Image Sharing Sites - Hot and Cool Media

                          McLuhan defines media as ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ largely dependent on the degree of audience participation. A ‘hot’ media usually emphasises one sense and pretty much tells the audience what is going on. On the other hand ‘cool’ media requires the audience to put a lot of effort in to understand and fill in the gaps that the media does not provide. Through using these definitions we can apply them to different media that we experience today. One of the most prominent and commonly used media is the internet which we can describe as a ‘cool’ media as it requires the audience to participate, to search for what they want to know or look or hear about. The internet is a medium which contains other media. So within a ‘cool’ media we can have ‘hot’ media.

                For example, image sharing sites that feature a collection of photographs, drawing and other forms of visual art. These sites are tailored towards vision and require very little participation from the audience. All the audience has to do is scroll down through the pages. This is wonderful for holding a large collection of images, which are often categorised. However, some of the original media is lost by placing these images on the internet like the texture and size. They are all made to conform into the same style, size and position in a unified page layout. Whilst being easily accessible they no longer possess all of their original qualities.

                But the issue with the internet is that it has many features and largely houses other media. These image sharing sites can be ‘hot’ media but they can also include a greater degree of audience participation through the many facilities of the internet. Choices are always being made when using the internet and the way in which we view media can vary. We are able to view an image sharing site where we see pages of uncategorised images or we can access an image sharing site where we can enter parameters for content, change the way we view the images and sometimes these sites are very interactive. In this way internet as a ‘cool’ medium challenges the ‘hot’ media as defined by McLuhan.

An example of image sharing sites-

http://pinterest.com/