Internet Radio, Media Ecology and the case for ‘Holistic Flexible Technological Determinism’

When radio is examined with an eye to interpretation or analysis, there are several frames within which it is considered. Radio is:

– a business (a means of generating a profit)

– a technology (a connection of electronic devices and a method of transmission)

– a means of communication (a forum within which views are expressed)

– a category of content (the defining prefix: radio-documentary; radio-play; radio-comedy…)

– a social phenomenon (creator of audiences)

– an historical phenomenon (nostalgia, Hauraki, deregulation)

– a subject of political discourse (communication policy)

– a subset of the music industry (advertising for record companies)

– representing sides of an economic dialectic (public vs private, Rogernomics vs Reithianism)

– a text – (content analysis)

– a cultural focal point (motivator of masses, creator of markets)

Each of these frames is a necessarily incomplete picture of what constitutes radio – and so naturally, each of these analyses provides a blinkered view of what radio is.

If one examines radio purely as a business, and as a means of extracting a profit by leveraging an audience and leasing its ears to advertisers for set periods of time (divided into 30 second blocks of ‘inventory’), then whatever happens around those advertisements is only of significance in so far as it impacts upon the delicate balance between a station’s target demographic, its audience size, advertising rates, and sales figures. This is a purely numerical game, which only considers in passing, if it considers at all, other measures of the success or otherwise of a radio station.

If read as a text, radio can give insights into prevailing modes of thought and patterns of communication within the medium – indeed, the media. It can reveal political, sexual, racial and other social biases and inequalities, and it can also uncover hidden depths of meaning. Considered apart from the day to day economic realities of the business of radio, however, it is almost impossible to consider the reasons why these inequalities may be inherent (and why it might be that they are so entrenched), or suggest methodologies which could yield positive social results by operating in an economic framework that appeals to those who have the authority to make systemic change.

In fact, radio can be considered an ecological system that has many interwoven parts, each impacting on the others – and as a system, is also itself a part of larger systems.

This Media Ecology framework allows for a multitude of different factors to be examined individually and considered collectively alongside disparate data from seemingly contradictory methodologies. This may not constitute a coherent causal system in a Newtonian mechanical sense, but can evoke a fuller picture of the truth about radio than pure analytical science will allow by facilitating a ‘poetic’, holistic understanding, rather than a scientific, reductive one.

A Media Ecological frame for considering radio enables the observer to take into consideration any and all of the abovementioned facets of the medium without fear of internal contradiction. Factors that would ordinarily be considered under a sociological frame can illuminate business analyses, and understandings of historical landmarks can help explain contemporary technological developments.

Fortunately, media ecology analytical frameworks and methodologies already exist that can be readily applied to radio. These methodologies are sufficiently scientific to allow for observations to be input as data, and meanings can be extracted as output. They are also sufficiently interpretive to enable semiotically creative – even poetic readings. McLuhan’s tetradic ‘Laws of Media’ provides the most formulaic of these.

Contrary to some opinion of enthusiasts and some scholars, media ecology neither starts nor ends with Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian academic and celebrity. He is, however, the figure at the centre of the Media Ecology canon, having revolutionised, popularised, and provided some of the most complete (and often confounding) systems of critique for the study of media. It was McLuhan who drew attention to media as an environment and to the fact that the content of a medium is of secondary importance next to the fundamental fact that the content is being delivered on that particular medium (“the medium is the message”).

McLuhan is often labelled a technological determinist. He believes that our media shape not only our history, but our way of experiencing the world – so much so that the media inscribe our sensory surroundings – and are in fact extensions of ourselves. In other words, what we know about ourselves and the world is absolutely dictated by the way in which we know it. McLuhan goes so far as to claim that the speaker of Chinese will necessarily have a categorically different sense of smell, for instance, because the Chinese world is not defined alphabetically, but rather ideographically.

To make the distinction, a political economy approach examines the patterns of ownership and their effect on power structures, defined in terms of financial flow. This is an example of a methodology that examines an aspect of the media environment, but still broadly operates within that media environment. Media Ecology is a more holistic study of a medium as an environment rather than as a figure itself. Rather than examine radio, one examines what goes on within radio. What ‘effect’ does the environment have on its constituents?

Within media ecology, the technological determinist will express the above question as ‘what changes do our media force upon us as human beings?’ – with almost exclusive reference to audiences and how they are shaped. A less deterministic media ecologist (myself included) instead asks ‘what conditions of a medium do human beings respond to – and in broadly what fashion?’ – with an emphasis on audience, but with an eye to other participants in the media environment. No media ecologist would suggest that McLuhan was wrong, particularly, but that his examination provides the starting point for a much broader ecological framework that includes his work and positions it within a more holistic viewpoint.

Evolution is the adaptation of an organism to its environment. Environmental change forces the hand of evolution. However, leaving it at that overlooks the fact that human beings, both individually and as social groupings, respond creatively to their environment – and often shape it outright in order to suit their own needs and desires.

Rather than a technologically deterministic media ecology, it is ecology as conversation and constant negotiation between environment and its participants. By participants, I mean owners (individuals and companies), managers, employees, broadcasters, advertisers and – in the case of radio – listeners. The media ecology of radio changes profoundly if radio is put onto (into?) the internet. As McLuhan pointed out, if you put one medium onto another, then the older medium stops being a medium in and of itself, and starts becoming the content of the newer medium. It ceases its role as environment and becomes a participant in the new environment. It becomes what we listen to, rather than how we listen – or even what we listen on.

Participants in a media environment are affected by changes to that media environment. A shift within that environment can be significant, with repercussions for all participants – the introduction of a new station, voluntary local content targets, deregulation, and so on – but a shift into an entirely new environment is a profound reshaping. The participants in the environment see the medium for the first time, as it becomes the figure, rather than the ground, in the entirely new environment. Adaptation and evolution, though constructed creatively by the environment’s constituents, is forced upon them as a condition of survival.

Thus, holistic flexible technological determinism: change is forced upon a medium’s constituents (not merely its audience) by the structuration of that medium’s technological manifestation, but the nature of that change is negotiable.

In order to provide a complete holistic, flexible, technologically deterministic (FHTD) media ecology examination of what happens when traditional AM/FM radio stations begin to stream their content online, it is necessary to consider the following aspects of the environment and its inhabitants:

– Audience

– Business

– Staff

– Content

– Public Policy

– Historical context

– Technology

– Creative Industries

– McLuhanist manifestations

…to be continued

Note: I find it odd that the three following statements can all be true:

1) McLuhan is a poetic, aphoristic theorist

2) Technological determinism is a purely reductive cause/effect system

3) McLuhan is a technological determinist