Telegraph, Television and Twitter: from the altering of perception in McLuhan to the mediatization process

Abstract

This paper examines how Marshall McLuhan, in the 1960’s, does not restrict himself to the mediatic framework, but approaches the media in relation to the society in which they are inscribed - indicating the existence of mediatic processes -, and assigns the message exerted by such media as the one responsible for the alteration in the perception and cognition processes _ anticipating that which today we understand as society in the process of mediatization. For that purpose, we have revisited three moments of communication: 1. The invention of the telegraph and its relationship with the already established print; 2. Television and the change in the viewers’ perception; and 3. Twitter in its tools as a complexification of the message. We revisited the first two moments, which are broadly reflected by McLuhan himself, in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and, finally, we work on Twitter establishing a relationship between McLuhan’s notes and contemporary concepts which involve mediatization.