Define 'Media' In One Sentence

I'm looking for definitions of 'media' that are one sentence long.

I already have a definition I've been thinking of, but I just want to make sure that my definition is correct and all-encompassing. I'll wait a bit before posting my definition so that I don't inadvertently influence anyone posting here.

A method of conveying information.

Stupidly broad, but I think it works.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Okie dokey. In absence of any other replies, I think I'll just post the one I'm working on:

• Media is information which has been crafted and communicated with the purpose of affecting the audience.

edited 21st Feb '12 5:35:11 PM by AlexisPius

Methods of communication which humans use to convey a message to other humans.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

So what, it stops being media once aliens read it?

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Aliens will be relevant if and when we actually find any aliens to begin with.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

^ That's a statistical impossibility that we're alone in the Universe. /offtopic

What is media? A miserable little pile of messages!

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

That we're not alone is irrelevant. There being aliens doesn't mean a thing if we can't actually find them. The universe, after all, is fucking gigantic.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

It's only a matter of time until we find them or equally as probable they find us. (If some UFO theories are to be believed, they've already found us.)

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

"A matter of time" is meaningless here, because it could be anywhere from five minutes from now to until the heat death of the universe. Furthermore, UFO sightings are not reliable sources for anything in the slightest.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Wow, I think this may hold a record for shortest time to complete and utter derail.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

-Flyboy & Tom

On the subject of humans - I submit to you that it is possible for a man to craft media for animals.

For instance, people have created DV Ds and iPad applications to entertain their cats. Media for animals could even hypothetically rely on animal senses that we humans do not have. For instance, rather than primarily using sight and sound, media for sharks might use their senses of electromagnetism and pressure.

More than likely, we would never be able to know for sure if the media has served it's intended purpose, since animals are so vastly different from us, but to me that is unimportant. If someone writes a book intending for it to have a certain impact on the audience, but then the book sits in a drawer unread and unpublished, I believe it still counts as media.

edited 21st Feb '12 5:48:37 PM by AlexisPius

I have 4 dogs that are proof of that. Just put a dog (or other critter) on TV and they go apeshit into watching the show.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

I was wondering, when I saw this post, why the dictionary definition wasn't good enough. Then I looked it up; apparently, the technical definition of "media" is as a plural form of "medium<" as in "the medium with which you create art" (which I knew already), but our popular use of it, as a blanket noun for the agencies of mass communication, originated in the advertising industry in the 20's (which I didn't know). There's no cited basis for why they started doing this, it just kind of...evolved. Ain't language wonderful?

Your linguistic trivia for the day.

- Mr. Gray

Yes, that is problem. Partially because if the definition of "media" means the same as "mass communication", it isn't broad enough. Not all 'media' is crafted with the intention to "reach large numbers of people, such as television, newspapers, and radio". I would argue that a love poem written to a single person, or a piece of amateur freeware Interactive Fiction that almost no one reads are both just as much a type of media as a huge Hollywood blockbuster.

edited 21st Feb '12 6:59:42 PM by AlexisPius

I'm not sure that the two usages mentioned need to be reconciled, necessarily. A poem or a piece of software are media in the sense that they are the media (plural form of medium) through which their creators work, whereas radio, tv and other forms of mass communication are "the media" in the colloquial sense of the term. These are two somewhat related, but distinct definitions. Lots of words have multiple meanings based on how they're used.

I don't see the necessity of concocting a single definition that incorporates both these meanings; indeed, to do so could be potentially misleading, as the two definitions cover different things. Unless I'm misunderstanding you?

- Gray

Well, the necessity is that I'm writing a guide to media and I figure that I should probably define what 'media' is.

I went back and reread your definition, and the problem is, I don't think your definition really embodies the way anyone, to any great degree, uses the word. I'm all for the free and organic evolution of language to meet the needs of its speakers, but a word generally has it's "official" etymological meaning and then whatever colloquial meanings it may have gathered unto itself. Unless you know for a fact that people use the term in such a way to match the definition you describe, it wouldn't be accurate to define it that way. I've never heard "media" used to describe a specific piece of information, only as either the means utilized by an artist or craftsman to create a work (it's etymological meaning)or as a blanket term for the various ways in which information/entertainment is communicated (it's colloquial meaning).

All that being said, it's possible that you could get away with defining "media" the way you describe, so long as you use it that way consistently throughout what you're writing. it's a tight rope to walk, though.

It's one of those complex, fuzzy terms like "nature" and "text" that can theoretically include literally anything, unless you impose some kind of arbitrary limits on its scope. I'd think a brief paragraph discussing the history of the term and how it gets used would be more useful.

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- Gray

Well, I think that what we're talking about does encompass an official definition. That is - the true meaning that most people would understand. It seems to me that the dictionaries are the ones with definitions that are slightly off. For instance, here are some dictionary definitions of "media":

• "newspapers, magazines, radio and television considered as a group"
• "The public institutions that report the news, such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, collectively; the news media"
• "the means of communication that reach large numbers of people, such as television, newspapers, and radio"
• "The main means of mass communication regarded collectively"
• "the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely"
• "In general, "media" refers to various means of communication. The term can also be used as a collective noun for the press or news reporting agencies."
• "Communication channels through which news, entertainment, education, data, or promotional messages are disseminated. Media includes every broadcasting and narrowcasting medium such as newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, billboards, direct mail, telephone, fax, and internet."
• (1) : a channel or system of communication, information, or entertainment — compare mass medium (2) : a publication or broadcast that carries advertising (3) : a mode of artistic expression or communication

So clearly the basic definition we're discussing here does exist - it's just that these dictionary definitions are hugely flawed.

And, in case my definition is confusing (if it is, I'll need to fix it), let me explain that it seems like all media genuinely is communicated information - literature, video games, paintings, music, film. To me it all seems like a mix of visual and auditory information.

And anything that can be perceived conveys information.

Take John Cage's 4'33" - not the score, the actual piece you hear. According to Cage, the piece consists not of silence, but of the background sounds you hear while the piece is being performed. What information is being conveyed here? Is anything definite being communicated? This is, remember, a widely acknowledged (if highly controversial) piece of music.

Now take the colour patterns on a coral snake and a milk snake. To anyone who is familiar with these animals, the patterns communicate certain information about the snakes - this animal is dangerous, this animal is harmless. Is this intentional on the snake's part? No - they simply look that way because the colouration deters predators, and so snakes that appear poisonous are less likely to be eaten and more likely to reproduce. So is a snake's skin a medium?

One more. Consider randomised algorithmic art. Few would dispute that visual art is a medium, or at least that the computer is a medium which can be used to generate and convey visual art, but is information conveyed by this art any more deliberate or controlled than the information conveyed by the aforementioned snakes? If the art generated is truly random (rather than pseudo-random*

), then it can't truly be said to have been designed by a human being, can it?

This is why I don't think you can write a succinct, concrete definition of "media" that will reflect the way the term is actually used, simultaneously excluding things like the snakes while including all experimental artforms.

edited 22nd Feb '12 4:38:58 AM by BobbyG

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The definition you presented seems to be saying that information is media, whereas the dictionary definition seems to be saying that media is the means by which information is communicated. Traditionally speaking, for instance, THE video game — in the general sense, as a format — is media, while A video game, speaking specifically of an individual game — is not. A newspaper is media, while the stories it contains are not, they're information.

Definitions change with use, and in the end, that's really what it's all about. I personally have never read or heard anyone use the word "media" to describe specific information, but if you know the term is used in the way you describe, if you have examples to back you up, then go for it. In Chaucer's time, the word "ask" was spelled and pronounced "aks" and it changed with use. Now, it's very slowly going back the other way. Language is very much a living thing; we can't control it, all we can really do is observe its behavior.

- Bob

Hmm, I understand you opinion, but I don't subscribe to the idea that we just can't define certain words. However, your post does make me question a couple of aspects of my definition:

• Media is information which has been crafted and communicated with the purpose of affecting the audience.

I think I can pretty comfortably explain the last two of your examples: The coral snake can be ignored because that information was not "crafted", or perhaps I should change the definition to be "intentionally crafted and communicated." As for randomized computer art, I actually have a section in my theory that included "randomized" elements. All right, this will actually be very confusing if I try to explain it here, but you can read more here. Sufficed to say - even if a human uses a machine to randomize some media, I would argue that it is still being intentionally crafted. That is - to me, using a computer to randomize something is functionally the same as closing your eyes and randomly splashing some paint on a canvas, or picking numbers out of a hat to decided the order in which to arrange clips in an art film. In all cases there is still someone intentionally choosing to craft this.

However, the John Cage 'song' does make me wonder. I could maybe argue that since it was originally intended to be a performance piece, it naturally includes live visual elements. Or maybe the background sound could be vaguely construed to be intended and 'randomized' in the way that I described with randomized art. I dunno, like I said, this one causes some problems. I'll think on it.

- Gray

Well, I don't like that definition - the idea that a single video game doesn't count as media - mainly because some 'genres' of media are actually ludicrously broad. For instance, there are video games that only use audio, some that only use text, some that have a lot of interactivity, some that have very little, etc etc.

Buuut... Hmm hmm hmm... okay, I might see a problem. I'm not sure whether media is the information itself or the ways in which it is communicated. Sorry, I'm going back and forth on this one, I'm not sure.

Whew, it is kind of giving me a headache, I'll think on this, and get back to you.

Oh, my point wasn't that we can't define certain words, merely that some definitions are, for whatever reason, too complex to describe in a single sentence.

Your proposed amendment isn't dreadful and I can see the reasoning behind it (and as far as Cage is concerned, it's certainly intended as to be heard, not merely seen, but random chance was precisely what he was aiming for there), but it is rather strongly at odds with some very prominent critical and cultural theories, specifically those that incorporate the notion of the "death of the author" to any extent - which includes most of the dominant movements since Barthes, even those which stress the importance of material context.

Speaking of which, the conventional way to describe a video game, in theoretical and media studies terminology, would be to call it a "multimedia text". Here "text" is used in the general critical sense prevalent in cultural theory, which encompasses not just written works but also films, games, pictures, comics, sculptures, architecture, music, etc., while "multimedia" denotes the combination of multiple media formats (in this instance, audio, animation, interactivity, written text, and probably still images as well) in a single text. So you see, there is a fairly crucial (if at times hazy) difference between a text and a medium.

Your "on media" thread looks interesting. I'll have a read through it now.

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