The shifting sensorium: A Q-methodology and critical theory exploration of Marshall McLuhan's visual and acoustic typologies in media, aesthetics and ideology

The dissertation examines Marshall McLuhan's sensory balance theory, which argues that individual perceptual patterns, as well as cultural, social, political and economic organization are shaped by the dominant medium. Medium theories of Walter Ong, Joshua Meyrowitz, Neil Postman and others are reviewed as parallels and offshoots of McLuhan's theory. The perspectives of the critical theory of Harold Innis and the Frankfurt School, the British cultural studies of Raymond Williams and John Fiske, and the social art history and the sociology of art of Arnold Hauser and T. J. Clark, provide the bases for critical evaluations of McLuhan's media and cultural theories.;Empirical research in media effects on perception is reviewed, and Q-methodology is applied in a research project designed to test McLuhan's sensory theory empirically. About 65 undergraduate students participated in a three-part Q-study using multisensory stimulus items to determine whether visual and acoustic orientations could be measured quantitatively in news media, aesthetics and ideology preferences. Factor analysis of the participants' Q-sorts revealed visual and acoustic factor types in all three areas of the study.;Consistent with McLuhan's theory, two acoustic factors, two mixed visual-acoustic factors, and one mildly visual factor emerged in the news media preferences Q-sorts. Also consistent with McLuhan's theory, two acoustic factors and two visual factors emerged in the aesthetics preferences Q-sorts, although the visual factors preferred visual style and acoustic form. In the ideology Q-sorts, contrary to McLuhan's theory, the strongest ideology factors were visual, with a third factor conflicted between visual and acoustic ideology and a fourth factor with a layer of acoustic ideology beneath a surface of visual ideology.;The findings suggest the acoustic media and aesthetics factors are more closely associated with the visual ideology factors. Conversely, the visual media and aesthetics factors are more closely associated with the less visual ideology factors. This finding supports critical theory's contention that the acoustic electronic media reproduce the dominant ideology, which is a visual ideology of bourgeois capitalism, rather that return society to an acoustic ideology with the socialist qualities of a global village.