Reading/Using Digital Media

Abstract

In the mass media age, theories of media use were dominated by two particular strands: instrumentalism and technological determinism. While very few studies of the way in which the audience used various media were wholly instrumentalist or technologically deterministic, most tended to be located somewhere on the continuum between these two positions. This chapter will critique these two positions before discussing theories that attempt to go beyond this crude binary, in particular Joost Van Loon’s conceptualization of media use and Neil Postman’s media ecology theory. While this chapter is mainly theoretical (with case studies following in chapters 7, 8 and 9), it will discuss how one of our oldest media practices, reading, has been affected by the proliferation of digital media. This particular case study will be theorized through Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan’s work on ‘secondary orality’.