Marshall McLuhan's Message for Multimedia  

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was more than the person of his times who coined the famous popular term 'the medium is the message.' He was also an influential thinker whose views on media are even more relevant today than they were in the 1960s. McLuhan’s ideas about 'hot' and 'cool' technologies, the power and limitations of various media, the psychological landscape of communication, and the global village are very relevant for today’s technical communicators. They contribute important ideas to the historical roots of multimedia, and as such, they are part of an evolving theoretical foundation for technical communication.

Shirk, Henrietta Nickels. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Multimedia>Theory

Mode, Medium, and Genre: A Case Study of Decisions in New-Media Design    

Recently, scholars of new media have been exploring the relationships between genre theory and new media. While these scholars have provided a great deal of insight into the nature of e-genres and how they function in professional contexts, few address the relationship between genre and new-media theories from a designer's perspective. This article presents the results of an ethnographic-style case study exploring the practice of a professional new-media designer. These results (a) confirm the role of dynamic rhetorical situations and hybridity during the new-media design process; (b) suggest that current genre and new-media theories underestimate the complexity of the relationships between mode, medium, genre, and rhetorical exigencies; and (c) indicate that a previously unrecognized form of hybridity exists in contemporary e-genres.

Graham, S. Scott. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Genre>Theory