A Study On Marshall Mcluhan’s TV Communication Theory

As the world-renowned scientist on the media communication, Marshall McLuhan is also the great master of the school of Media Ecology. TV plays an important role in McLuhan’s media analysis theory. McLuhan has original views on television study, and he makes us aware of the power of television in shaping the psychology and thinking of human being. This thesis mainly studies the TV Communication Theory of McLuhan. By systemically sorting out the works by McLuhan and relevant research papers by other representative scholars, and making comprehensive comments on the TV Communication Theory, this thesis explores deep into the value and significance of the theory, and tries to further enrich the research of McLuhan and theoretical studies of Western TV communication in China.This thesis mainly deals with the following six aspects:first, it sorts roughly out researches on McLuhan and his TV Communication Theory in China and states briefly the purpose and the value of this study, the research emphasis and difficulty, and the research method and innovation; second, this thesis mainly explores the social background when McLuhan’s TV Communication Theory came out and the prevailing Western television communication theory studies in the mid-20th century; third, it discusses McLuhan’s theories on how the technology forms of the television affect individual perceptions; fourth, it makes a list of the unique social and cultural features of the television technology forms embodying the characteristics of the times; fifth, this paper examines and weighs McLuhan’s theory by putting it in the internal system of the school of Media Ecology, and compares the TV Communication Theory with that of Neil Postman, Paul Levinson, Joshua Meyrowits, Derrick de Kerckhove to consolidate McLuhan’s theory; sixth, this paper is concluded with the summary of the entire study.