The characteristics of cool media are: A. High participation B. Low definition…
2024
The characteristics of cool media are:
A. High participation
B. Low definition
C. High definition
D. Small amount of information
E. High amount of information
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer: D. A, B, D Only — Concept — In Marshall McLuhan’s classification of media (Understanding Media, 1964, “Media Hot and Cold”), every medium is placed on two linked scales: its…
- A.
A, B, C Only
- B.
B, C, D Only
- C.
C, D, E Only
- D.
A, B, D Only
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept — In Marshall McLuhan’s classification of media (Understanding Media, 1964, “Media Hot and Cold”), every medium is placed on two linked scales: its definition, meaning how densely it fills a single sense with data, and the participation it demands, meaning how much the audience must supply to complete the message. The two scales move in opposite directions.
A hot medium is high in definition — it is “well filled with data” — so it hands the audience an almost complete message and asks little of it. A cool medium is low in definition — it supplies sparse data — so the audience has to fill in what is missing, which is why it asks for a great deal of involvement.
Application — testing each trait listed in the question against the cool side of that scale:
A. High participation — a sparse message has to be completed by the audience, so heavy involvement is exactly what the cool side calls for.
B. Low definition — supplying thin, incomplete sensory data is the defining property of the cool side.
C. High definition — a sense densely filled with data is the hot side of the scale, the opposite pole from cool.
D. Small amount of information — giving little and leaving the rest to the audience is the same cool property stated in terms of information supplied.
E. High amount of information — an information-rich message that completes itself is again the hot side.
Cross-check — the two categories side by side:
Aspect | Hot medium | Cool medium |
|---|---|---|
Definition (sensory data) | High — well filled with data | Low — sparse, incomplete data |
Audience participation | Low — little is left to complete | High — the audience fills in the gaps |
Information supplied | Large | Small |
Typical examples | Print, photograph, radio, film, the lecture | Speech, cartoon, telephone, television, the seminar |
Definition and participation are inversely related, so a single medium cannot be both low and high in definition, and cannot supply both a small and a large amount of information. The cool-media profile is therefore high participation, low definition and a small amount of information — the combination A, B, D.