Listening to Media in Cultural Theory, Sociology, and Management

摘要

Taking up a suggestion by Marshall and Eric McLuhan to use the metaphor of the ear rather than that of the eye when it comes to exploring media effects, the paper looks first at a certain oblivion of media following their clear-sighted discovery by Aristotle. Media, which for Aristotle were the invisible precondition of any vision, were to be rediscovered only when notions of the invisible were no longer the exclusive domain of religion. First in German Romanticism, then in the psychology of perception, and finally in both cultural theory and sociological theory, both phenomena and notions of media had to be re-conceptualized to account not only for figure and ground but also for loosely coupled elements prefiguring their rigid coupling in things. Focusing on sociological ideas, the paper looks at dissemination and success media of communication and adds a notion of media of composition, examining the examples of causality, rationality, and complexity. Brief remarks on a culture theory and a management theory of media conclude the paper. Listening to media rather than attempting to watch the ground of a figure amounts to learning to account for media dependencies, media interconnections, and media compositions. This might be useful in a next society opting for meshes and mashes, cross-overs and coverings rather than for reasonable clear-cuts among media.