Course:MDIA300/Senses

Senses(in Media Theory)

Introduction

In media theory, the senses are represented not as fixed biological tools but as abilities that are continuously shaped, mediated, and reorganized by cultural and technological environments.

Overview

The sensory system includes vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, and is historically and technologically constructed. Across philosophy, anthropology, and media studies, theorists have shown that the senses adapt with changing media forms. This perspective contrasts classical views of the senses as fixed human capacities. Media and technologies from written work, photography, and digital platforms create a sensory experience by reorganizing perception and attention and producing new sensory environments.

Historical Foundations

Caroline A. Jones

Media scholar Caroline A. Jones introduces the concept that perception itself is mediated. In her chapter Senses (in Critical Terms for Media Studies), she writes that “the senses both constitute our ‘sense’ of unmediated knowledge and are the first medium with which consciousness must contend”. In this case, the senses are not passively receiving information, as they are active areas of mediation that define what we consider real, meaningful, or perceivable.

Plato’s Cave Theory

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave presents vision as susceptible to deception, linking shadows with ignorance and sight with false appearances. As Jones summarizes, the prisoner must turn "away from spectacle, or if one cannot turn the whole body, close one’s eyes to the visible world—or its mediated image—to question what one sees” to reach true knowledge. In this example, the senses must be overcome rather than trusted.

Dennis Diderot

Diderot explored differences between blind and sighted perception, claiming that additional sensory input does not guarantee a clearer understanding. He proposed that blindness could encourage greater abstraction and make one less likely to be deceived, illustrating how sensory structures shape ways of thinking.

David Hume

Hume argued using a billiard ball example that demonstrates that what people think of as rational knowledge—such as knowing that one ball will move another—is the result of habit formed through repeated sensory experience. Hume claims that “rational” knowledge is only the conclusions or assumptions drawn from sensory experiences and that the mind does not logically deduce causation but instead learns patterns from sight, touch, and experience.

Senses involved in other theories

Friedrich Kittler’s Media in Production

Kittler argued that media systems shape the conditions of perception. Technologies such as phonography and film isolate, record, and reinterpret sensory information, which determines what can be heard, seen, or stored. Therefore, human senses are historically contingent and technologically produced.

Marshall McLuhan: Media as Extension of Man

McLuhan argued that media technologies extend human senses and reorganize the “sensory ratio,” shifting how different cultures perceive and interpret the world. Examples include print strengthening vision and electronic media impacting multisensory perception .

Tim Ingold: Making

Ingold claims that the role of bodily engagement in materials affects perception. He argues that making is a relationship between body and environment, where perception stems through continuous sensory engagement rather than passive observation.

Ron Scollon: Mediational Means

Scollon claims that methods such as language, documents, and digital platforms mediate action and shape perceptual habits. In this case, the senses are engaged in a mediated activity rather than functioning as isolated human abilities.

Contemporary Applications

Media continues to reorganize the sensory experience across current and emerging platforms and environments:

Digital interfaces and Daily Digital Interactions

Digital interfaces affect how users see, touch, and learn about the world:

• Touchscreens rewire tactile senses by normalizing gestures such as tapping, swiping, scrolling, and pinching.
• User interface design impacts visual attention through layout, contrast, colour, and animation movements/motions.
• Notifications and alerts condition auditory and visual response patterns, which form an attentional demand.

Augmented, Virtual, and Extended Reality

Immersive technologies demonstrate “reality” as a multisensory, technologically mediated field:

• Virtual reality adjusts the body's ability to sense its own position and movements, depth perception, and spatial position, producing a digitally generated sensory world.
• Augmented reality overlays digital objects on top of the physical environment, mixing real-life and mediated senses.
• Extended reality environments combine various sensory modes (visual, tactile, and auditory) to merge or replace real-world experiences with technologically manipulated content, such as virtual and mixed reality technologies.

Social and Cultural Environments

Media systems influence how senses are culturally valued and interpreted.

• Aesthetic trends on social platforms such as Instagram and TikTok form visual norms (e.g., colour grading, filters, and personality-related “aesthetics” (i.e., clean girl, grunge aesthetic)).
• Advertising and branding strategically manipulate visual, auditory, and tactile senses to guide consumer perception.

Conclusion

In media theory, the senses are not stable biological factors. They are continually reorganized by the media environments in which humans live. The senses are always active, mediated, and involved with human understanding. Understanding media requires recognizing the senses not merely as biological tools but as dynamic interfaces between humans and their mediated worlds.