[In an audio clip Joseph Thornley asks for the phrase social media.]

People often quip “the media medium is the message.”  It’s such a wise thing to say, but I’ve never quite understood it.

I just spent a moment reading explanations of what it’s supposed to mean and although they make sense I still don’t get why “the media medium is the message” carries such weight as a phrase.

This famous phrase was written by Marshall McLuhen back in 1964 when media meant newspapers, TV, radio and magazines. All of these traditional media are now feeling the effects of the internet.

The podcast you are listening to or the blog you are reading is in the category sometimes called social media because not only can I talk at you, you can talk back at me, and to each other.

The Oxford English Dictionary released its draft revised entry for the word media in June 2008 and it didn’t include the combination social media, although they did include 25 other phrases such as media darling and media baron*.

So I turned instead to wordspy.com where the first citation that Paul Mcfedries could turn up shows its age by some of the words it uses.  It reads:

“What attracted librarians to the Internet? For some cybernauts, USENET, IRC, and the other social media of the net are the hooks.”

That’s from January 1994 by a reference librarian named Greg Notess; still an active internet observer from what I can see at his website.

But on to the roots of the words.

Both of them appeared in English just about the time Shakespeare was born.  Social came through the intermediary of French, ultimately from Latin. The Latin root socius meant “friend” or “companion.”

Perversely media—which is the plural of medium—didn’t have French as a medium between Latin and English but arrived directly.

In Classical Latin medium meant “middle” but it also had already taken on a sense of “intermediary.”

It’s this role as an intermediary between the source of the news and you the listener or reader that made media appropriate for TV and newspapers.

Similarly social media acts as an intermediary multilaterally between any number of internet users.

So in the spirit of social media I invite you to use the comment space in the blog post for this episode to tell me, and tell each other, why you think that phrase “the media medium is the message” is so memorable.

Today’s episode brought to you by Grammar Girl’s New York Times bestselling book. Look for the link at grammar.quickanddirtytips.com

*The OED explained that they usually list entries like social media under social, not media.  Fair enough, but they haven’t gotten to revising social for V3 yet.