Media may refer to:
Communications
- Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data
- Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
- Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass electronic communication networks
- Digital media, electronic media used to store, transmit, and receive digitized information
- Electronic media, communications delivered via electronic or electromechanical energy
- Hypermedia, media with hyperlinks
- Mass media, all means of mass communications
- Multimedia, communications that incorporate multiple forms of information content and processing
- New media, a broad term encompassing the amalgamation of traditional media with the interactive power of computer and communications technology
- News media, mass media focused on communicating news
- News media (United States), the news media of the United States of America
- Print media, communications delivered via paper or canvas
- Published media, any media made available to the public
- Recording media, devices used to store information
- Social media, media disseminated through social interaction
- MEDIA Programme, a European Union initiative to support the European audiovisual sector
Computing
- Media (computer), used in computer data storage devices
- Media player (application software), a piece of software designed to play audio and videos
Fine art
- Media (arts), materials and techniques used by an artist to produce a work
History
- Median Empire, an ancient Iranian kingdom of the Medians (Medes) in north-western Iran
Life sciences
- Growth medium, objects in which microorganisms or cells can experience growth
- Media filter, a filter consisting of several different filter materials
- Tunica media, the middle layer of the wall of a blood vessel
- A group of insect wing veins in the Comstock-Needham system
Places
- Media, Illinois
- Media, Pennsylvania
Music
- Media (album), the 1998 album by The Faint
Mythology
- Medea, the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis in Greek mythology
Ships
- RMS Media, a Cunard Line cargo liner in service 1948-61
There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in “high definition.” High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, “high definition.” A cartoon is “low definition,” simply because very little visual information is provided. Telephone is a cool medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a meager amount of information. And speech is a cool medium of low definition, because so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience. Naturally, therefore, a hot medium like radio has very different effects on the user from a cool medium like the telephone.
— Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)