The medium is the format in which something works. The selection of media predetermines how content gets disseminated and shared.
The Internet is a mass medium. Newspapers are a medium. TV, radio, podcasts, and books are also mediums.
A medium is any messaging mechanism that connects people together to help facilitate communication. The medium is the fulcrum for storytelling including all its characteristics. Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.”
But some platforms are more powerful than others. Audio, argues Alex Danco in his piece “The Audio Revolution.”
Meanwhile, the physical properties of the medium you choose will also influence the temperature of what’s being communicated. A photograph is hotter than a pencil: they both make pictures, but one makes low-resolution sketches and the other high-definition images.
What’s hottest? You might think that the highest-resolution format of all could be visual, typographic or video. But it’s not. It’s audio.
As much as we think visual-first platforms like Instagram and terse Tweets are the most compelling storytellers, it is the distribution of audio and speech that cut straight to the point.
Listening to George W. Bush galvanize firefighters on top the rubble of 9/11 through his bullhorn with these words is practically a pierce in every Americans’ brain.
“I can hear you!” Bush declared. “The rest of the world hears you! And the people – and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” The crowd firefighters and crew responded with prolonged chants of “USA! USA!”
One doesn’t need to see the footage to feel the aura of the speech.
Writes Danco:
Audio is how you communicate what you really mean, straight into ears, headphones and car radios, intimately and directly. Music is good at this, but speech is even better.
Whatever it is that’s being communicated, audio will heat it up.
Your ears understand what’s really being said, and they seek hot content.
There is no content without a medium. If content is king, then the medium is its own eponymous and gargantuan device.
