Hot Media in Brainwashing
Marshall McLuhan's definition of hot and cool media describe hot media is as being "low in participation," while cool media is "high in participation or completion by audience" (McLuhan 29).
In Cyberspace and Human Nature, Rheingold describes the process of initiation that people went through thousands of years ago. They were brought into dark caves, and shown images while in a very specific mindset.
The deliberately sensitized psyches of the novices were reframed by carefully crafted sequences of sights and sounds, imprinted with the secrets of fire and metal, the connections between seeds and stars.
This process was used to pass down cultural knowledge, and was called a sort of "brainwashing" by John Pfeiffer. It used elements of cutting off some senses while overwhelming the others, and required low participation. Would hot media therefore be an element of brainwashing?
Brainwashing is described as overwriting a person's beliefs and behavior, usually through isolation and manipulative techniques. Although brainwashing may be an extreme term for what happens through certain media, some studies have shown that media such as television have a strong effect on the brain.
The studies found that some of the effects of television included:
Less creativity in problem solving
Reduction in critical thinking
In agreement with McLuhan's popular saying that "the medium is the message," the studies found the same results regardless of content.
McLuhan listed television as a cool medium, but some would argue that with technological advances, it has become a hot medium. A study by Professor Herbert Krugman found that within one minute of watching television, the response of the brain switched from active, faster brain waves to passive, slower brain waves. Faster brain waves are associated with logic and critical thinking, while slower waves are associated with memory and meditation.
This would suggest that television as a medium has the effect of putting people into a meditative like state, in which they become more susceptible to absorbing what is shown. Jen Senko's documentary about her father's transformation from a non-political democrat to an extreme Republican is one example of hot media being used to change a person's beliefs and behavior.
She describes how her father began to change when he started listening to talk radio while commuting to work alone. The radio is a medium that McLuhan stated as being hot. Soon he began to watch Fox news on television which, if viewed as a hot media, combined with radio to overwhelm her father's senses and transform him into a right-wing Republican.
If McLuhan's overarching idea of "the medium as the message" is believed, people should be aware of how the media that they use affect them. Rather than focusing on the content of the medium, they should focus on how it is being presented. Would a news story have the same effect if read online as it does when presented on television or radio? These are the ideas that should be thought about before allowing media to brainwash.
