It's time to get macro on our micro

By David Jenkinson 02-12-2025

If, as Marshall McLuhan proposed, the medium is the message, what should the entertainment business do to ensure the message makes things better, not worse?

I hate to say Marshall McLuhan again, but Marshall McLuhan. The Canadian philosopher’s seminal 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man still hits it on the head harder than anything that has followed and has never been more important to re-read and re-consider than it is today.

In that work he proposed ‘the medium is the message,’ a theory summarised by the core idea that the medium shapes society more than the content it carries. He argued that the form of a medium (TV, print, radio, internet, smartphones) has a greater impact on human behaviour, culture and thought than the specific messages it carries. For example, TV changes how we perceive reality, regardless of whether it broadcasts news or a sitcom.

Extrapolated, it suggests each medium restructures how we think, altering our habits and social structures: print encourages linear, logical thinking; TV encourages simultaneity, emotion and visual processing; the internet encourages decentralisation, participation and speed. And if believed, it explains why the world is in the state it’s in.

He also proposed that content distracts us from the real effects and when we focus on the content (the storyline, the text) we ignore how the medium quietly reshapes society.

For McLuhan and those of us who worship at his temple, all forms of media are ‘extensions of man.’ Every medium extends some human capacity: the wheel extends the foot, the book extends the eye, electronic media extend the nervous system. And when a new medium arrives, it extends  and transforms that capacity.

In short, the meaning and impact of a medium lies not in the content it delivers, but in how the medium itself reshapes individuals, communities and whole societies.

Let’s assume he was right (because he was). What might we consider as the global content community in regard to how our work impacts the world?

Over the past decade, social has been the dominant medium and has become the message, defined by shortform, scrollable content that shallow-surfs responsibility and sets digital tribes against each other over tabloid vendettas. Attention spans have declined, truth has been undermined, stories are defaulting to shortform crack-snacks and the world is shouting at each other online.

There are world-changing consequences. I’m sure we all know teachers who can’t get kids to learn, parents who have no idea what to do with their children to get them to engage in life, and doctors who face daily abuse from patients who waste their time with digitally sourced diagnoses.

There are real-world consequences for media-delivered messages.

And then we get microdrama – the latest trend in media – delivered over mobile in short bites with cliffhangers every two-minute episode. We have a major track throughout Content London on this new opportunity, which the entertainment business is rushing towards, hungry for an escape from the collapsing old-world business models.

But here’s the thing: if the medium is the message, what is the long-term consequence of serving up more crack-snack entertainment to the society that digests that message? It might capture audiences in the short term, but the long-term impact on attention spans, relationships with stories and engagement with the real world could be damaging.

It’s an interesting debate to have this week. And it’s vertical because TikTok and Instagram have defined the user experience. Even the prospect of turning a phone on its side to get a more appropriate perspective is ignored in the rush to capture a new audience in its most-easy-to-convince ratio.

What microdrama has defined is a shortform opportunity delivered to mobile. What its evolution might bring is a more eloquent relationship with story, extensions into longer-form and new windowing opportunities with ‘television’ as part of a fresh mix. The industry’s role in helping define a more eloquent message, beyond that dictated by the medium, might need to be considered.

I suppose a lot depends on whether you buy into McLuhan’s premise that the media is the message. We perhaps do need to consider whether or not the future is about getting bigger audiences hooked on disposable micro-novellas, or whether the new opportunity afforded by going to mobile first with shorter-form material can evolve the genre into something more valuable.

Meanwhile, I love the fact Australia plans to ban children under 16 from social media, in an attempt to mitigate the ‘harm’ social media is inflicting on kids. We’ll all be watching.

There are encouraging signs across digital and outside the influencer bubble that newform content in the digital space is evolving to better serve its audience, with more compelling stories and deeper narratives that support positive change.

If the medium is the message and that message is part of the problem, not part of the solution, where will we end up? But time is running out folks. And we’re all complicit.