"Towards a Mediological Method: A Framework for Critically Engaging Dimensions of a Medium," by Melinda Turnley (2009)

I found Melinda Turnley’s article, “Towards a Mediological Method: A Framework for Critically Engaging Dimensions of a Medium” difficult. Inspired by Regis Debray, she provides “a framework for analyzing media that includes seven dimensions – technological, social, economic, archival, aesthetic, subjective, and epistemological (Turnley 1).”

After I read this article, I decided to read and blog about the other articles before revisiting it. I’m glad that I did because I understood her seven dimensions a bit clearer as they kept popping up in the other readings.

When I was reading Scott Campbell’s 2009 article, Giving up my iPod for a Walkman, I thought of the technological dimension. He was used to a shuffle feature on his iPod and since the Walkman didn’t have this feature, he had to rely on the rewind/fast forward buttons.

Both the Economic and Archival dimensions immediately came to my mind while reading Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article, As We May Think. When he describes the Memex, which is his version of the personal computer, he explains that it will be important that it can store a lot of information and that a person can access this information readily, perhaps years down the line (pg.9). I expand on his point about the economics of the car in Ancient Egypt in my previous blog.

While watching the YouTube video, I thought of the social dimension. Today, almost anyone can create a message and spread it rapidly via the Web, a privilege that in the past only belonged to a select few. I was also reminded of the point in the video when it says, “We’ll need to rethink a few things: Copyright, Authorship, Identity, Ethics, Aesthetics, Rhetorics, Governance, Privacy (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g>)” because although most people have the ability to communicate via the Web, it doesn’t mean that they are professionals. It doesn’t mean that they can communicate effectively, that they can produce something aesthetically pleasing, that they are communicating their own thoughts and not somebody else’s work.

Turnley addresses this on pg. 2 of the article when she discusses convergence, which she defines as “the ways in which digital technology allows previously distinct media to come together.” Today various media can be merged together quite easily by almost anyone with a computer.

Another interesting quote from Turnley’s article is on page six. It reads, “Politics, discourse, and media shape one another and collectively support certain systems of power and access.” When I read this, I thought about the Web’s role in political campaigns. In this past presidential election Barack Obama was able to raise an unprecedented amount of money to support his campaign, which perhaps helped him win the election.