From McLuhan to Azzi: A Theoretical Road Less Traveled
Mathematical Theory, Media Determinism, and Value Determinism.
Mohamed - Hashim ELKAREEM
Graduate Student
College of Communication
University of Sharjah
The present research paper provides a brief explanation of some the theoretical
origins and research developments that led to the emergence of the Mathematical
Theory of Communication (also known as information theory). This paper also
intends to explicate this very early but fundamental theory and give some historical
accounts of its impact on the field of mass communication. Therefore, the paper, in
more general terms, aims at providing the reader with a review of the relationship of
interdependence among several main theories in communication science, by showing
some of the theoretical linkages, or bridges, that may take the reader on a theoretical
road less traveled, from Mathematical Theory of Communication (Shannon and
Weaver), to Media Determinism (Harold A. Innis and Marshall McLuhan), and finally
to Value Determinism (Dr. Abderrahmane Azzi).
An enormous significance of the Mathematical Theory of Communication was
that it played a crucial role in the transposition of models from the exact sciences to
the communication field. The significance of transposition meant several things to
communication science. First, it meant that scholars concerned with the phenomena
of communication were able to transpose, exchange, and incorporate other ideas,
models, and theories from the exact and other sciences and adopt, accept, and
implement them into the development of the study and theory of communication.
Secondly, it meant that the term 'information' could take on the status of a calculable
symbol, as a result of the research on communication devices that were developed
1
during World War II, including Weaver's coordinated research on large calculators
and Shannon's Bell Laboratories research on cryptography.
Owing to the research carried out by Shannon and Weaver, information was
conceived of and identified as taking on the characteristic of a numerable piece of
information, or a signal. In other words, the nature of information itself became
numerable, calculable, and data-like. Respectively, the notion of information
resembled the concept of a 'strong currency', a viable means and variable element,
which then allowed for the flow of free conceptual ideas and principles and for the
exchange of models and theories among the various disciplines and sciences.
One of the great implications of information theory was that its notion of
information as calculable symbol, made it conceivable for scientists, scholars, and
researchers alike, to think of communication as a linear process, a beginning-to-end
schema, with a one-dimensional flow, from a source to a receiver. Consequently, the
communication process was becoming viewed either as involving relations among
machines; or as involving relations among biological creatures; or as involving
relations within social organizations.
Communication as a linear process between two poles
In 1948, the American scholar Claude Elwood Shannon published a
monograph entitled The Mathematical Theory of Communication, as part of the
research produced at Bell Systems Laboratories. In the following year, the University
of Illinois published the same monograph with some additional comments by Warren
Weaver, who previously coordinated research on large calculators during World War
II. Shannon's model proposed a framework for a “general system of communication
that consisted of a linear schema with poles or split-ends indicating the beginning and
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ending of the communication process”1. In this view, communication was based, or
depended, on a chain of constituent elements: the source of information which
produces a message (such as speech on a telephone); the encoder or transmitter which
transforms the message into signals allowing for transmission (e.g. the transformation
of the voice by the telephone into electrical oscillations); the channel which is the
means (medium) used to send the signals (e.g. the telephone cable); the decoder or
receiver which is the person who or the thing that receives the message.
For the most part, Shannon viewed his framework, or model, as a solution to
the main problem that he thought was confronting communication at the time, that is,
to be able “to reproduce at a given point, in an exact or approximate way a message
selected at another point”2. Thus, he concentrated most of his efforts on outlining a
mathematical framework, which would make it possible to quantify the cost of
transmitting a message or communication between the two poles of the system, in the
presence of random disturbances designated or labeled as ‘noise’, and which were
undesirable, because they prevented ‘isomorphism’ and obstructed the complete
correspondence between the two poles. Therefore, in order to facilitate making the
transmission process as inexpensive as possible, the transmission had to take place
using the least expensive possible conventional means, signals. In other words, this
ideally meant two things, for the transmission, it meant increasing the amount of
communication only through quantifying the message itself, and for the message, it
meant taking on many different shapes and sizes based on the different types of
channels (or mediums).
1 Mattelart, Armand and Mattelart, Michèle. (1995). Histoire des theories de la communication. Paris:
Éditions La Dé couverte. (In English, Theories of Communication: A Short Introduction. Trans.
Susan Gruenheck Taponier and James A. Cohen. London: Sage Publications, 1998), pp. 44-46.
2 Ibid. pp. 44.
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Information The
Source Transmitter Receiver Destination
Signal Received
Message Signal Message
Encoder Decoder
Medium Medium
Modulation Noise Demodulation
Source
Figure 3.1 A Schematic Diagram (Model) of Shannon's General Communication System.3
At the centre of Shannon's model shown above, the transmitter converts the
message (encoding – modulation) to a signal suitable for the channel to be used, the
receiver performs the inverse operation of the transmitter by reconstructing (decoding
- demodulation) the message, which was already encoded or modulated by the
transmitter, from the signal. The medium is the channel that transmits the signal from
the transmitter to the receiver, and includes the transmitter, the transmitted signal, the
received signal, the noise source, and the receiver. The destination is the person or
thing that gets the intended message.
Some Historical and Theoretical Predecessors
There were many other theoretical studies and research that not only preceded
Shannon’s and Weaver’s model, but also influenced and played a major role, in the
outcome of the mathematical theory of communication. From as early as 1910, there
was the research work begun by Russian mathematician Andrei Markov on his
theoretical studies of chains of symbols in literature. In 1927, Ralph V.L. Hartley in
the United States worked on developing Markov’s theory further, and proposed the
first accurate measurement of information about the transmission of symbols; which
3 Severin, Werner J. and James W. Tankard, Jr. (1992). Communication Theories: Origins, Methods,
And Uses In The Mass Media. Third Edition. Austin: The University of Texas at Austin. pp. 39-40.
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later on became the forerunner for the bit theory (the binary digit) and the language of
binary opposition. In 1936, British mathematician Alan Turing designed a machine
capable of processing this information. Later on the works of John Neuman, who
helped build the last large scale electronic calculator, became also influential. Then
following this period, the computer was developed between 1944-1946 in response to
the US Army’s search for means of measuring ballistic trajectories (or missiles). But,
in 1948, the most influential theoretical work came from Norbert Wiener, who was a
former teacher of Shannon and the founder of Cybernetics that combined between
systems theory and cognitive sciences, and which was defined by Weiner as the
science of command and control. With the advent of Cybernetics came two important
concepts. First, the concept of the statistical foundation of communication, and
second, the concept of feedback. The concept of feedback allowed a system to make
corrections in its own operations. The relevance of the concept of feedback to
communication can best be described as that, in the mass media, we have many forms
of feedback from the destination to the source to help the communicator correct any
subsequent output. A good example of feedback from the destination back to the
source would be the letters and telephone calls that come from listeners to radio and
television stations, during airing or showing of a radio or television programme.
In the same year in which Shannon published his monograph, also, came the
advent of Lasswell’s early verbal model in communication that was considered just as
important as Cybernetics. The advance of Lasswell’s early verbal model in
communication became very influential and allowed for many general applications in
mass communication. Lasswell’s model implied that more than one channel can carry
a message, but, the model itself was mostly verbal and consisted of the following
verbal statements:
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Who
Says What
In Which Channel
To Whom
With What Effects?
The Who raises the question of the control of the message (e.g. "gatekeeper"
study)? The Says What raises the subject of content analysis (e.g. studies of the
portrayals of conscientious objectors in media). The In Which Channel raises the
subject of communication channels studies in media analysis (e.g. advances in
communication channel technology). The To Whom raises the question of receiver
and deals with the receiver and audience analysis (e.g. the newspaper nonreaders
studies in media effects, and the With What Effects deals with diffusion and
communicator credibility studies (e.g. diffusion's theory).
According to Severin and Tankard, Lasswell's model allowed for many
applications in mass communication and focused most attention on some important
aspects of communication. One of the greatest impacts of Lasswell’s model was that
it raised very important questions regarding the process of communication, directed
great attention to some of the key concepts in communication, and facilitated the
investigation of several areas of communication process as it were through empirical
studies and research methods.
Main Assumptions of Mathematical Theory of Communication
The general assumption adopted by the mathematical theory was the neutrality
of the 'transmitting' and 'receiving' instances. In addition, there were other
assumptions borrowed from earlier periods and some social sciences traditions like
social-psychological theory and its research. Whether the communication process
involves relations among machines, or among biological creatures, or within social
organizations, it follows a linear pattern that makes it a stochastic process, that is, a
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process affected by random phenomena occurring between a transmitter that is free to
choose the message to be sent and the destination that receives the information with
its constraints.
The linear view of communication was very popular and influential that
researchers in many disciplines quickly adopted it and borrowed Shannon's notions of
information, transmission of information, encoding, decoding, recording, redundancy,
noise, disturbance, and free choice. As well, in line with these developments came
the adoption of the assumption of the neutrality of the 'transmitting' and 'receiving'
instances. In other words, what scholars assumed of the communication process was
that it was neutral at both ends of the communication spectrum.
Although, Shannon was keenly interested in the logic of the communication
process, his theory did not take into account the meanings of the signals, or how the
receiver understood the transmitted signals. Thus, this theory faced a lot of criticism
for its lack of taking into account the content of the message.
------------------------------------------
However, the arrival of mathematical theory of communication influenced all
differently and even radically opposed schools of thought and currents of research on
the means of communication. Mathematical Theory of Communication became the
underlying assumption of all functional analysis of effects theory and profoundly
influenced structural linguistics, structuralism, and structural anthropology. Here, one
can easily observe that the mathematical theory of communication clearly played a
role in laying down the foundation for the emergence of the functionalist approach.
Mathematical Theory of Communication became the formal model, and although,
various studies in the sociology of media were able to introduce further complexities
or add newer variables to this model, many scholars and researchers continued to
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respect the conception of beginning-to-end or linear schema of communication.
Moreover, in spite of the refinement of those variables over the years, this did not
manage to change neither the assumption nor the model, in which communication as a
straight-line was taken as self-evident or a given.
A General Meaning for Mathematical Theory
The Mathematical Theory of Communication generated an approach in
communication that reduced or relegated the role of technology to the level of
instrument. Towards this end, most of the general concerns were how we could
increase or send the most amount of information or communication through a
channel. Respectively, these general concerns made it almost impossible to formulate
any conceptual framework in which technology was defined in terms other than
calculations, planning, prediction, and control. Therefore, Shannon and Weaver
developed a model for analyzing information transmission (stemming from
information theory) which visualized communication as a sequential process
beginning with a source and ending with a receiver. A source selects a message,
which then is transmitted, in the form of a signal (encode), over a communication
channel, to a receiver that transforms (decode) the signal back into a message for a
destination. The sequential model of communication made it possible to account for
the differences between messages as sent and messages as received, and in terms of
noise and interference affecting the channels of communication.
Yet, it is also noteworthy to observe that the notion of 'information cannot be
disassociated from some concurrent developments in the field of biology and
biological research, which around the same time of the development of information
theory, began to incorporate in its vocabulary terms like information and codes.
Nevertheless, also, just as important, is the fact that Shannon himself had clearly
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borrowed some ideas and concepts from the field of biological research on the
nervous system.
The Transition from Information, to Systems, to Networks
Generally, we can observe that the size of effect that was attributed to the
media between the late 1940's and late 1960's was generally described or
characterized by what was called the limited effect model. The powerful effects
model that characterized the previous period (first phase of the history of research into
the effects of mass communication) was becoming subject to further qualifications
and studies, and new evidence was being provided that ‘powerful effects’ do not
occur universally or very easily.
In addition, as part of this general transition in thinking come the advances
made by Wilbur Schramm, an early and continuing influence in the mass
communication field, who offered several models that dealt with both human
communication and mass communication. In 1955, Schramm pointed out that the
mathematical theory of communication were based on probabilities, and that learning
alters these probabilities, and this prevented the direct application of Shannon's theory
to human communication. Schramm also introduced a model that includes the
concept of shared experience, suggesting that successful message encoding and
decoding depends on the source and receiver having sufficient commonalities such as
similar language and cultural backgrounds.
Another of Schramm models included the first depiction of feedback or
information that the receiver sends back to the source, which might be used by the
source to clarify or otherwise alter the future message. Because of Schramm's
depiction of feedback, the concept of feedback became an element that is usually
depicted in communication models.
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According to Schramm, a system is defined as any part of an information
chain that is capable of existing in one or more states or in which one or more events
can occur (Schramm, 1955, p.132). Systems include the channels of information but
also include sources, transmitters, receivers, and destinations. Systems must be
coupled with one another in order to transfer information; and the state of any system
depends on the state of the system adjoining it. If, the coupling between two systems,
called an interface or a gatekeeper point, is broken then information is not transferred.
However, more importantly, during the 1960's the sociological theory
embarked on a return to the study of social bonds, social integration, that was built
through everyday communication. This return happened at a time when complex
technological systems of communication and information were actually playing a
structuring role in organizing society and transforming the world order. As a result, in
this respect, the society was seen to be defined in terms of communication, which
itself was defined in terms of networks. Therefore, clearly a shift was occurring in
which Cybernetics theory was displacing the Mathematical Theory of Information.
The advent of the notion of network, a model of network, also was in keeping
with the general assumptions of the one-dimensional conception of progress for
society, a general positivism, which strongly held that modernization and the adoption
of innovations necessarily brought about 'development' and 'progress'. According to
this view of progress, any refusal of modernization and innovations had to be caused
by persistent features - social, cultural, and historical features - of the so-called
traditional societies. Henceforth, one may remember the two monumental published
works, The Passing of Traditional Societies (19..), and Communication and National
Development(19..), which were published earlier and became very relevant to this
period and its widely accepted notion of positive progress. But, in real practice, the
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diffusionist, or dissemination, strategy came down to only product marketing in the
end.
The earlier theory of innovation advanced by Everett Rogers', in which he
restricted the definition of innovation as "communication through certain channels
over time among the members of a social system,"4 was revisited twenty years later
and was judged again, or re-evaluated, to be too closely linked to mathematical theory
of communication. Moreover, Rogers's theory was criticized for its tendency to
neglect context, define interlocutors as isolated atoms, and, above all, its reliance on
one-dimensional or one-way mechanical causality. Instead, Rogers proposed to
replace the earlier theoretical notion with a new definition of communication as a
"convergence process in which the participants create and share information with one
another in order to reach mutual understanding" (Rogers and Kincaid, 1981). In place
of the former diffusionist model, he proposed a "communication network analysis".
A communication network analysis that is composed of the ‘individuals’
connected to one another by patterned communications and flows. It is an analysis of
communication structure, or communication network, as the arrangement of the
differentiated elements of a system, which also requires the definition of the main
subsystem. Both the definition of the system and the definition of the subsystem were
required in this communication network analysis. The newly proposed model of
communication network analysis, therefore, implied producing new research
procedures or methods by which the definitions required could be achieved. These
4 Mattelart, Armand and Mattelart, Michèle. (1995). Histoire des theories de la communication. Paris:
Éditions La Dé couverte. (In English, Theories of Communication: A Short Introduction. Trans.
Susan Gruenheck Taponier and James A. Cohen. London: Sage Publications, 1998), pp. 44-46.
11
new research procedures were consisting of several new research procedures and
models.5
Shortly, thereafter, a social psychologist developed a methodological basis for
measuring the different variables in a 'network' of relations and quantifying the
models of communication between individuals within a system. This schema or
'sociogramme' indicated both the positive and negative attitudes of the members of a
group and designated key individuals and leaders (henceforth, the theory of opinion
leaders). For many scholars, this constituted an essential step forward in the search
for "harmonic community". With respect to these recent findings, the development of
light communication technologies, like video and microcomputers, appeared to be in
favor the advent of the horizontal model that Rogers counter posed to the heavy
apparatus of centralized media systems, on which diffusionism had based its vertical
schema of persuasion.
The Influence of Mathematical Theory on Linguistics and Structuralism
The historical as well as conditional significance of the following review of
structural anthropology is to point out the relation of interdependence between
structuralism theory and information theory. We will become aware that the model of
communication formulated by Roman Jakobson was an outgrowth of the
mathematical theory of information.
The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss stood out among those scholars who
strongly promoted the transposition of the linguistic model to other disciplines.
Strauss explained his theoretical model in his published book Structural Anthropology
5 This model implied new research procedures consisting in (1) identifying cliques, defined as a
subsystem whose elements interact with each other relatively more frequently than with other members
of the communication system; (2) identifying certain specialized communication roles such as liaisons
(an individual linking two or more cliques in a system, but who is not affiliated to any clique), bridges
(an individual linking two or more cliques from his position as a member of one the cliques) and
isolates; (3) measuring communication structural indexes (such as communication connectedness) for
individuals, dyads, personal networks, cliques or entire systems. (Mattelart, 1998, pp. 130-134)
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(Anthropologie Structurale), and which he also tested in his thesis published in 1949
under the title Structures èlèmmentaire de la parente. In this thesis, his analysis was
concerned with myths as a form of language – those myths, although there are many
and is varied, can nevertheless, be reduced to variations of universal structures. For
instance, Strauss emphasized that those particular myths, which he called
“mythemes”6, a name he used based on the linguistic model of “phonemes”7 ,those
vowels and consonants making up the basic units of language, have meaning only and
only when combined or coalesced together. Respectively, the rules governing these
combinations form a sort of grammar that makes it possible to go beyond the surface
of language to the underlying system of relations or logic that constitutes the meaning
of the myth.
Therefore, interestingly for Strauss, we can observe that, the focus on relations
also serves, or served, to explore totemic systems or kinship relations, which become
'communication networks' or 'codes' enabling the transmission of messages, in
particular messages that can be understood in terms of social or cultural or
generational values. For instance, this could mean the transmission or passing of
traditions from one generation to another generation seen as a communication
network analysis of myths.
Claude Lévi-Strauss attributed the influence of his intellectual contribution to
structural anthropology to his decisive and important encounter with linguist Roman
Jakobson in 1941, whose courses he enlisted in while in exile in New York. Jakobson
was born in Russia and was the first linguist along with Karcevsky and Troubetskoy,
to use the term 'structure', at the conference of Slavic Philologist held in Prague in
6 Mattelart, Armand and Mattelart, Michèle. (1995). Histoire des theories de la communication. Paris:
Éditions La Dé couverte. (In English, Theories of Communication: A Short Introduction. Trans.
Susan Gruenheck Taponier and James A. Choen. London: Sage Publications, 1998), pp. 132-136.
7 Ibid.
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1920. Saussure had been only content to use the term 'system'. The principle of
immanence, which was very crucial for structural analysis, 'took of language as a
system which knows only and only its order. While, respecting the principle of
immanence, Jakobson still managed to reveal and systematize the rules governing the
workings of language. His schema for all communication contained six constitutive
elements and corresponded to six functions: the speaker determines the expressive
function; the destination determines the conative function, which can only be defined
tautologically as the function of language as aimed at a receiver; the message
determines the poetic function, which includes all the referential function; the contact
determines the phatic function, which tends to verify that the listening of the receiver
is still established; and finally the code determines the meta-linguistic function, which
is concerned with language as an object, and through it, the speaker and the receiver
verify that they are using the same vocabulary and grammar. (Jakobson, 1962) and
(Armand and Michele Mattelart, 1998).
The relation of dependence between structuralism and mathematical theory
was made evident by generalizing the heuristic value of the concepts of code,
encoding, decoding, redundancy, message, and information. For Jakobson, he was
suggesting, earlier than his encounter with Strauss, that anthropology should apply the
same schema to kinship systems. Furthermore, in the early 1970's, Jakobson pursued
his project to give linguistics a scientific status, and drew his inspiration from
discoveries in molecular biology. At the this time, some molecular biologist were
uncovering that the laws of heredity were based on DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid),
and they mobilized information theory to explain genetic inheritance in terms of
'programmes', 'codes', and 'information' (mathematical interpretations). Jakobson
went even further in his explanation as to establish structural similarities between
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these two information systems, the genetic code (molecular biology) and the linguistic
code (structural linguistics), that is, between a chemical message contained in the
architecture of the cell that transmits 'orders of life' and a linguistic message contained
in the structure of language that transmits 'orders of meaning'. Certainly, we find that
in both cases, the message contained in the temporal coding-decoding sequence is
strictly linear (influences of the linear process of communication); and that, it is
possible to reduce the relations between elements - phonemes or chemical bases - to a
system of binary oppositions. Henceforth, the advance of the digital binary theory or
what was commonly known as the binary system or the two-bit theory.
Mathematical Theory, Media Determinism, and Value Determinism
Harold Adams Innis was the first person to hit upon the process of change as
implicit in the forms of media technology. He also preceded Marshall McLuhan, and
both, Innis and McLuhan became the two prominent figures in what became known as
the Toronto School.
Innis held strongly that communication technology formed the basis of
political and economic processes. He came to these findings after several
monographic studies on fisheries, the fur trade an railways, in which he was able to
test his formulated hypothesis. His two monumental works that attest to these
interests are Empire and Communication (1950) and The Bias of Communication
(1951). (Mattelart, 1998, pp. 148-150).
The key concept in Innis’s work was that technologically determined
knowledge monopolies could control the distribution of political power among social
groups. Thus, the control of power involves the control of space and time. For Innis,
communication systems shape social organization because they structure temporal
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and spatial relations. Historically speaking, there have been two different kinds of
media or communication, which gave rise to two different kinds of empires. The first
media, which is ‘space-binding’ or (has a space bias), is symbolized by the printing
press and electronic communication and leads to expansion and to the control of a
territory. It aims at centralizing. The second media, which is ‘time-binding’ or (has a
time bias), is sustained by oral culture and manuscripts and fosters memory, a sense of
history, small communities, and traditional forms of power, and it aims at
decentralizing. Therefore, the development of a monopoly on knowledge is linked to
both time and space and is the basis of absolute power and it represents a serious
threat, as Canada was in an unusual position of being influenced (sandwiched)
between two empires, the US and Britain. This threat was very real and detrimental
because it came at the very moment where the two biases of communication (space
and time biases) were coming together, thus Canada was forced to combine two
opposing technological forces.
This is what amounts to the term media determinism, that is, those
technological forces (the two biases combining forces together and aiming at both
centralizing and decentralizing) do play a role in restricting the ranges of possible
responses, and discussion on the part of the audiences, socially speaking, to only these
two opposing forces – one of the two different kinds of empires. To combat these
effects of technological determinism which restricts the range of possible responses
and discussion on the part of audiences, it is necessary to re-establish the 'oral
tradition', revive memory and create channels of democratic participation, all
elements that form a basis of an alternative kind of communication. Innis attributed
the characteristics features of successive ancient civilizations to the prevailing and
dominant modes of communication, and each mode of communication has its own
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bias (a technology bias) in terms of societal form. In other words, that the particular
form of a society we find is due to the bias of the dominant technology that society
uses. Thus, we can explain changes in societal forms in terms of changes in modes of
communication and their biases. As the means and modes of communication change,
then, also, the societal form of the society changes. The main organizing principles in
Innis's work are two. The first principle lies in the economic sphere, and states that
communication leads over time to monopolization by a group or a class of the means
of production and distribution, which either impedes changes or leads to the
competitive emergence of other forms of communication, that in turn, tend to correct
the disequilibrium. Thus, new communication technologies undermine old bases of
social power. The second principle lies in the monopoly or control sphere, and states
that the most important dimensions of empire are space and time, and that some
means and modes of communication are more suitable for one, space or time, than for
the other (the bias of communication). Thus, empires can exist either through time
(like ancient Egypt), or extensively in space (like Rome), and this totally depends on
the dominant form of communication used. (Dennis McQuail, 1994).
Marshall McLuhan, a colleague of Innis at the University of Toronto,
acknowledged his scholarly debt to Innis's advanced ideas in his published work The
Gutenberg Galaxy (1962). He became convinced and built on the foundation laid by
Innis and in 1964 launched his famous statement, "the medium is the message", in the
classic Understanding Media (1965). In his classic book, McLuhan wrote, "the
effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense
ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without resistance". (McLuhan, 1965,
pp.18) (Severin and Tankard, 1992, pp.251). Furthermore, McLuhan claimed that not
only are the ages of civilization determined by the prevailing medium (technology),
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but that each medium has its own power that far exceeds the content transmitted
through it. He made these advances with a single overriding theme that content should
be ignored as critics evaluate the impact or effect on society made by the advent of
media. In other words, can we think of any single message or even many messages
that were ever transmitted by television that has had more effect or influence on daily
lives of human beings than the advent of television itself? Thus, the medium itself is
the message.
Now, very briefly, I like to discuss the theoretical ideas advanced by Dr.
Abderrahmane Azzi. Those advances made by communication scholar Dr.
Abderrahmane Azzi, respond critically to McLuhan's theory of media determinism
with its famous statement, "the medium is the message". In my best but very limited
understanding of Dr. Azzi's ideas, I can say that Dr. Azzi's theoretical framework
places great importance on the inherent or imbedded conflict, which can arise
naturally, between the medium and the message. Thus, unlike McLuhan, instead of
focusing on the medium as the message, Azzi puts his focus on the determinant value
inherent or imbedded on the message and the content of the message. In this respect,
Dr. Azzi is advancing further the ideas of McLuhan, that is, from the "medium is the
message," to "the message is the value"8. Azzi's statement describes the
communication process and concentrates on the possible application of the message
as the carrier of cultural and social values that help the individual and society
strengthen their moral and civil public manners, both locally and internationally. This
is what ought to be reflected positively on the individual's material, and non-material
being.
8 Nassier, Bu Ali. (2005). Media and Values: A Reading in the Theory of Algerian Thinker
Abderrahmane Azzi. Ain Malelah, Algeria: Alhuda Publishing House. pp. 42-49.
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If, McLuhan intended to explain the evolution of his society, then, Azzi with
his value-determinism theory, also intends to explain his society. This brings me to
the following, that, the notion of cultural relativity is very important and significant,
as well as the notion of normative theory, more particularly, in some of the
comparative studies and research. This is becoming evident by the works of both
McLuhan and Azzi that mass communication theory and study ought to make account
of cultural and social relativity factors as well as of normative theories. The theory
and practice of mass media ought to be based on those culturally, historically, and
socially determined factors as well as on the materially and non-materially determined
characteristics of society. Therefore, the message is more determined by its value,
rather than by its medium, and that "the message is the value"9.
There is a very significant distinction between mathematical theory and media
determinism, that I personally learned as a result of this research paper. The former,
is concerned more with channel capacity, which is not the number of symbols a
channel can transmit, but rather the information a channel can transmit, that is, a
channel's ability, feasibility, or capability to transmit the information coming from the
source. This focuses on the channel as an instrument and on the amount of
information going through inside the channel or within the medium. The later, media
determinism is concerned more with the nature of the medium, that is, the medium
from the outside and its role as a whole in the process of communication. This role,
off course, was determined to be a structuring role, and that is why McLuhan said the
content is irrelevant. Because, the nature of the medium itself may have special
characteristics that affect the process of communication, regardless of what is inside
it. The medium changes the way we relate to it and to ourselves, and this is
9 Ibid.
19
particularly true, when, at the level of society, the medium take the form of giant mass
communication processes and technologies, that stand between individuals, groups,
and institutions and their existence. Indeed, it is true that, "between consciousness
and existence stands communication". Communication technology determinism has
been described as still an active tradition that is continuing to search for the links
between dominant communication technology of an age and key features of society
that bear on the three or four issues of power, integration, knowledge, and social
change. Thus, media determinism has a media-centred view that has the tendency to
focus on the potential for social change of a particular communication technology and
to subordinate all other variables. Now, the age of the new information society is
taking on the form of production of mental states.
Conclusion
The impact of the Mathematical Theory of Communication was far-reaching
and influential on the field of communication. This theory gives us great insights into
the inter-relationships within many forms of communication theories, research, and
perspectives. It has important and far-ranging applications and one of its direct results
is the advance of digital communication technology in the 1980's. We have also seen
the association of the theory with the research on communication devices, in
particular, with the kind of research on large-scale computers
Moreover, we can conclude that mathematical theory had an impact on the
rising power of discourses and expertise in the field. It appears that the entire field is
finding it increasingly difficult to extricate itself from its instrumental image, an
image laid down by this theory. However, some critical ideological shifts are still
occurring in an age of advancing science, modernity, and control societies, when
communication processes and new technologies have taken over as an important
20
parameter par excellence in the evolution of humanity. In such a general context,
there are many contrasting or opposing perspectives, theories, models, and schools of
thought that seek to define the exacting nature and effect of the processes of mass
communication and newer technologies in everyday life, and more particularly, in the
presence of more variables such as interactivity and user control.
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