The media has always been a large part of American history. This article explains how it has evolved over time. Politicians especially have used media in order to influence public opinions. It has gone from the news papers, to the radio and TV, and through various other sources of media. Politicians will always take full advantage of these resources. You can see it in the past and even today. These sources have influenced everything to our views on parties, whether or not we support a war, to our views on other countries and their policies.

Griffin’s main topic is Media ecology and Focuses on McLuhan’s study. The media creates different environments and these change due to new communication technologies. Media ecology is defined as, “The study of different personal and social environments created by the use of different communication technologies.” (310). This means that different communication technologies (newspapers, radios, TV etc.) create different environments in how we socialize and in our personal lives.  According to McLuhan we are currently in the electronic age, “An era of instant communication; a return to the the global village with all-at-once sound and touch.” (315). Information and the ability to connect to others globally is so much easier. According to Postman he believed that new technology is like a Faustian bargain, “A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates.” (317). New technologies seem like a gamble sometimes they can help society and there are times when they do not.

Different mediums create different personal and social environments. As the mediums have advanced to the TV, radio and other media sites these have changed overtime. As technology has increased and gotten better, the way things are portrayed have become more emotive. People focus more on how information makes them feel and form opinions through that.  A large part of American history has been in the electronic age. This can be seen through the technologies we have used for communication such as; Radio’s the T.V, Service announcements and so on. These forms of media shape our environments, our opinions and our ideologies. One example used in the article was how the news portrayed the cold war in the 80s. The example given with this is how Poland had a crackdown on the Solidarity Union. While the media can be good and can open up new avenues for us to communicate there can be downsides to these new technologies. With how things are portrayed sometimes we do not always think fully rationally and instead think with our emotions. Many forms of media rely on our emotions, from politicians to advertisements. These technologies are controlled by people can they can heavily influence are views to fit agendas. One example given in the article was that while they covered the issue in Poland they did not cover what was happening in Turkey at them time. Such as the militaries brutal crackdown on the trade unions. A final note is that as the technologies increase is that communication and how we interact becomes impersonal.