Who is Marshall McLuhan? McLuhan is considered by many to be the first father and leading prophet of the electronic age. He foresaw what was going to happen in the future with the use of technology. In his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” (1964) he foresaw how popular culture would effect the human race and also their relations with one another. He coined the term "global village" and the phrase "the medium is the message“.

“The medium is the message” In simple terms, “the medium is the message” means that the medium is more important than the content itself. Content has little effect on the medium itself. The medium changes how we interact with it. For example, McLuhan used the example of the lightbulb. A lightbulb doesn’t have content, so to say like newspaper with articles or the Internet with websites, but instead it creates a social effect which allows people to see in the darkness. The phrase, “the medium is the message” can also be seen in action in TV shows such as X Factor and other reality TV shows.

The medium that is Facebook Social networking is another example of “the medium is the message”. A prime example is the site known as Facebook. According to Alexa.com, Facebook is one of the top 10 sites in the world. As of June 2010, over 27 million users in the UK use Facebook and it is the UK’s second most popular website, ranking just behind Google. This graph shows that the percentage of Females using Facebook is a little higher Than that of the male percentage in the UK

“Hot” and “cool” media McLuhan identified two types of media: “hot” and “cool” media. “Hot” media requires little to no interaction by the audience e.g. movies. “Cool” media requires some work/engagement by the viewer. Facebook, for example, is “cool” media. Facebook allows it’s user to do what they want with their own profile. Essentially, the user can be whoever they want to be on Facebook. Users are allowed to post their own photographs, thus making them a photographer or post statuses for everyone to see, therefore making them an author and so on and so forth. The user is then seen as a prosumer; a producer and a consumer.

Prosumption Millions of users each day are editing their profile or posting statuses on sites such as Facebook or Myspace. They are constantly uploading media to sites like Flickr or YouTube, or giving detailed information about themselves on the microblogging service, Twitter. On the site, Sociology Compass, it says “Facebook’s profit model is built upon an ownership of its user’s labour, specifically, the intimate detail of our lives and self-presentations.” As well as this, they are also looking at other people’s information. This is a prime example of prosumption in which the producer also consumes.

Facebook Demographics x

Myspace Demographics x

Twitter Demographics x

Three Tiers of Personal, Social Relationships Close – partners, close friends and family. Intermediate – people you go to school with or used to go to school with and people you work with. Remote – people you haven’t met in real life It also tends to map geographically, for example: Close; live with or locally. Intermediate; between same town or country. Remote; same country to world wide.

The Newsfeed It is not so much the content of Facebook that is important but more how the site is laid out. For example, as soon as the user opens the site it comes up with the Newsfeed. This is one of the modes of communication that people use. Instead of constantly looking for someone’s profile, all their information is already presented before them. Users are consuming what they see as well posting their own stuff as well.

There are many uses for Facebook There are many uses for Facebook. Allowing users to upload content is allowing them to create their own social identity. Users can become some of the following because of Facebook and other social networking sites; photographer, web designer, author, musician, business entrepreneur, etc.

Graphic Designer

Musician

Business Entrepreneur

Photographer

Media competition Prosumption best serves the principles of capitalism in which the various forms of media compete. E.g. Advertisements at the side of your facebook profile page.

What does the future hold for Facebook? As Alvin Toffler predicted, the role of producers and consumers would begin to blur and merge where the term prosumer was coined, therefore over time Facebook’s popularity may increase due to the fact that consumers are able to control the way they want their page to be presented to others. However, their popularity may decrease as other social networking sites tend to find new ways to engage their target audience.