"Our technology forces us to live mythically, but we continue to think fragmentarily, and on single, separate planes” (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967). What would McLuhan think of us now? That is the question that I have been wrestling with since the inception of this issue. Our world does not look like the one that McLuhan imagined. In many ways, I’m not sure he could have … [Read more...] about Are We Living the McLuhan Myth or Reality?
McLuhan Mosaic
Bridging Past and Present to Build a Better Future
This issue, A McLuhan Mosaic: Bridging Foundational Thought to Present Urgency and Relevance, reflects the mission of the International Council for Media Literacy—to bridge academia to action. We have to begin by thanking our guest editors, Neil Andersen and Carol Arcus, who worked closely with Andrew McLuhan and Antonio Lopez to shape this issue. As is our practice in … [Read more...] about Bridging Past and Present to Build a Better Future
Marshall McLuhan knew what we were. And what we were in for.
A Letter from Guest Editors, Neil Andersen and Carol Arcus “[The] instantaneous world of electric informational media involves all of us all at once. Ours is a brand new world of all-at-once-ness. The global village is not created by the motor car or even by the airplane. It's created by instant electronic information movement. The global village is at once as wide as … [Read more...] about Marshall McLuhan knew what we were. And what we were in for.
Being an AI in a Marshall McLuhan World
Co-authored by Perplexity Preface There continues to be a long and loud sturm und drang about Generative artificial intelligence. I am responsible for some of it because I helped to create the GenAI Agent Imposter podcast in this issue. One GenAI innovation is the ability to dialogue with users. I have had conversations with a virtual Hamlet, Ophelia, Adolf Hitler, … [Read more...] about Being an AI in a Marshall McLuhan World
The metaphysics of Marshall Mcluhan: Technology, Ethics and Human purpose
Abstract In 1954, Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher, wrote a book called The Technological Society which posited that once new technologies are developed their application becomes almost inevitable. Ellul warned that personal transformation is necessary to retain one’s humanity in the face of technological imperatives. “Technique,” as he called expanding technology, needed … [Read more...] about The metaphysics of Marshall Mcluhan: Technology, Ethics and Human purpose
McLuhan Messaged Up My Mind
Abstract This is clearly my story and analysis of the impact of Marshall McLuhan’s thinking on my own work. As a broadcast student, shortly after UNDERSTANDING MEDIA came out, I/we were cautioned about the “controversial” thinking. We were told not to read it, but I did and was fascinated. Looking back, I realize McLuhan’s ideas affected my work with children … [Read more...] about McLuhan Messaged Up My Mind
Contextualizing Marshall McLuhan
Abstract My thesis is that the Canadian Renaissance specialist and media ecology theorist and Catholic convert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph.D. in English, Cambridge University, 1943) is an analogist. McLuhan himself developed the thesis that the Victorian Jesuit poet and Catholic convert Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is an analogist in his 1944 article “The Analogical … [Read more...] about Contextualizing Marshall McLuhan
The Medium Matters More Than Ever
Abstract The theoretical domain of communication and media studies, encompassing the scholarship of Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, and Stuart Hall, among others, has provided valuable insights for navigating the multiple, complex media-rich landscapes in which users find themselves immersed. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan cautioned that the … [Read more...] about The Medium Matters More Than Ever
At the Digital Frontiers: Extending Media Literacy through Media Ecology
Abstract Media literacy is considered to be an integral skill for personal, professional, social, and political action in the 21st century. However, what constitutes media literacy itself and the manner by which media literacy education is taught, received, and measured continues to be ardently debated amongst scholars and practitioners. Moreover, the new educational … [Read more...] about At the Digital Frontiers: Extending Media Literacy through Media Ecology
Media Literacy in the Ecosystem: After McLuhan
Abstract This essay makes the case for media literacy as an essential element in the health of the communication ecosystem and reappraises McLuhan's contribution for the post-digital media literacy field. In motivating a global media literacy mapping with a theory of change (McDougall, 2025), for this special issue, the essay shows how media literacy makes a difference … [Read more...] about Media Literacy in the Ecosystem: After McLuhan
“Making the familiar strange again”: media effects, knowledge construction, and media literacy in the age of artificial intelligence.
Abstract In an era where media technologies, from legacy broadcast to social networks and generative AI, pervade everyday life, the once-invisible media environment demands renewed scrutiny. This article re-examines media effects and knowledge construction through a critical lens that “makes the familiar strange again.” Drawing on media ecology, constructivist epistemology, … [Read more...] about “Making the familiar strange again”: media effects, knowledge construction, and media literacy in the age of artificial intelligence.
Critical Media Literacy and the Importance of Critical Self-Reflexivity
Abstract This essay examines critical self-reflexivity as an essential, yet overlooked dimension of critical media literacy. While media education emphasizes the analysis of media, messages, and audiences, it often neglects self-reflection about how one’s own identity, positionality, and lived experience shape meaning-making. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory, … [Read more...] about Critical Media Literacy and the Importance of Critical Self-Reflexivity
The Message Is Multimodal: Acoustic Space, Disability, and the Present Future
Abstract Disability communities have enacted McLuhan’s media theories for decades, revealing communication as inherently multimodal, mediated, and distributed. Through assistive technologies that routinely become universal infrastructure, the essay shows how disability both confirms and unsettles McLuhan’s framework, and why the future of media is already being prototyped at … [Read more...] about The Message Is Multimodal: Acoustic Space, Disability, and the Present Future
McLuhan’s Playground
Co-authored by Perplexity AIhttps://www.perplexity.ai Abstract Here, the interplay between human intervention and AI assistance becomes part of the story itself, illustrating how technological tools—no matter how advanced—are never fully autonomous but exist in dialogue with the human creativity that guides them. Keywords Artificial Intelligence, Marshall McLuhan, … [Read more...] about McLuhan’s Playground
Talking with Fish: An Arts-based Retrospective of Media Literacy in Teacher Identity and Pedagogy
Abstract “We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't a fish.” This adage, long attributed to media scholar Marshall McLuhan, invites us to consider worlds shaped by media as invisible environments. Fully immersed from dawn to dusk, we may struggle to identify or clarify the boundaries between the physical and the digital. In media literacy, we employ McLuhan's … [Read more...] about Talking with Fish: An Arts-based Retrospective of Media Literacy in Teacher Identity and Pedagogy
McLuhan, Media Ecology, and Machine Learning: Rethinking Media Literacy in K–12 Education
Abstract This article reframes K–12 media literacy through a media ecology lens to address the realities of algorithmic and AI-driven media environments. Drawing on McLuhan, Postman, Strate, and critical media literacy scholarship, it argues that media operate as environments that shape perception, attention, and meaning rather than neutral tools. Integrating media ecology … [Read more...] about McLuhan, Media Ecology, and Machine Learning: Rethinking Media Literacy in K–12 Education
Media Literacy Education For Survival In An Algorithmic Age
Abstract Over the last decade, we have entered a new technological epoch characterised by social media platforms, algorithmic curation, and artificial intelligence. Media literacy has become a prerequisite for survival rather than an optional educational enrichment. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s foundational insights, this article argues that while McLuhan’s broadcast-era … [Read more...] about Media Literacy Education For Survival In An Algorithmic Age
Designing for Digital Wellbeing with Teens: Participatory Co-Design Workshops to Explore Youth-Centered Platform Concepts
Abstract Digital well-being is increasingly recognized not only as a matter of individual self-control but also as a structural condition shaped by the design of digital platforms. This paper presents findings from participatory co-design workshops with Hungarian high school students (n = 89), in which inquiry-based and design-thinking methodologies were mobilized to … [Read more...] about Designing for Digital Wellbeing with Teens: Participatory Co-Design Workshops to Explore Youth-Centered Platform Concepts
The Case of an AI Agent
Abstract This case study documents the discovery of an AI Agent impersonating a student in an asynchronous undergraduate media and information literacy course. A hidden prompt embedded in the final paper revealed not only machine-generated text but the wholesale outsourcing of learning to an automated generative AI agent. Drawing on McLuhan’s (1964) concept of media … [Read more...] about The Case of an AI Agent
GenAI Agent Imposters: A Cautionary Tale: A Podcast
Abstract A conversation exploring a GenAI agent impersonating a student reveals a provocative question for education: what happens when participation—and learning itself—can be fully automated? Neil Andersen interviews Gina Marcello - Link to Podcast Keywords Podcasts, Artificial Intelligence, Generative Artificial Intelligence You are teaching an asynchronous online … [Read more...] about GenAI Agent Imposters: A Cautionary Tale: A Podcast
