The Effects of Media

What are the effects of media today? What exactly is “social” about social media? How do media shape reality? Are developments in AI changing media as we understand communications technologies? Sixty years ago, the Canadian Professor of English and Media, Marshall McLuhan published the unexpectedly popular volume Understanding Media (1964), which would go on to establish a vocabulary addressing these questions - a vocabulary and set of ideas that scholars continue to grapple with to this day. But the world of media has shifted radically since then, and with the advent of social media and artificial intelligence the idea that “the medium is the message” has taken on a kind of new urgency. This panel will address these questions, as well as those that deal with how we will define and experience media in the future.
Participants:
Daniel Czitrom
Professor of History on the Ford Foundation, Mount Holyoke College
Paula McDowell
Professor of English, New York University
Erica Robles-Anderson
Associate Professor of Media, Culture, & Communication, New York University
Anna Shechtman
Klarman Fellow, Cornell University
R. John WIlliams
Associate Professor, English, Film and Media, at Yale University
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