In his book, McLuhan defines his concept of a hot medium as the one “extends one single sense in high definition, the state of being well filled with data” (22) . In this case, people hardly put their own effort in getting the information but receive the information by visual or oral means. On the other hand, “cool” mediums are “high in participation or completion by the audience” (23), requiring much involvement from different sensories. Reviewers on Yelp go to the place, taste the foods, sense the aura of the restaurant, and especially put their thoughts into words. The combination of these different actions shows that Yelp is an example of a predominantly “cool” medium. Yelp puts the role of the authority on the customers, given that customers control their own discoveries of the local businesses, by means of touching, writing, and seeing. The sense of affiliation is reflected on the way users touch the screen, scroll up and down the screen to read different reviews and see their photos. All these gestures of finding information on Yelp are far more active than sitting at places to absorb information through means of “hot media” such as radios or televisions.
Yelp exemplifies another important idea of McLuhan’s which states …show more content…
For instance, a friend named Kimberly K put up her review for Spot Dessert Bar with ten pictures of different desert sides and with just a few short provoking questions like “Do you like green tea? What about chocolate? If you answered yes to both these questions, run don’t walk to Spot Dessert Bar” . The fact that Kimberly asks users these questions reflects her efforts to get across her points and to provoke readers’ sense of curiosity. Out of many other reviews that get no “Useful”, “funny”, or “Cool” clicks from others, Kimberly got 8 people vote the review as “useful”, six people vote as “funny” and other seven users vote as