'MEDIUM': DEFINITION [medium-def-2024.doc; vs. 22-08-2024]
for intermediality studies and studies of literature, arts and (new) media
from: Wolf2009: 13 f.
The concept of 'medium' [...] is a notoriously fuzzy notion. Following Marie-Laure Ryan's lucid discussion, in which she includes technical, semiotic and cultural aspects as constitutive of the term 'medium' as used in intermediality studies (see 2005: 288-290), I conceive of a medium as follows: it is a conventionally and culturally distinct means of communication, specified not only by particular technical or institutional channels (or one channel) but primarily by the use of one or more semiotic systems in the public transmission of content that includes, but is not restricted to, referential 'messages'. Generally, media "make[...] a difference as to what kind of [...] content can be evoked [...], how these contents are presented [...], and how they are experienced [...]" (Ryan 2005: 290). [...] medium in this sense includes the traditional arts (including literature as verbal art) as well as more recent means of representation or communication such as photography, film and the digital media.
Adapted version: [changes in 'italics']
'Medium' is a concept whose definition depends on the context in which it is used, here: , intermediality studies and studies of literature, arts and (new) media.
[...] Following Marie-Laure Ryan's lucid discussion, in which she includes technical, semiotic and cultural aspects as constitutive of the term 'medium' [...] (see 2005: 288-290), 1 conceive of a medium as follows: it is a means of transmitting^ information (means of communication) that is conventionally perceived as distinct (*) and used aJsuch in cultural practice; it is thus specified by cultural conventions but also by particular technical and/or institutional channels (or one channel) and the use of one or more semiotic systems in the public transmission of content that includes, but is not restricted to, referential 'messages'. Generally, media "make[...] a difference as to what kind of [...] content can be evoked [...], how these contents are presented [...], and how they are experienced [...]" (Ryan 2005:290). Medium in this sense refers to the traditional arts (including literature as verbal art) as well as more recent means of representation, expression or communication such as photography, film and the digital media.
(*) cf. Rajewsky 2010: 61; cf. also Schwanecke 2015 : 275, drawing on S. J. Schmidt, who uses similar criteria and, in addition, "specific media products" which help stabilize the protypcial idea of a given medium
Rajewsky, Irina O. (2010). „Border Talks: The Problematic Status of Media Borders in the Current Debate about
Intermediality".   Lars   EllestrOm,   ed.   Media   Borders,   Multimodality   and Intermediality.
Houndmills/Basinstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 51-68. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2005). "Media and Narrative". The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Ed. David
Herman, Manfred Jahn, Marie-Laure Ryan. London: Routledge. 288-292. Schwanecke, Christine (2015). "Filmic Modes in Literature". Gabriele Rippl, ed. Handbook of Intermediality:
Literature - Image - Sound - Music. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter. 268-286. Wolf, Werner (2009). "Metareference across media: The concept, its transmedial potentials and problems, main
forms and functions". Werner Wolf, ed. in collaboration with Katharina Bantleon and Jeff Thoss.
Metareference across Media: Theory and Case Studies - Dedicated to Walter Bernhart on the
Occasion of his Retirement. Studies in Intermediality 4. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2009. 1-85.