Marshall McLuhan's tetrad of media effects uses a tetrad—a four-part construct—to examine the effects on society of any technology/medium by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously. The tetrad first appeared in print in articles by McLuhan in the journals Technology and Culture (1975) and et cetera (1977). It first appeared in book form in his posthumously-published works Laws of Media (1988) and The Global Village (1989).
Reading, and Understanding Media
A guidebook, and poetry more than prose, Marshall McLuhan's 1964 work remains one of our best resources for exploring the nature and effects of new media. It's not an easy read, so I'm going to help.
Brett Scott (@brettscott)
Marshall McLuhan is famous for his observation that the form of a communication technology can shape our mind and society The age of the printed book, for example, carried with it a particular way of being. Regardless of the differing content of different books, all books required a particular mindset in which a thread is followed from the beginning to the end through an arc I feel the age of social media is like the age of a ripped up book, as if we were surrounded by torn shards and shreds of paper floating like confetti around us. We grab for them, hoping for some tiny insight, but not having any way of knowing where it fits in the overarching narrative This note is one such shard. You can toss it away now
No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior
Introduction: Behavior in Its PlacePart I--Media as Change Mechanisms Media and Behavior: A Missing LinkMedia, Situations, and BehaviorWhy Roles Change When Media ChangePart II--From Print Situations to Electronic Situations The Merging of Public SpheresThe Blurring of Public and Private BehaviorsThe Separation of Social Place from Physical PlacePart III--The New Social Landscape New Group IdentitiesNew Ways of BecomingQuestioning AuthorityEffect LoopsPart IV--Three Dimensions of Social Change The Merging of Masculinity and FemininityThe Blurring of Childhood and AdulthoodLowering the Politica
No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior
Electronic media present us with a collage of experiences from everyplace. We eat dinner at home while watching starving children thousands of miles away reach out to us for food. From our easy chairs, we stare at blindfolded hostages, and coolly
Post Artifact Books and Publishing
How does digital affect publishing spaces? How do we talk about these effects?
SocialTIC
SocialTIC es una organización sin fines de lucro dedicada a la investigación, formación, acompañamiento y promoción de la tecnología digital e información para fines sociales. Investigamos, entrenamos, acompañamos proyectos y catalizamos comunidades multidisciplinarias de actores de cambio para que utilicen estratégicamente la tecnología digital e información para generar un cambio social.
Distinguishing Person-Specific from Situation-Specific Variation in Media Use: A Meta-Analysis - Anna Schnauber-Stockmann, Michael Scharkow, Veronika Karnowski, Teresa K. Naab, Daniela Schlütz, Paul Pressmann, 2025
Media use varies between persons (person-specific variation) and within persons (situation-specific variation, that is, the same individual uses media different...
Media and Social Capital
We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on social capital. Guided by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a range of different outcomes related to social capital—from social and political participation to interpersonal trust—in its benign and destructive manifestations. The impact of media technologies hinges on their content (information versus entertainment), their effectiveness in fostering coordination, and the networks they create as well as on individual characteristics and media consumption choices.
Media and Social Capital
We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on social capital. Guided by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a range of different outcomes related to social capital—from social and political participation to interpersonal trust—in its benign and destructive manifestations. The impact of media technologies hinges on their content (information versus entertainment), their effectiveness in fostering coordination, and the networks they create as well as on individual characteristics and media consumption choices.
Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams
I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…
Person Overview ‹ Mitchel Resnick – MIT Media Lab
Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab, develops new technologies and activities to engage people (particularly child…
Media Ownership Monitor
Mass media influences how facts are viewed and debated in a society, contributing to crafting its public opinion. Independence and pluralism...
How Does Media Influence Social Norms? Experimental Evidence on the Role of Common Knowledge
How does media influence beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors? While many scholars have studied the effect of media on social and political outcomes, we know surprisingly little about the channels through which this effect operates. I argue that two mechanisms can account for its impact. Media provides new information that persuades individuals to accept it (individual channel), but also, media informs listeners about what others learn, thus facilitating coordination (social channel). Combining a field experiment with a plausibly natural experiment in Mexico, I disentangle these effects analyzing norms surrounding violence against women. I examine the effect of a radio program when it is transmitted privately versus when it is transmitted publicly. I find no evidence supporting the individual mechanism. The social channel, however, increased rejection of violence against women and increased support for gender equality, but unexpectedly increased pessimism about whether violence would decline in the future.
No effect of different types of media on well-being
It is often assumed that traditional forms of media such as books enhance well-being, whereas new media do not. However, we lack evidence for such claims and media research is mainly focused on how much time people spend with a medium, but not whether someone used a medium or not. We explored the effect of media use during one week on well-being at the end of the week, differentiating time spent with a medium and use versus nonuse, over a wide range of different media types: music, TV, films, video games, (e-)books, (digital) magazines, and audiobooks. Results from a six-week longitudinal study representative of the UK population 16 years and older (N = 2159) showed that effects were generally small; between-person relations but rarely within-person effects; mostly for use versus nonuse and not time spent with a medium; and on affective well-being, not life satisfaction.
