2010, pp. 49–63.

Liu, Lydia. “Writing.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 2010, pp. 310–326. 

Blog post written by Naomi Brown

Critical Concept Explication

Materiality and the Resurgence of Physical Media

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By Bara and Allie

On the Author, Bill Brown

The author of our chapter, Bill Brown, is a critical theory scholar and professor of English language and literature. His major theoretical work is on Thing theory that makes a distinction between a thing and an object, and observes their roles in modern culture. In his book “A Sense of Things”, Brown focuses on how objects are represented in 19th century American literature. For his chapter on materiality, he focuses on the physicality of media and the effects of our conversion to the abstract.

On Materiality

Materiality, to put it simply, is not something easy to define concretely, but we can view it as a diverse spectrum. For example, to say your new sweater ‘lacks the materiality’ of your previous one, it doesn’t assert the sweater’s intangibility. More likely, we mean that the new sweater may be somewhat stiff and doesn’t smell like our laundry detergent, or is made of 100% wool, which is itchy and uncomfortable (that’s why we prefer a wool mix). 

Materiality is defined by far more than just the tangibility of an object – it is also about the physical qualities of this object, about how we experience it and life in general. We know life, says Bill Brown, only as it is mediated by the senses. This means life is in the smell of a freshly bought book, in your controller vibrating after you finish a level in Lego Star Wars, and in when you squat in front of a painting to see it at a different angle because now the light is different.

Digitization is in opposition to materiality by turning the tangible into the intangible. Some media theorists are concerned that the digitization of media can compromise its tangibility and therefore our physical experience of it. To help visualize, Bill Brown quotes Friedrich Kittler’s passage where he declares digitalization erases the differences between individual media, since inside the computer, everything is reduced to numbers. In his “The Last Mixtape”, Seth Long describes how the music industry went through the process of gradual digitization with the development of newer technologies. Later, he also recalls how the way people related to music fundamentally changed after the switch due to the difference in mediums’ affordabilities: physical media created challenges (in finding, curating, listening to music) that allowed for a deeper emotional relation to the process. Listening to music became less intentional, less personal, and less ritualistic once it became digital.

Why care?

Next time as you are creating or analysing media, ask yourself: If the medium is the message, how does the message change depending on the materiality of the media? How does the experience of reading a web-comic differ from reading a physical copy? Does digital media feel ‘less real’ due to its immateriality, or does the physical experience lure us away from objectivity?

The Conversion to the Digital

The chapter discusses the idea that the evolution of our material surroundings and the relationships we have with them have become less tangible; this is the “digital threat”, or the fear of “abstraction” in our modernizing age. 

As we have revolutionized technology, Colin Renfrew suggests there has been a separation of “communication and substance”, or rather, that our conversion towards the digital is making our world less tangible, and thereby, our associations to “meaning” are threatened. If you, for example, were to take a picture of your childhood stuffed animal, upload it to a program and model it exactly as it is in real life, there is no symbolic relationship between you and the object any longer, as it exists digitally. We can even understand “touch” as being a privileged way in which we as humans interact with the world around us. 

Will stripping our society away from its physical qualities not abstract our relationships, our culture, our lives? While these concerns are within our human nature, so are now our relationship with the intangible, be it Tamagochi or the Sewaddle I caught in Pokemon Go last week. Media evolves because of us, alongside us, and even evolves us back.

The author invokes the ideas of both Marx and Benjamin in order to explain; as human relationships have become increasingly complex with their interactions with media, the relationships between previously privileged elements such as “form” and “substance” have been abstracted. For example, systems of money have become increasingly distinct from their material forms. Photography has long been “divorcing form from matter”. To some, this sounds like an understandable threat. However, even Benjamin believed that these new technologies can enrich our perception and reveal to us truths hidden to the human eye. Even as most forms of media are being “homogenized” into the digital, this is an incredibly complex and interdependent relationship that means humans are evolving in a way, too. 

Body and Meaning 

In the closing section of “Materiality” from Critical Terms for Media Theory, Bill Brown turns to the body as the ultimate site where materiality asserts itself. Throughout the chapter, he stresses that materiality is what resists or exceeds meaning—the stubborn “stuff” that literary, cultural, and media theory often try to interpret away. By ending with the body, Brown emphasizes that it is not simply an object to be represented, but both a medium of representation and a lived, physical thing, which is explored deeper by our colleagues’ report on the Biomedia chapter. 

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty and Kant, Brown highlights the body as the very ground of perception, the pre-condition for experiencing and making sense of the world. This leads him to the idea of the human as a kind of network of information; the body provides the “framing function” that gives form to otherwise formless data. In this sense, the human body becomes the source for giving “body” to digital media. Information, whether sensory or computational, only becomes meaningful through embodied experience.

Yet Brown warns against reducing the body to mere signification. He points to how technology pervades embodiment, blurring any clear divide between body and media. You can think of a person using a smartphone’s health tracker; the body’s steps, heartbeat, and sleep patterns are turned into data, while the body itself is shaped by that data—prompted to walk more, rest differently, or change behaviors in other ways. Here, body and technology are inseparable, each creating meaning and as such, meaningful action, for the other.

The general idea, then, is that materiality is not opposed to meaning, but is that which 

meaning depends on and yet cannot fully contain. The body is transitional and evolving: it is both medium and a message, symbol and substance. Brown emphasizes that materiality is not simply “out there” as physical or tangible things, but is embedded in lived experiences that challenges and reshapes how we define media and media relationships.

Resurgence of Physical Media 

In recent years, public interest in physical media rose: you might have (or be) a friend collecting DVDs or burning your own CDs. One of my closest friends bought herself a Nintendo DS this summer, preferring it to the digital emulators. Businesses slowly but surely feel this tendency and acted accordingly: Sony has recently come out with a new Blu-Ray player – the first in over five years. 

“The Last Mixtape”, by Seth Long, describes the difference between physical media as ‘allowing for ownership’ and digital media as ‘allowing access’. When we as a society trusted digital subscriptions to provide us with media, we did not expect them to take our favourite movies down. But in these later years, more and more streaming services have failed to renew licensing agreements for many beloved movies: in fact, last month, iconic movies like The Notebook, Anchorman franchise and, worst of all, the Bee Movie, left Netflix. People are paying the same subscription price, but have access to content they don’t care about. In most of these cases, the solution for this would be to own the movie yourself. Having a DVD of your favourite movie is a tangible experience of ownership, while a Netflix subscription doesn’t provide the same level of accessibility anymore. 

Another factor in the rise of physical media is, of course, nostalgia. Early 2000s trends are all the rage again, bringing back skirts over jeans, butterfly clips and flipphones. When we dissect this fallback to trending fashion of the early millennium, we uncover that this style embodies a specific feeling, a set of approaches and attitudes of the times. This, of course, includes the now forgotten due to AI-powered oversaturation feeling of excitement over technology. Not technology like cybertruck, but tech focused on entertainment – like an iPod, a furby or… literally anything in clear plastic casing. In the early 2000s, media technologies were going through massive transformations, both exciting and physical: people bedazzled their flipphones and rented movies on DVDs for the weekends from the same places they borrowed cassettes from in the 90s. From these observations we can conclude that people who feel nostalgic about a certain time or period of their lives will seek the same feelings and experiences of interaction through physical media.

While digital media has a vast potential for user’s experience, tangible media will always be able to offer different affordances. The smell of a book you left notes in, the safety of spacious, but your own DVDs collection, the little imperfections of vinyl that make your ABBA sound a little different from your mom’s.

Similarly, businesses based on physical media continue to thrive thanks to the experiences unavailable to digital users. In their article “Death by streaming or vinyl revival?” Hracs and Jansson explore how independent record shops in Stockholm use the physicality of their spaces to their business advantage. These stores curate their collections, cultivate the in-store experience filled with meanings and rituals and create value through product rotation – something that would’ve been impossible to engage on the same level with in the digital realm. Hracs and Jansson emphasize: these stores are still open because of their mediums affordances, not despite them. 

If we know life by how it is mediated through our senses, a material media will be more memorable, more real, and even more lovable than its digital counterpart. 

So what?

Both physical and digital media and experiences have their own affordances, and it is important for us as media theorists to keep in mind the role of physical media, even (or especially) if their digital counterparts seem more convenient, more modern and more global. Material media is not dead, but an important tool that allows us to consider and critique the conversion of our world to the abstract, and understand how this affects our human experience. 

Keywords and Definitions

Abstraction: in the context of this article, abstraction refers to the idea that our relationship with media (such as communication technologies) has evolved to become less physical and tangible, and more so based on abstract understandings.

Dematerialization hypothesis: the idea that digital conversion is affecting the meaningful relationships between humans and tangible experiences. 

Hegemony of the digital: the conversion of medias into digital forms.

Materiality: … did you read the piece? We recommend the start, middle, and end.

Source Materials

 Brown, B. (2010). Materiality. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for Media Studies (pp. 49-65). The University of Chicago Press.

Long, S. (2025). The last mixtape: Physical media and nostalgic cycles (1st ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Hracs, B. J., & Jansson, J. (2017). Death by streaming or vinyl revival? Exploring the spatial dynamics and value-creating strategies of independent record shops in Stockholm. Journal of Consumer Culture, 20(4), 478-497. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540517745703 (Original work published 2020)

Cover Image created by Bara, Written by Bara and Allie

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Portal Into my Mind and Barrier to the World. “AirPods”

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My Evocative Object: “AirPods” 

 Humans need ways to be distracted. As a baby you are given rattles to numb the need for mental stimulation and the woes of being a baby. When you clock-out of your nine-to-five you turn on the TV to decompress from your workload. Since childhood I have struggled with chronic anxiety. My thoughts have flooded my mind with seemingly no way to channel (unless I resort to insanity).  The best tools to combat my anxiety have been distractions. I have many hobbies to distract myself from day-to-day. However, as far as I can remember I have had a growing addiction to technological distractions, specifically ones with sound mediators (i.e. dialogue, music, etc.). I would watch a movie, and headphones would allow me to be in my own world. I found that I needed headphones to be able to distract myself while pursuing other distractions. My Spotify playing would be parallel to my drawings, while also having a tv show in the background. Now I cannot even write a paragraph for school without having another stream of noise in my mind. My need for distraction is the reason why I can always be found with my wireless Bluetooth headphones, my AirPods.  

As I step onto the bus to go to class, I am comforted by the little pieces of plastic and wiring in my ears. My small white AirPod case can always be found in the front pocket of my backpack. If I leave my AirPods at home, I am devastated because it is nice to not have to hear my own thoughts. It is almost a necessity if I would like to have a quiet ride. My AirPods allow me to be alone. In Bernadette Wegenstein’s chapter “Body” in the Critical Terms for Media Studies she emphasizes the distinction between body and embodiment. Wegenstein defines embodiment as contextually dependent on the environment in which the physical body is. By this definition of embodiment, Wegenstein also establishes the fracturing of embodiment with the increasing technological use of society. People split into multiple selves when using the various interfaces of technology, the technological barriers somewhat protect people’s dignity thus allowing them to perform.  

Using AirPods, to me, is like a term that was used in Sherry Turkle’s Evocative Object, “brain prosthesis”. The distraction in my mind by the dialogue of whatever is coming from my mind allows me to relax and “perform” in social interactions in a way that is comfortable. The barrier of the media as a constant white noise in my mind protects me from the version of myself in my mind, thus allowing me to be more present in the moments with others. Technology has become an embodiment of myself. My comfort in technology could be an example of a parasitic reliance of new technology, or it could be symbiotic relationship to use technology as tools of self-realization. In my opinion, I believe using media technologies in this reliant form has given me a sense of control over my mind. 

In Caroline Jones’ chapter “Senses” in the Critical Terms for Media Studies, she explains that technology has trained our minds. Endless scrolling has affected our attention span. McLuhan insights in the “Senses” chapter states that media technologies have become extensions of man thus, extending our senses and supplemented our way of thinking. However, one of the dangers of using technology as an extension is the narrow scope that technology has. It is inherently biased because of our own perceptions and for the communities that do not have access. If we solely use technologies, then we are only perceiving reality through the layers of interfaces of technology rather than firsthand experience.  

This isolation of my thoughts using media technologies could be like the Evocative Object “My Laptop” and the attribution of “brain prothesis” the author, Annalee Newitz, gave to her laptop. Wearing AirPods, the Bluetooth aspect allows me to complete my tasks. I am impeded from my tasks without them in my ears; this highlights my need for distraction and the reliance I have already. I have noticed that whatever is playing in my headphones determines my mood and productivity. I even use my AirPods as a channel to convey my emotions to my own body. If I am on the edge of a good mood I will play something that reminds me of a happy moment to supplement my mood. The state of myself in which I feel the most comfortable, is a state where I am an extension of myself who is constrained by a medium.  

A mindset that I use to justify my overuse of this technology is that not only do AirPods allow me to have access to my own knowledge of my mind, but also access to music, and knowledge of others through podcasts. I use these objects as a medium to myself. To me they represent my expression of my feelings to myself. If I am feeling incredibly overwhelmed, the heavy metal in my ears reflects that.  My AirPods have given me the perspective of the world with autonomy over what noise I hear. Perhaps this lack of control I have felt over my own body has inspired my ideology of the importance of autonomy in my own mind. This may have caused my attachment to this technology. My fear of loss of control may have also stemmed from the helplessness I have experienced with my own body. My day-to-day tasks are constantly mediated by AirPods and afforded me focus, however they have also been a barrier for human interaction because I have to tune myself out. Ultimately, AirPods are a medium of communication and perception in a digital interface, however, impedes my perceptions and communication of reality without technological interference.  

Written by Bridghet Wood  

Image by Bridghet Wood 

Citations 

Jones, Caroline. “Senses.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, Chicago [Ill.], 2010. 

Newitz, Annalee. “MY LAPTOP.” Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, edited by Sherry Turkle, The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 86–91. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhg8p.14. Accessed 30 Sept. 2025. 

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, Chicago [Ill.], 2010. 

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THE IMAGE: REPRESENTATION, REINCARNATION, REPRODUCTION

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The Inception of the Image

When did we make the first image? Was it two hundred years ago, when Niépce made the first heliograph of the view from the window at Le Gras? Was it sixty-four thousand years ago, when neanderthals hand-stenciled the first paintings in Maltrevieso cave? Or was it the moment we first thought in pictures; the first mental image; the first time we imagined, instead of seeing? 

To make an image is simply to take some part of our world that you saw, and make what it looked like, yourself, so that you can see it again. Centuries ago, with nothing but hands and clay or stone and paint, we first learned to take a part of our world and re-make it ourselves. Before we first painted a boar on the walls of a cave, we thought of a boar not only by its visual appearance, but by its entire presence, face-to-face – the way it looked and sounded, breathed and moved – everything it presented to us. We couldn’t think of a boar only in the abstract; only as what it looked like; we had to think of that time when we had experienced its presence. The moment we could re-make what it looked like as a painting, the boar could become something else. We could see it, even out of its presence; painted on the walls of the cave, or projected in our mind’s eye. We could think of it, not exactly as we had experienced it, but as a visual abstraction. No longer could something we had seen exist to us only as we had experienced it in the world. It could now exist to us as an image.

From the moment we first sculpted a human figure, we changed what it meant to be a person, literally. We could use that word, “person,” to refer to a living man, or to a heap of clay. We could point at a sculpture and call it a person, or point at a painting and call it a boar. Anything we saw could become an image. Anything we saw, we could make ourselves. After seeing a boar, we could see it again by painting it, even before a real one presented itself out in the world again – we could present it ourselves, re-present it, remake it, as a representation.

Image Reproduction and Consumerism

There have been many evolutions to the technical task of image creation. Significant evolutions include the mass production of coins via printmaking, the rise of private patronage of art in the renaissance shifting dominance from public murals to individual, movable property items in the form of oil paintings. These exemplify the commodification of images into individual articles as expressions of wealth. A current example is the development of artificial perspective using scientific processes to create images depicting real things from a humanly inaccessible perspective, marrying science and imagination and separating imagination from creative production. 

These shifts in image production mechanisms affect the element of artist labor, both physical and creative. As images become easier to produce, and further mass-produce, these images become less valuable under Walter Benjamin’s conception of artist labor as the process by which art is imbued with meaning. This perspective is reiterated in modern discourse through the dominant concept that AI art, produced relatively without human labor, is “soulless”. 

When analyzing these evolutions, it is important to avoid characterizing development as linear. Labeling the past as “traditional” or “ancient” and present as “modern” or “postmodern” is arbitrary, that key hypothetical moment in which image production and circulation changed mechanically, radically altering culture, has happened repeatedly throughout history and shall certainly re-occur, and progress does not erase production styles of the past. 

Media theorists apply moral judgements to these advancements, the default position being that mass production is destructive to the soul of the image, decrying many or most modern images as “kitsch” with only aesthetic value. A rebuttal lies in the national differences in image production, despite global access to the same or similar technologies. This demonstrates that the human element guiding the tools is still reflected in the final image, reaffirming a human-centric assessment of image value.

Thus, in an oversaturated world of image-production, the key human interaction from which to ascertain value is the second human transition in mediation: audience reception. An image is valuable for its capacity to elicit a passionate response. There are three active roles in the process of mediation: the artist/author, the image/media, and the audience. The mediation of images is bookended by human influence on both sides of the interaction.

The Paradoxical Relationship of Power

A theme within Wells’ text is the paradoxical relationship between media, images and consumers. He discusses contradictions, situating an image’s status as being everything and nothing. An interpretation of Wells’ arguments follows this paradox, looking at an image’s relationship to power. This paradox stems from an individual’s perception, the resemblance of images, and the relationship between progress and crisis. 

Looking at perception, Wells understands images as tangible objects that can be destroyed and as indestructible impulses of the mind. He argues that the mind can be regarded as a medium for image production, developing the underlying power of the image. He states that images and their power depend on the minds that perceive them and that “alongside images in media we have images of media that we internalise as subjective pictures of our own processes”. This physical process of image consumption is what creates an internalisation of their underlying ideological message. He quotes Hansen, who states that the perception of images can no longer be regarded as physical surfaces but must be seen as a process where information embedded is perceived through embodied experience. 

When looking at Wells’ definition of image as symbols of visual resemblance, there’s a focus on resemblance as the source of this “power”. The closer an image gets to a resemblance, the more powerful the reception is on perception. A resemblance is seen as the embodiment of God on earth or a connection that creates an emotional response.

When looking at images through the scope of consumption, one understands how imagery becomes idolatrous in this nature of resemblance. Images become a resemblance to ideological positivity and communal conformity. He mentions this point when relating images to crisis, where images spread faster when tragedy strikes and fear grows, contrasting the positivity in commercial ideology. In connection, Wells, with his paradox of the academic, sees the image as a constrictive way to reincarnate the masses into “ancient idolaters”. Images reduce individuals to irrationality and mass ornamentation, where the idol becomes consumption and is revered the same way an ancient worshiper sees drought as a message from the Gods. 

When placing the image under this scope of a reverential idolatry, the paradox of power becomes the longing for subversion and a rejection of it. Subversion becomes an inevitable process of fetishising images, hoping they guide individuals on what to think and how to act in ideological comfort. The paradox thus falls to the point of progress. Wells argues that the relationship between humans and images flares up during innovation. Especially when technology challenges the status quo. When new forms of image production emerge, their manipulation affects us like “microbes… infect(ing) the minds of consumers,” leading us to become scared of new idols and forms of subversion we enjoy. Societies take innovation as an organic inevitability when they create their own subversive power. Wells argues that if man was created in God’s image and was destroyed in man’s image, then it makes sense that man brings the end of man and image with the creation of something more powerful, like AI.

Manipulation Through Image

Images, especially photographs, gain this power throughout much of our modern society. They are often represented as explicit truth. This notion allows those in power to manipulate public perception by taking advantage of images. There is a certain image, that I find, represents both manipulation through the actual doctoring of images, and using iconography as a means to show political power. Raising a flag over the Reichstag. Is a photograph taken on May 2, 1945, which shows a soviet soldier flying the Soviet Union’s flag over Berlin after the defeat of the Nazi party in the Battle of Berlin. The image follows the classic imagery of victory in combat; the flying of a large flag, remnants of imagery that were popularized from imagery of the French revolution, for example Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. 

One interesting thing about this photograph in particular is that the image that is more prominent is the doctored version of the image. In the original photograph, one of the soldiers is wearing two watches, suggesting he looted one of them off of a fallen soldier. Obviously this could cast a shadow on the victorious moment the image was displaying.

I think this image is a great real world example of how images can be used politically to present a certain idea. While also giving us an example of early image manipulation, something that has remained so prevalent, especially with the added, modern context of digital manipulation.

More recently the funeral of Charlie Kirk, ran rampant with all sorts of religious, and American iconography. As a viewer, this event came off as a tacky attempt of manipulation through images. A man carrying a large cross would be a physical feat with obvious biblical ties, if not for the wheels located at the base of the cross. This being said, the privilege of studying media theory is not lost on me as I see the direct influence these images have been having on a large base of the American public. Reproductions of biblical images, being directly associated with politics, a direct opposition to Exodus 20: 4-5, has a major influence on the opinions of an extremely large number of people.

Contributors: Daniel Schatz, Django Mavis, Sydney Wilkins, Matthias von Loebell

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Gaza and the Failure of Mass Media

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Never before has a genocide been both the most documented in history and the first ever livestreamed in real time. And never before has the world scrolled past such unthinkable horror.

Carpet bombing entire residential neighbourhoods, erasing streets, homes, and entire families in seconds.
A boy screaming into the night after Israeli airstrikes wiped out his entire family.
A father collecting the scattered remains of his daughter in a plastic bag because there is no body left to bury.
Premature babies pulled from incubators after hospitals were bombed.
Doctors forced to operate on children without anesthesia, using vinegar and sewing needles because medicine has been cut off.
Hospitals, mosques, and churches bombed to rubble.
UN schools turned into mass graves.
People burning to death because bombs ignited their homes, trapping them under rubble and fire with no way out.
The deliberate murder of journalists, medics, doctors, nurses, UN staff, aid workers.
White phosphorus and other internationally banned chemical weapons raining down on crowded refugee camps.
Children starving to death, due to malnutrition and Israeli-made famine.

They are my family. Many of them have been murdered. Others are still buried under the rubble. And for nearly two years now, my people have been forced to livestream their own genocide to the world.

But this genocide did not begin in 2023. It’s actually the latest chapter in a 77-year Zionist settler-colonialism of Palestine. It’s a continuation of the Nakba of 1948, where 750,000 Palestinains were forcibly expelled and 500 villages destroyed to make way for the creation of the colony of “Israel.” It has carried on through decades of apartheid policies and military occupation of indigenous Palestinian lands.

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A UN ambassador described Gaza as “the most documented genocide in history.” According to the latest UN OCHA update, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reports 65,419 Palestinians killed and 167,160 injured since October 2023. International law is shattered with impunity, and war crimes are committed in plain sight. A genocide carried out by a settler-colonial power, protected and armed by Western governments, and sanitized by Western media institutions. 

That is the contradiction I cannot shake. Billions see it but nothing changes. 

I think this paradox, of hyper-documentation alongside silence, denial, and complicity from institutions of power, is what makes Gaza one of the most urgent media events of our lifetime.

Messages, Means, and Agents Under Attack

To understand this paradox, I turn to John Durham Peters’ chapter on Mass Media in Critical Terms for Media Studies. The author explains that media always involve three things: a message, a means, and agents. The “what,” the “how,” and the “by/to whom” (p, 266)

In Gaza, all three are under attack.

The messages Palestinians send are live footage of their mass murder, but by the time they reach Western newsrooms, they are twisted into biased reporting that flattens, sanitizes, and outright misrepresents the truth. And this in turn, dehumanizes Palestinains to justify occupation and genocide. What is really the genocide of an indigenous population, carried out by a colonial state on illegally stolen land, occupied for 77 years, is reframed as a “conflict.”

The means are our devices and social media platforms. One would expect them to amplify oppressed voices, expose injustice, and make Palestinian suffering impossible to ignore. Yet these very platforms censor, shadowban Palestinian content and suspend accounts, silencing the very voices they should be carrying to the world. In fact, a 2025 report revealed that Meta, under an Israeli-led censorship campaign, complied with 94% of government takedown requests, removing or suppressing over 38 million posts about Palestine. At the same time, Israel has launched coordinated propaganda campaigns, paying influencers up to $7,000 per post to spread pro-Israel narratives.

And the agents, the local Palestinian journalists on the ground who risk everything to document the truth, are being targeted by the illegal Israeli occupation, murdered one after another. The occupation has deliberately murdered over 270 journalists and media workers during this genocide, an unprecedented number in history.

This is a systemic war on truth.

Power as the Ultimate Medium

“Power is perhaps the ultimate mass medium: it speaks to whom it will, multiplies symbols across space and time, and immobilizes audiences” (Peters, p. 278). The colonial state and its Western allies are not only waging war on an indigenous people and their land but also on the narrative itself. What the world sees, and what it is kept from seeing, is shaped by the machinery of power.

“Where mass media are, there is usually power” (p. 277). The myth of neutrality collapses when Western outlets uncritically reproduce and parrot the colonizer’s talking points, from the debunked “40 beheaded babies” claim to justifying the bombing of hospitals as “strikes on Hamas targets.” This is not journalism but propaganda laundering, justifying genocide and the 77-year-long illegal occupation and colonial oppression of Palestinians. Every accusation is a confession. Power multiplies these frames until they dominate the discourse, drowning out the voices of the oppressed.

Peters calls mass media “the playthings of institutions… under the management of the palace, the market, or the temple” (p. 277). In Gaza, the palace is the state power of the illegal Israeli occupation and its Western allies, which provide the political cover and billions of dollars in military aid (funded by our own tax dollars) that supply Israel with the most advanced weapons and military equipments in the world. The market is the military-industrial complex and corporate platforms, where profit is tied to both arms sales and digital control over information flows. The temple is the settler-colonial and ideological narratives that justify the occupation and genocide of Palestinians.

And when truth does break through, power immobilizes. Billions witness livestreamed massacres, children pulled from rubble, and entire neighbourhoods flattened yet visibility yields no action. Audiences are numbed, while those who resist and speak out are harassed, censored, fired, or cancelled. Cancel culture is weaponized against anyone who challenges these narratives, from journalists to students and professors, ensuring that speaking truth to power comes at the cost of their lives and careers.

Gaza exposes mass media as a battlefield where power itself is the ultimate medium, deciding what circulates, what is erased, and how the world responds—or fails to respond—to the most documented genocide in history.

Conclusion: Solidarity & Awareness as the Counter-Medium & Our Responsibility as Media Students

Gaza forces us to confront the failure and limits of the media. Never before has the world been so saturated with real-time evidence of genocide and war against humanity itself, and never before has that evidence been so easily dismissed, reframed, and silenced by those in power.

Yet despite censorship, despite propaganda, the truth is inevitable.

Citizen journalism in Gaza has created an indestructible archive that history will remember and hold power accountable. And global solidarity, from university encampments to mass protests and digital solidarity campaigns, shows that resistance and awareness are growing more than ever, worldwide. 

If mass media are the “playthings” of power, then solidarity and awareness are the counter-medium. It ensures that even when headlines distort and platforms censor, the truth still breaks through, carried by those who refuse silence and ignorance and choose to stand on the right side of history. Gaza teaches us that while mass media can immobilize, it can also mobilize when audiences choose to resist.

As Malcolm X said: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” 

And as media students, that choice is ours. We are not passive observers. We are agents who can decide whether to reproduce power’s narratives or to challenge them. To study media critically is to recognize its dangers but also its possibilities. Our responsibility is agency, and we have the tools to question, to respond, to expose, to resist.

By Maryam Abusamak

Image Credits

  • Photo: AFP – A relative mourns Palestine TV journalist Mohamed Abu Hatab and 11 family members, the day after they were killed in Israel’s bombardment of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, November 3, 2023.
  • Photo: Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) – Pro-Palestine protest in Dublin, Ireland.
  • Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana / Associated Press – Relatives and colleagues mourn over the bodies of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, 2024.
  • Photo: Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images – Palestinian children walk past the rubble of the al-Bukhari mosque in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, March 2, 2024, after an overnight Israeli airstrike.
  • Photo: Anas Baba / AFP via Getty Images – Smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City as Israeli warplanes drop bombs at night.
  • Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency (AA Images) – The body of a Palestinian child after an airstrike.
  • Photo: Ahmed Hasaballah / Getty Images – Palestinian children mourn during the funeral of relatives killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
  • Cover image: Ashraf Amra / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images – Funeral ceremony held for Palestinian journalists Saeed Al-Taweel and Mohammad Sobh, who were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on October 10, 2023, while filming the targeting of a residential building in the Rimal district, western Gaza.

Critical Concept Explication

Negotiating the Body: Between Expression and Control

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Our group presented our analysis and explication through a podcast: https://on.soundcloud.com/mqPJiyJwTVvtSuQgM4

Our perceptions of the human body evolve across time periods and diversify across cultures. As technology advances, artificial intelligence and the ability to have multiple online personas complexify our view of the body as a mode for self-expression. Some even theorize the body will be replaced by “computational or other machinic embodiment”; this could appear as “brain layers” being transferred to “hard drives” in order to streamline knowledge exchange (Wegenstein 27). In these times of “disembodiment”, we must critically examine the importance of the tangible human body as a mode of communication (27). At first, our group was confused by the concept of being detached from the body; this prediction by Wegenstein and several theorists felt dystopian and unrealistic. However, we later realized this is exactly what Wegenstein aims to convey; she hopes to demonstrate the “frightening”, “posthuman’”, and “antihumanist” nature of this prediction (27). 

Connections with other Critical Terms

After watching other groups’ presentations, I found our chapter connected to the presentation on Chapter 12: New Media. The presenters noted that all media is in a sense “new”, as media of all ages has always had moments of “newness”. Although our chapter heavily focuses on defining the body as a medium, I believe the body can also constitute “new media”, as it is always being reinvented due to cultural precedents. Here, Hansen’s emphasis on affect and bodily experience of computation in “New Media”  underwrites Wegenstein’s claim that the body is not post-media but in media. Because of the heavily politicized nature in which bodies have existed through centuries, our chapter also connects to the “Law” chapter which emphasizes how legal codes inscribe and regulate bodies i.e determining which bodies are visible, legitimate, or deviant. Hence, we see the connection that the media produces bodies as aw policies. A striking example of this is cosmetic surgery–a regulated practice (with you can cut what is allowed and malpractice frameworks). Here we see the interplay of law and bodies as mediums of production. 

Podcast Brief

Through this podcast, we explore the discussion of ‘The Body’ chapter through summary, analysis, and drawing connection to our experiences and other media. We seek to answer the following questions: 

  1. If the body is always already mediated, is there such a thing as an “authentic” body at all?
  2. How does the body influence culture and how does culture influence the body?
  3. If the body is our first medium, what is one way you consciously use your body to communicate or express identity?

Our exploration of Wegenstein’s Body highlights how embodiment is never static but continually shaped by technology, culture, and law. Although it initially felt dystopian to explore the idea of disembodiment and machinic embodiment, we now see how it becomes predictive once we recognize it as a provocation to think critically about what makes the body meaningful. By situating the body alongside “new media” and legal frameworks, we see it not only as a vessel of self expression but also as a contested site of regulation, reinvention, and power. 

Podcast link: https://on.soundcloud.com/mqPJiyJwTVvtSuQgM4

Contributors: Stuti Sharma, Dea Yu, Emily Shin, Kimchi Tran

Works Cited

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, U of Chicago P, 2010, pp. 19-34.

StrawberryJello. “A Cold but Warm Winter ~Snow World~.”, SoundCloud, no. 8, 2016, https://soundcloud.com/strawberryjello/008-snow-world-yume-nikki-ost.

Other

The Ambiguity of Language

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Introduction

When one thinks about one of the many human languages, it may be easy to look at words as fixed in their meaning, regardless of what tongue is being spoken. Words can be translated and retain their meaning, so why not assume that they can each be neatly defined once and for all? Critical Terms for Media Studies and its chapter concerning language challenges this notion as it spotlights various theorists that emphasize the importance of context that supports language. They assert that meaning does not exist inside words themselves, rather it emerges through the contexts in which words are used. Whether it is a colloquialism shifting over time, systems of communication shaping interpretation, or theories that emphasize the instability of meaning – there exists a strong argument that language only makes sense when placed in relation to a wider social, and perhaps psychological frame. Theorists like Saussure, Luhmann, Derida, and Bateson each highlight this principle with different beliefs, reasoning, and specifications. In this blog post, we will delve into their ideas and examine the significance of context in the realm of language.

Saussure

While Cary Wolfe–our chapter’s author–cites many theorists, he describes Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics as “arguably the most important [linguistic text] of the twentieth century”(233). Saussure’s describes language as comprised of “two fundamental dimensions: the abstract system of rules that constitutes any language system at a given moment in time (langue), and the heterogeneous utterances and speech acts in which individual speakers engage (parole)”(Wolfe, 234). Additionally, Saussure explains how language systems are developed over time, existing solely through the instances of their use while only remaining meaningful because of the context of rules in which they are situated (Wolfe 234). 

This philosophy of language arguably mirrors John Locke’s two-headed approach to communication studies (Communication Presentation, Slide 4). The social aspect of intentionally exchanging ideas that partially defines communication is largely made possible through instances of parole, while the ideas that this communication embodies would not be properly transmittable without the structural understanding of langue. Essentially, Saussure’s two dimensions of language coexist with Locke’s dimensions of communication.

The relationship between language structures and their use is reciprocal. Without parole there would be no use for langue, and without langue there would be no basis for parole. This relationship makes differentiating between the individual and social aspects of language difficult. To do so, Saussure emphasizes the importance of langue, as it is “the norm of all other manifestations of speech” and consequently attributes order to systems that are otherwise relatively ambiguous (Wolfe 234). He objects to an object-centred approach to language–which views words as “derived from their referents”–arguing that if words were to stand for pre-existing concepts, they would directly translate across different languages (Wolfe 234). Instead he proposes a “relational understanding” of language–viewing it as established and dictated by social conventions–and theorizing that language is not complete in, or determined by, any one speaker (Wolfe 234). 

A prime example of this social approach to understanding language is the everchanging meanings of words in slang dialects and colloquialisms. The efficacy of slang lies in the extent to which it is adopted in parole. Our society emphasizes langue, setting semi-stagnant definitions and uses for its words and rules. As such, if only some people are using words intending to mean something outside of their understandings in langue, others will not understand their potential alternate meanings in parole. In this way, the developments of colloquialisms and slang perfectly encapsulate both the functions of langue in everyday life, and Saussure’s idea that language is not complete in any one speaker, but instead a collective effort to reinterpret the meanings of words. 

Ultimately, Saussure highlights the ambiguity of language through his breakdown of its dimensions. By defining language systems through their occurrence in parole, he delineates these systems by the contexts in which they are used. A sentence could mean one thing according to langue, yet have its meaning completely altered in a different instance of parole.

Derrida

Derrida, too, subscribes to the idea of signifiers or “concepts” being referred only as a system of signs, in which it “refers to one another,” hence, being a “chain” of sorts (1982, 11). This, in relation to context, provides evidence for how the necessary context of the chain of concepts is required for the referential nature of language. Unlike Saussure, Derrida insists on the inseparable and “unmediated” existence of “consciousness” and “conceptuality,” largely rejecting the purely psychic perspective of language. For Derrida, the context arguably cannot be taken out of the signified itself. In such discussions regarding the mediation of “psychological” and “communicational” aspects of language, examining Luhmann’s theories will support our exploration of language in its necessary context. 

Infographic created by Christine Choi (made on Canva)

Luhmann’s Theory on Systems of Communication

When examining Cary Wolfe’s chapter on Language, an overarching argument emerges: 

meaning is inherently tied to context; hence, language does not exist in isolation but is shaped by surrounding systems. Language is regulated by the structures in which it operates. Wolfe analyzes the work of Nikolas Luhmann, a German sociologist who developed a theory on systems of communication. Luhmann distinguishes between two systems: the psychic system and the social system. The psychic system is a self regulating system that reproduces itself through perceptions and consciousness. The social system reproduces itself through communication with language serving as its primary medium. He argues that both systems are closed off, meaning that the mind cannot directly transfer thoughts into society, and society cannot directly communicate meaning into one’s consciousness. Within his framework, language does not transmit ideas within a system but works as a medium that makes communication possible through context. 

These ideas are further developed in Bruce Clarke’s chapter on Communication, which 

was touched upon during the presentations. Clarke expands on the connection between Luhmann’s system theory and language. Luhmann claims that  “Communication… takes place only when a difference of utterance and information is first understood. This distinguishes it from a mere perception of others’ behavior.”(Luhmann 2002, 157). In other words, communication does not depend on the transmission of perceptions but on shared ideas of meaning and the context surrounding them. Meaning is seen as a form in which“the actual and the possible can appear simultaneously.”( Luhmann 1995, 63). He argues that language operates through codes, differences, and context that allow humans to have a sense of understanding. For language to function as a medium of communication, humans must depend on the codes that provide the system with meaning.

Luhmann’s work helps reiterate that context provides meaning to language. His work 

states that the psychic system and social system are closed off, which means humans are unable to transfer ideas. Due to this, meaning cannot simply exist in words or be communicated directly. It has to be interpreted within context, which Luhmann refers to as codes and distinctions that are utilized by each system. Luhmann’s argument raises important questions surrounding the media. If these systems are closed off, then the media cannot assure the transmission of an artist’s internal thoughts or intentions. This challenges the idea that the media allows the audience to perceive an artist’s intentionality. It suggests that the media functions more as a medium, similarly to language, having the ability to shape communication, but never fully bridging the gap between internal and external systems. This leaves us with the question: when we create media, are we truly able to express our perceptions, or will these internal thoughts always be reshaped by the context in which they are received? 

Bateson (/Kac)

This brings us back to a broader point: what theorists like Bateson remind us is that language only exists through context, and contemporary artworks like Eduardo Kac’s Genesis make that insight visible in surprising ways. Gregory Bateson defines context as essential by referring to communication via language as “the difference that makes a difference” (Bateson 235). Essentially, he explains that a word or sign only really carries meaning when placed within a specific frame of context that allows humans to interpret it. For example, a phrase that is spoken ironically will communicate something entirely different than the same phrase spoken earnestly. Bateson reminds us that language does not exist in a vacuum – it is always dependent on the situation that surrounds it. Eduardo Kac’s artwork Genesis is a great representation of this idea. Kac began with a biblical verse, translated it into Morse code, then converted it again into genetic code and implanted it into living bacteria. Visitors online could then manipulate the bacteria, which in result, altered the biblical text itself. What began as a scripture became a coded message, then a biological sequence, then an interactive artwork. Its meaning shifted at every stage because of the context in which it appeared. Genesis embodies the central argument that language, whether in everyday conversation or in art form, can only be truly understood within the context it exists in.

Citations

Bateson, Gregory. “Language”, Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T Mitchell and Mark, B.N. Hansen, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp 235. 

Clarke, Bruce. “Communciation”, Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T Mitchell and Mark, B.N. Hansen, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp 132-144. 

Wolfe, Cary. “Language”,  Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T Mitchell and Mark, B.N. Hansen, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 233-248.

Written by: Molly Kingsley, Lea Lavalley, Christine Choi, Aminata Chipembere

Featured Graphic created by Molly Kingsley

Critical Concept Explication

Mass Media is Never Neutral

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What does it really mean to speak to the masses? From kings carving words into stone to TikTok clips spreading across the globe, people have always tried to push their voices further than the moment in front of them.

Mass media, as John Durham Peters explains in Critical Terms for Media Studies (Mitchell & Hansen, 2010), is part of this long history of communication across distance and time. In our group’s presentation, we looked at how mass media reshape communication, power, and culture. Peters (2010) explains this through a triad: the message (content), the means (delivery), and the agents (authors and audiences). Together, these form an ecosystem of media. 

Mass Media has transformed from speaking face-to-face, to broadcasting for unknown audiences in three main features:

  1. Generalization, where the content is made for public standards and interests rather than tailor for specific individual needs. 
  2. Spatiotemporal Reach, which enables communication across space and time. 
  3. Elective Participation, related to the targeted audiences’ availability in time and the method of access.

Classic Theorists on Media & Power

These three aspects allow the media to become “mass” by expanding its audience while addressing them as strangers.

Classic theorists like McLuhan and Innis deepen this argument. 

  1. “The Medium is the Message”, one of Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrases, on how the form of media covers more meaningful information than the content it carries. 
  2. Harold Innis shows a different perspective on power and different media forms, proved  by the space-binding media like images, prints and audios serve better in Commerce, while time-binding media like oral traditions and scripture sustain Religious and Cultural authorities. 

These key arguments of the chapter highlight why media matters while showing how mass media has always been tied to structures of power while still leaving room for audiences to interpret and resist.

Media’s Reach & The Power of Audiences

Our chapter on Mass Media looks at media through a general lens that broadly covers concepts about its development and reception. It begins by discussing how “any form of communication has potential for spillage,” meaning that any form of communication, but most significantly word of mouth/face-to-face communication, may not be limited to being understood by the target audience. For example, a conversation, a speech, or a broadcast always has the potential to be overheard by an external audience that the content is not intended for. 

The second point, which the chapter elaborates on most extensively, is crucial to understanding the presence and efficacy of mass media: the Spatiotemporal Range. This basically refers to the presence of a media object across time and space, and how it maintains permanence through this.

The spoken word is a temporary form of communication. It addresses only a finite audience. Even though it can address large audiences at once, it cannot be passed on across cities or countries or years in the exact same way. In these terms, writing has a better spatiotemporal range. With the printing press, the written word could be replicated multiple times, which gives it permanence and the ability to be transported across landscapes. This becomes even easier with the internet and, in today’s age, social media. Now, ideas can be communicated instantly, reach an indefinitely large audience, and be preserved over decades effortlessly.

Lastly, the writer addresses the fact that interaction isn’t always two-sided. The way a piece of media is interpreted, and by whom, lies mainly in the hands of the audience/ consumers. Creators, authors, and speakers can curate their content to address a specific group of people and ensure it is understood in a certain way. However, the actual engagement with that content can always differ from the intended outcome. 

These sections lead us to understand the place of mass media in culture and through its evolution, eventually guiding us to a main argument, which, according to Peters is that “power is perhaps the ultimate mass medium.” Keeping this in mind, we think that the most crucial point that the readers can latch onto is that, despite Mass Media being centered around institutions of power, ultimately, the power to choose what influences people resides with us as audiences and consumers of media. Or in simple words: audiences have agency. 

This chapter is especially important and relevant now, when every individual has the ability to create independently, as well as easy access to any form of media through the internet. In such a digital environment, people of power can spread messages farther than ever. At the same time, this amplification of the spatiotemporal range, also amplifies the ability for audiences to reinterpret, resist, boycott, or support these messages and spread their own individual ideas. The vastness and accessibility of the internet allow the audience to do more than just accept or reject dominant ideas, which adds fragility to power. 

Connecting the Dots: Finding Common Ground in Media Theory

While this chapter looks at mass media through a broad lens, we found that other groups’ presentations had many overlapping themes with ours and were able to dive deeper into certain concepts to provide further insight into areas of media. 

For instance, though our presentation used the term ‘communication’ loosely, the group that presented on communication further explained how it works and the systems within it. They compared two models of communication: the transmission model, which focuses on the one-way transfer of information, and the constitutive model, which views communication as a dynamic, reflexive process. The latter describes how meanings are not fixed and are instead created during interaction, as the decoding of a message by a receiver heavily relies on social and contextual factors. We found that the constitutive model is similar to our chapter’s discussion of mass media’s indefinite form of address, in which it is explained that different audiences outside of the target group can interpret the same piece of information differently and thus change the original meaning. 

Furthermore, we emphasised the significance of power in mass media, which is a theme that runs through many other chapter presentations. The presentation on image talked about how we as humans heavily rely on images to act as tangible representations of concepts, which is why religious imagery, such as paintings, has such a strong influence on audience perceptions. The group that covered writing detailed different forms of writing such as recordkeeping or numerical notion for trade, and how the ability to write distinguishes those who have access to knowledge, and therefore power and control. Thus, image, writing, religion and art are some of the many chapters that relate back to our chapter’s argument that media is always tied to institutions of power, which makes mass media a tool of global influence.

Reflective Conclusion

Looking back on our presentation, we think there are a few things we could have done differently. One main thing we wish we had included was more examples, both from the author’s text and from our own media experiences. The chapter itself is filled with vivid illustrations from medieval manuscripts to modern broadcasting, and bringing more of those into the presentation might have made the theory feel less abstract. Even more importantly, connecting the ideas directly to examples familiar to us as BMS students, maybe like current events, pop culture or how we consume global media. We think this could have made it more interactive and relatable for our audience.

What we found challenging about this chapter was its sheer scope. The author moves from ancient kings and religious sermons to radio and television, and at first it was difficult to pin down what exactly he meant by “mass media.” Was it a modern invention or a timeless human practice? Eventually, we came to see that his answer is both: the urge to reach the many, to preserve messages across space and time, has always been central to communication. Even face-to-face speech, the author argues, carries the potential for mass communication because words inevitably spill beyond their intended audience. That realization reshaped how we think about communication itself, it is never fully contained.

Preparing this presentation also taught us something valuable that we think matters for the rest of the class: the importance of studying media historically and critically. It’s easy to treat mass media as something that began with the printing press or exploded with radio, television, and the Internet. Still, the author shows us that the logic of mass communication is much older. Religious texts, oral performances, decrees, even monuments, all functioned as forms of mass media long before the digital era. For us, that was a crucial takeaway. Mass media is always entangled with institutions of power but it has also always been reshaped by the audiences who interpret and respond to it.

If we had to summarize our own takeaway, it’s that mass media is never neutral. It carries with it histories of power, control, and institutions, yet it is never completely one-sided. Audiences always bring their own interpretations and agency, whether that’s through critique, resistance, or creative re-use. That tension, between institutional influence and human response, is what makes studying media so relevant to us today. In a world where media can both oppress and liberate, the responsibility falls on us to recognize its power, challenge its narratives and imagine new possibilities for how stories are told.

Contributors: Maryam Abusamak, Adela Lynge, Minh Ha Nguyen (Eira), Kenisha Sukhwal

Reference: Peters, J. D. (2010). Mass media. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for media studies (pp. 267–280). University of Chicago Press.

Critical Concept Explication

How Does Law Govern and Control Media?

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Context and Summary of Presentation (Naomi)

Peter Goodrich’s essay Law falls within the “Society” section of Critical Terms for Media Studies. A professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, Goodrich is a scholar of critical legal theory. Accordingly, his contribution to Critical Terms opens with a kind of contradiction or dialectic about the nature of “free speech”. There seems to be a legal guarantee to free speech embedded within the United States’ Constitution; in fact, it is embedded in the First Amendment. However, the presence of licensing, censorship, and regulation are also well-known factors of public broadcasting– and the general public knows this. We believe this chapter is important for the class to understand, because it pertains to current events and is a part of the social framework we exist in as media-makers. How does the law work as a system which mediates the kinds of speech we can air on public channels? Goodrich’s argument begins by convincing readers that the law mediates our very self-perceptions and behaviour, in order to then answer this question. 

In our presentation on September 10, our group sought to structure the arc of Goodrich’s essay by working from the most abstract and yet “frontal” part of the argument: the image of the law. As our peers who presented on Image reminded us, there is deep power in promulgating and controlling icons and symbols, which then become normalized to the point of representing an institution in the public eye. The image of the law is Your Honour; it is cloaked and robed, and built into the architecture of court buildings (Critical Terms, 250-252). A comprehensive understanding of the law is gate-kept from the everyday person, making use of esoteric language which both obscures meaning and contributes to the “theatrical” nature of courtroom behaviour and ritual. 

We then attempted to explain the aspect of nomos: how the law is able to evolve and be re-interpreted by officials with “blind” judgement. “The judge is the bearer of the oracles, the custodian of an antique and continuing prior knowledge or precedent, not merely the rule but the nomos of law. This nomos, to borrow from early Greek sources, refers to a method, a melody or rhythm that precedes positive law and makes it possible” (Critical Terms, 252). In a way, this might explain how we accept the malleability and ever-specifying/ ever-overturning nature of the law to be able to restrict our speech in certain cases. 

Expanding on Juridification (Celeste)

Law seeps into our lives every day. From the second we are born, we are made one with the law. Through birth certificates, social security numbers, passports, identification cards, they are all legal documents that “prove” our existence, and without them we are considered illegal, and have difficulty accessing things like healthcare, education, travel, employment, housing, marriage, and voting. Without legality, humans are left with nothing in today’s society. We can think about Homo juridicus, the reminder that law doesn’t just regulate us but constitutes us, the way we live, and how we act. In our daily lives, law exists and rules us there too. In our workspaces, our employers set our hours, pay, protections, and benefits, while workplace law like anti-discrimination, safety law, and unions, set what’s acceptable for you. In public spaces, traffic laws keep us in check while walking and driving. You stop at red lights, yield at yellow, wait for the walk sign or go to a designated intersection to cross the road. In your family, marriage, child custody, divorce, inheritance, all regulated by legal frameworks. Whether or not you have interacted with what we think of as law- eg, a court case, jail, lawyers, suing, jury duty- you are consistently governed, mediated, and controlled by the law. 

Juridification absorbs us in other aspects than personally as well. It controls licensing, surveillance, control over the image of justice, regulation of speech and decency, historical censorship, and more. Goodrich covers this and more in his chapter about Law as a critical media term, and we covered it in our presentation. Licensing and censorship is a large part of our world today and its fully ruling media by law. Through laws like The Radio Act of 1927 and the Communications Act of 1934, licenses were restricted to only those with appropriate character, public interest, citizenship, and morality. Citizenship is an important part of these acts and the presentation of licensing, as it is a direct connection to how law can control everything that we do in our day to day lives. Law controls and mediates everyone, but access to law and the ways it is upheld is exclusive to a select few. 

Relevance of Theory Today (Bridghet)

To further explore the exclusivity of law and the methods of which it is upheld, conducted an interview with Phillip Duguay. Duguay is the former Vice-President of Grid United who is a registered lobbyist that has worked with many advocacy groups for the renewable energy legislation. While conducting the interview, I noticed Duguay redefining the Image of Law in the present media and highlighted some of the extreme lengths that the judiciary system is reinforcing its power.

“The law is being diluted by the media which is fracturing traditional media and is becoming an antiquated beast; the entering effect of American politics/Western World.” Duguay stated. With an extreme expansion of accessible information channels, information has changed from rigid and transparent to malleable and targeted. This change of information distribution has resulted in formerly strong institutions’ respect to be watered down which leads to retaliation by those institutions with more extreme methods. Duguay gave a local and timely example of this kind of retaliation with the case of Doug Ford. The Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, has continuously discounted the prestige of electoral platforms by his polarizing use of social media. Ford uses his public platform to target the electoral system of which he is trying to gain trust. 

In another macro-example of the reimaging of law, Donald Trump has continuously used the media to dilute his authority and then used legislation to punish his critics. The most recent instance of this would be Trump’s involvement in Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension by ABC after he commented on right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk’s death. Deemed insensitive by the right-community, Kimmel’s speech resulted in the chairman of the Federal Communications Committee, who was appointed by Trump, making a serious legal case against him. Many colleagues and supporters have rallied for Kimmel and state that this suspension is a clear example of censorship and a violation of his right to free speech. Currently, the judiciary system of North America is attacking itself, which has led to a division within their respective societies. 

Philip Duguay reiterates why the development of the internet and social media has caused these rifts by stating, “Hate speech in the media, by the alternative right wing and extreme left wing creates an environment of fear and mistrust in media and elected officials, laws, judiciary. The system is delegitimized and leads to polarization. This polarization makes it increasingly harder to be a moderate.”

Ultimately Duguay concludes the interview by approaching some solutions. Though the media and legislative focus has drifted away from renewable energy, Duguay is still adamant on its importance and states that based on Canadians’ voting habits, people long  for a more united government. He concluded his remarks by wondering , “if there could be a more proactive response by the government. Canadians want an interregional powergrid; shouldn’t the government be tackling it?” It is becoming seemingly more apparent that the judiciary system is becoming a battle for authority. Will law continue to be an untouchable symbol in society’s iconography, or will someone be the sole authoritarian?

Further Connections (Xelena)

Overall, the arguments we made in our presentation and that Duguay presented in his interview all relate back to the rest of the critical terms presented in class–specifically how these systems govern our media yet are also mediated by it. In our case, law governs media through the ever-present threat of litigation and censorship, yet is influenced by the media through its authority on the legal image. This dialectical relationship between systems and media is apparent throughout time, history, and differing institutions. Writing governs media by controlling how we communicate and disseminate information, yet the media also has the ability to transform and change the medium itself through digital and technological developments. The same goes for the image, which governs our perception of reality and the media landscape, yet is mediated by mass production and mass replication, and, lastly, mass media itself, which governs public communication but is mediated by how much the public audience is able to understand. As one can see, systems pertaining to law, writing, image, and mass media–to say the least–are all controlled by media institutions who then hold and garner power, control, and influence over the public landscape. 

However, I found that the presentation for materiality made an extremely relevant case in regards to this power–they state that the hegemony of the digital age is now calling into question all pre-existing forms of media. Technology is rapidly improving and growing, yet the fact remains that it is still dependent on humans on public opinions. Thus, we circle back to what Duguay expressed with the polarization between the public and the media institutions in power. This struggle for authority in this modern era is a prevalent theme throughout all the chapter presentations we have seen thus far. As society becomes more intangible, more digitally connected, more publicly and quantifiably powerful, we see these long-standing institutions and systems challenged–perhaps, rightfully so. Therefore, as media-makers, it is imperative that we understand these social frameworks so that we understand how it affects our daily lives through current events, the evolving media landscape, and through the content we consume and produce.