Genres vs. Media

Some of the comments about my most recent podcast episode (both on the blog and elsewhere) had me revisiting one of my favorite books on the subject of information media, the highly underrated Ambient Findability by Peter Morville. In Chapter Six, Morville outlines the difference between “media” and “genre,” which I believe might go part of the way toward Allen Rosenshine’s claims around the Internet’s inability to carry the emotional content necessary in branding messages.

Morville outlines the difference between “media” and “genre.” Basically:

Media = mechanisms that carry and display information. Examples include paper, television, radio and the Internet.

Genres = the forms that information carried takes. Examples include documents, diagrams, photographic images, video and audio.

As I eluded to in the podcast, Rosenshine’s comments seem to be referring specifically to the more common genres of information carried over the Internet, such as email and web pages. If this is the case, while personally I still think it’s a bit a of overstatement to imply these genres couldn’t possibly carry emotional content, it does make at least a little bit more sense.

(That said, I should mention that I believe that the impact of information does not rely solely on the genre. Experiencing a video, for example, is a very different experience when watching a TV broadcast vs. watching it on YouTube, even if the content is the same. I don’t want to get too far down the McLuhan road at the moment, but I do believe firmly that the medium is (still) the message — in fact I’d argue that it is more true than ever. But that, as they say, is another story…)

Popularity: 54% [?]