cool medium
- noun
- /kuːl ˈmiːdiəm/
- Formal
:
medio frío
- Television is supposedly the cool medium that comes into the living room, the bedroom.
Examples
-
Television is a cool medium because it engages viewers with captivating visuals and sounds while requiring minimal interaction.
-
Many people consider radio to be a cool medium, as it provides entertainment without needing audience participation.
-
In the realm of digital communication, social media can be seen as a cool medium that shares information broadly but demands little direct involvement from users.
Antonyms
- Specialized
A way of sending detailed information that needs little effort from people who receive it, like radio or film
How Participatory
- Texting
162
2.3
- Specialized
1
4.6
∞
1.0
- Formal
∞
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a specialized media-theory term (McLuhan's ‘cool’ vs ‘hot’ media) whose intended sense (low audience participation / low definition but stimulating) is technical and not the ordinary meanings of 'cool' that a B1 learner would know. Because the specific evaluative/technical sense of 'cool' here is jargon-like and not predictably derived from 'cool' (stylish/temperature) + 'medium' (channel), learners who only know the constituents would not reliably infer the MWE meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
Cool medium comes from a writer who used the image of something cool, not 'hot', and the word medium to mean a form of communication. A cool medium gives only a little information, so viewers must 'fill in' the rest, which is why it means a kind of media that asks people to take part.