Rethinking Media and Technology: What the Kennedy-Nixon Debate Myth Can Really Teach Us

The presumption that communication technologies – TV, the Internet, social media – have fundamentally changed society has a deep cultural resonance. Indeed, the predominant framework for theorizing “media” – within both the academy and in popular culture more broadly – is rooted in technological determinist presumptions. The primary goal of this article is to challenge this framework, to demonstrate the ways it is incompatible with critical theory, and to make as case for a method and tradition that more productively problematizes technology itself. Taking on one of the most repeated claims and examples for the “effects” of media technologies, the Kennedy-Nixon debate, the article makes a case that a limited, binary theoretical model has fundamentally influenced the deductions. What’s at stake here is how to properly theorize media technologies and propose solutions to social problems and issues.

Nixon as having 'a clear advantage' among radio listeners" because none of the organizations distinguished between the radio and television audience to begin with. The authors also trace the major citations and sources for this claim in order to well establish they're all personal opinion rather than statistical evidence.
While questions of who really did "win," audiences' interpretations of political discourse in the age of TV are somewhat interesting, how the debate has been understood highlights a significant, problematic presumption about the role and function of communication technologies in society. The debate has indeed become this key, obvious moment that a good many critics and scholars point to in order to illustrate the demonstrable differences between communication technologies and their "effects". The claim that the mediums of radio and television have different "effects," and that the Kennedy-Nixon debate clearly illustrates the social and cultural consequence of television, for good or ill, has been commonplace, even logical to presume. The debate myth is so pervasive, though, precisely because the assumption of a viewer-listener disagreement entirely in line with a widely accepted theoretical approach and general understanding of media and technology that informs this kind of reading. It's an approach and understanding that deserves serious questioning (if not rejection). Why does this myth have such cultural currency?

Cause and Effect: Mcluhan's Vision (Problem)
"Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier," Hunter S. Thompson wrote of Nixon. "When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates," Thompson continues, "he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona.
Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly." 5 CNN describes Nixon and debate less caustically on their website, asserting, "What everyone remembers is the first debate, where the telegenic Kennedy won the image battle over Nixon who, recovering from the flu, appeared pale and refused make-up. … One study concluded that those who heard the debate on the radio thought the contest to be a draw, while those who watched the broadcast thought Kennedy the clear winner." 6 Again, as already noted, Vancil and Pendell well demonstrate there's no empirical evidence or "study" to support this claim of a viewer-listener disagreement during the debate. While the first claims that people who watched the debate on television differed in perception from those who listened on the radio can be found in speculative newspaper commentary immediately following the debate, considering the body of literature, both popular and scholarly, up to the present day that make this claim, one name appears again and again as both direct and indirect citations: Marshal McLuhan. 7 Surveying this body of work, David M.
Lubin points out, "It was McLuhan who advanced the notion that Kennedy had triumphed over Nixon in the televised debates because his relative casualness and nonchalance were so much easier for viewers to watch -that is, to invite into their living rooms -than his rival's over insistent, almost hectoring, style of debate." 8  McLuhan, "The medium is the message' means, in terms of the electronic age, that a totally new environment has been created." 10 Simply put, McLuhan's theory of communication technologies is that they fundamentally shape and can even change social conditions. "The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts," McLuhan contends, "but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance." 11 At the root of McLuhan's methodology is a formulation that conceptualizes technologiesmediums -as independent properties. "Technology" -a medium -is theorized in one sphere while society and culture are in another. The point is to study the relationship between the two with an emphasis on the formal elements of the technology/medium. No question, McLuhan very clearly puts forward that different technologies produce different effects, writing, "Concern with effect rather than meaning is a basic change of our electric time, for effect involves the total situation, and not a single level of information movement." 12  debates, those who heard them on the radio received an overwhelming idea of Nixon's superiority." 13 While it is important to emphasize McLuhan's claim is entirely speculativehe provides no empirical evidence for this assertion -it is just as essential to point out in his reading of the debate content and context are irrelevant, or at least trivial, because the technology itself is the real message. "Radio affects most people intimately, person-toperson," McLuhan declares, so people who listened to Nixon on the radio were naturally affected one way while those who watched the debate on television another way.
Vision is a crucial element in McLuhan's formulation and approach, indeed the whole body of his work, as it is with many other accounts of television's role in the Kennedy-Nixon debate myth. The claim that Nixon's visual appearance caused people to look unfavorable upon him, that he "lost" the debate because of the way he looked is problematic on a number of levels. Addressing this point, Vancil and Pendell sensibly note that "Appearance problems, such as Nixon's perspiring brow, could have had a negative impact on viewer perceptions, but it is also possible for viewers to be sympathetic to such problems, or to interpret them as evidence of attractive or desirable qualities." 14 Appearance alone does not lead one to any natural or essential conclusions. One's person's "used-car salesman" can be another's benevolent friend. Reading a person's perspiration as evidence of a dishonest character isn't a natural reaction to a televised image but rather a socially constructed one.   Seeing technologies as entirely part of a set of social relationships can not only be to recover human agency but to also highlight the material fact that new uses or forms of technology will not in themselves change or even address social issues. Simply put, critical theory and McLuhan's line of thought are entirely incompatible.

Towards (A Return to) Practice and Praxis
In his popular book, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Joshua Meyrowitz repeats the widely shared belief that "those who watched the Nixon-Kennedy debates on television tended to agree that Kennedy had won, while many of those who listened to the debates on radio thought that Nixon had won." 22 We can follow the footnote to read Meyrowitz supports the claim by stating, "The point has been mentioned by many writers, including Mickelson, 1972, p.207" and critique it by pointing out that Vancil and Pendell address this very cite and show it is, like all the others, speculative and without empirical proof. 23 We can also address Meyrowitz's reading of Nixon, that "His finely tuned verbal arguments were often undermined by a clenched fist, shifty eyes, and a contemptuous scowl," by again emphasizing that visual features alone to do constitute a dominant reading nor is it sufficient evidence for a widespread social effect. 24 The same can be said when  27 David Harvey's thoughtful self-analysis is relevant, as well, writing, "I recognized that definitions could dictate conclusions and that a system of thought erected on fixed definitions and fixed categories and relationships could inhibit rather than enhance our ability to comprehend the world." 28 The Kennedy-Nixon debate myth is just one representative example of a pervasive cultural logic that needs to be challenged and critiqued, since it has serious social and cultural implications.
These repeated accounts of the Kennedy-Nixon debate might be seen in a direct relation to the public service announcements urging kids and young adults to read, which too highlights the extent of determinist thinking. Both arguments locate cognitive transformations in a formal "technology," the kind of logic that leads Johnson to declare, "I believe the printed word remains the most powerful vehicle for conveying complicated information -though the electronic word is starting to give books a run for their money." 29 What's most problematic in these arguments, though, is the model of society it presents. When society is presented as structured not on social relationships and material conditions but on forces or technologies outside and apart from people, meaning and possibilities become limited if not made for us.
Content and social conditions cannot be easily dismissed, though, and can be a set of questions that play a role in countering determinist formulations. When we consider those well-meaning ads and posters that promote "reading," as if reading itself leads to knowledge, this perhaps becomes clear. Of course, it is not that one reads, it is what and how one reads, in what social contexts that are ultimately important. Put another way, the task is to reconceptualize media and technology as a practice and activity within socio-economic conditions.
As Williams perceived of the ways we talk about a technology, "It is either a self-acting force which creates new ways of life, or it is a self-acting force which provides materials for new Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 5 -Issue: 2 April -2015