Grade by Grade
Media Studies · Media Studies: Critical Lenses, Platforms, AI and Responsible Production

Form Is Never Neutral: Interfaces, Games and Memes as Media Forms

2.1About 70 minutes
Learning goals
  • I can analyze an interface as a media form and identify deceptive design.
  • I can explain how games make arguments through procedural rhetoric.
  • I can explain how the characteristics of memes and other forms shape content and create meaning.

Words to know

interface
The visible design of an app or site: layout, buttons, feeds, counters and notifications.
stopping cue
A natural end point where a user decides whether to continue.
deceptive design (dark patterns)
Interface design that tricks users into choices they didn't intend.
procedural rhetoric
Persuasion through a game's rules and mechanics.
meme
One of a group of texts sharing form, content and stance, created and spread through remix.
confirmshaming
Decline wording designed to make users feel guilty.

Remember from Grade 11

In Grade 11 you identified general and specific characteristics of media forms and explained how convergence, remediation, platform affordances, aspect ratio and transmedia storytelling shape content. In the critical lenses lesson of this unit you met McLuhan's claim that the medium is the message.

Grade 12 (expectation 2.1) asks you to show insight into how a form's characteristics shape content and create meaning. This lesson treats three forms that are easy to overlook: interfaces (the design of apps themselves), games, and memes.

Hook: the streak

An invented language-learning app, LinguaLoon, shows a cartoon loon and a flame icon with a number: Day 211. Miss a day and the flame goes out. A notification at 9:45 p.m.: The loon is sad. Don't lose your 211-day streak! You open the app, do one 30-second lesson, and close it.

Did you learn French tonight, or did you protect a number? The form of the app, its streak, its flame, its mascot, its timing, shaped what you did as much as any lesson content did.

Interfaces are media forms

When you analyze an app, the interface (layout, buttons, notifications, feeds, counters) is a form with characteristics that shape content and behaviour:

  • Infinite scroll: removes stopping cues. Designer Aza Raskin, credited with creating infinite scroll, has publicly said he regrets how it is used to keep people scrolling.
  • Autoplay: the next video starts unless you act, so the default is to continue.
  • Streaks and badges: turn activity into a score you don't want to lose.
  • Notifications: bring you back at times chosen by the system.
  • Pull to refresh and variable rewards: you never know what will appear, which critics compare to a slot machine.
  • Metrics on display: likes and view counts invite comparison.

Deceptive design (designer Harry Brignull coined the term dark patterns in 2010) means interfaces that trick users: hidden unsubscribe buttons, pre-checked boxes, confirmshaming (No thanks, I don't want to learn), countdown timers that reset.

Neil Postman and form

In Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), media theorist Neil Postman argued, building on McLuhan, that television turned public discourse (news, politics, religion, education) into entertainment, because the form favoured images, speed and emotion over sustained argument. Ask the same question about short-form video today: what kinds of ideas does the form make easy to express, and what kinds does it make hard?

Stopping cues: paged versus infinite feedsNext pagean end point: you choose to go onno end pointvs
A paged feed builds in a stopping cue: you reach the end and decide whether to continue. An infinite scroll removes it, so the default becomes keep going. The interface is part of the form, and it shapes how long people stay.

Games as a media form

Games communicate through rules, not just stories or images. Ian Bogost (Persuasive Games, 2007) called this procedural rhetoric: a game makes an argument by what it lets you do, what it rewards and what it makes impossible. A game where you manage a food bank with a fixed budget and rising demand makes an argument about scarcity through its mechanics, even if no character ever states it.

General characteristics of games: interactivity, rules, goals, feedback, choice and consequence. Specific characteristics vary by genre (simulation, puzzle, role-playing, mobile casual).

Memes as a media form

Communication scholar Limor Shifman (Memes in Digital Culture, 2014) describes internet memes as groups of texts that share form (a template or structure), content (ideas) and stance (tone and attitude), and that people create with awareness of one another. Characteristics:

  • Template plus variation: the shared form carries the joke's structure.
  • Intertextuality: meaning depends on knowing earlier versions.
  • Participation: anyone can make one, so memes spread through remix.
  • Compression: complex feelings in a few words, which can also oversimplify or spread misinformation and hate quickly.

General and specific, at Grade 12

Insight means connecting a characteristic to a consequence for meaning: Because a meme template carries the structure, a political meme can borrow the authority of a familiar joke and make an argument feel like common sense.

A meme is a template plus variationsame imageME: I'll study at 7ME AT 7: one more videosame imagePLAN: shovel at 8 a.m.THE SNOWPLOW AT 8:05:same imageNEW YEAR: read 30 booksMARCH: rereading book 1Shared form, endless content: the template carries the joke's structure.
Memes (as studied by Limor Shifman) are groups of texts that share a form (template, structure, stance) but vary in content. Recognizing the template is part of understanding the meaning; each variation is also intertextual.
Worked example

Let's analyze LinguaLoon as a form

Analyze how the interface characteristics of the invented LinguaLoon app shape content and create meaning.

  1. Characteristic 1: the streak. Learning becomes a daily score. Effect on content: lessons are short enough to finish in 30 seconds so the streak can be kept. Meaning: success means showing up, not mastering French.
  2. Characteristic 2: the mascot and guilt notifications. The loon is sad uses a parasocial character and mild confirmshaming. Meaning: your relationship with the app is emotional, and stopping feels like letting someone down.
  3. Characteristic 3: notification timing. A 9:45 p.m. reminder targets the moment before the streak is lost. Meaning: the app, not the learner, sets the schedule.
  4. Purpose and industry link: daily active users are what the company reports to investors and advertisers, so the form optimizes for return visits.
  5. Balanced evaluation: streaks really do help some learners build habits. The insight is that the form redefines what learning means inside the app (a streak), which may or may not match the learner's own goal (speaking French).

LinguaLoon's form (streaks, a guilt-inducing mascot, timed notifications) makes short daily visits the content and consistency the meaning of success. The form serves the company's measure (daily users) and may help or distract from the learner's real goal.

Reading the argument of a form

For any app or game, ask: What does this form make easy? What does it make hard? What does it make default? What does it reward? Those answers are its argument.

Just for fun

A real common loon can dive as deep as about 60 metres. A streak-guarding cartoon loon can dive deep into your evening plans for 211 days in a row. Only one of them needs a lake.

Hands-on activity

Interface autopsy

You need: one app you use often (with a grown-up's OK), paper and a pencil.

  1. Screenshot or sketch three screens: the home screen, a content screen and the settings or notifications screen.
  2. Label every interface feature you can find: feeds, counters, badges, autoplay, notifications, buttons, defaults.
  3. For each feature, write: what it makes easy, what it makes hard, what it makes default, what it rewards.
  4. Look for at least one possible deceptive design pattern (or write none found with reasons).
  5. Write a 5-sentence analysis using Postman's question: what kinds of ideas or activities does this form favour?

What to look for: specific features labelled, all four questions answered, a careful deceptive-design check, and an insight linking form to meaning.

Your turn

1

Why is an app's interface a media form?

2

What is a stopping cue, and which feature removes it?

3

What is deceptive design (dark patterns)? Give one example.

4

What did Neil Postman argue in Amusing Ourselves to Death?

5

What is procedural rhetoric?

6

According to Shifman, what three things do memes in a group share?

7

Give one strength and one risk of the meme form.

More practice: warm-up

1

Who coined the term dark patterns, and when?

2

Who wrote Persuasive Games (2007)?

3

What does autoplay make the default?

4

What is confirmshaming?

5

True or false: a meme's meaning can depend on earlier versions.

More practice: on your own

1

Explain how a visible like count shapes the content people post.

2

Describe the procedural rhetoric of an invented game where players can only win by cutting down all the forest.

3

Apply Postman's question to short vertical video: what kinds of ideas does the form make easy and hard?

4

Why might a meme be an effective vehicle for misinformation?

5

Is a streak always bad design? Explain.

Challenge

1

Write a paragraph analyzing how one form (an app interface, a game or a meme format) shapes content and creates meaning. Use one theorist from this lesson.

2

Ontario requires many websites and apps to meet accessibility standards. Explain how accessibility is also a characteristic of form that shapes meaning.

3

Compare how a news story about a rising cost of living might be shaped by three forms: a long-form article, a short vertical video, and a simulation game.

Check your understanding

Quiz

1.

Infinite scroll mainly changes a feed by removing:

2.

A pre-checked box that signs you up for marketing emails is an example of:

3.

Ian Bogost's term for games making arguments through rules is:

4.

Neil Postman argued that television turned public discourse into:

5.

According to Shifman, memes in a group share form, content and:

6.

No thanks, I don't want to learn on a decline button is:

For parents and teachers

What this lesson teaches: how media forms' characteristics shape content and create meaning (2.1), applied to interfaces (infinite scroll, autoplay, streaks, notifications, deceptive design), games (procedural rhetoric) and memes (template plus variation), with Postman, Brignull, Bogost and Shifman. LinguaLoon is invented.

How to help at home:

  • Do the interface autopsy together on an app you both use; compare what each of you notices.
  • Turn off one non-essential notification together and talk about the difference.
  • Play a board or video game and ask: what is this game's argument?

Common difficulties:

  • Ignoring the interface and analyzing only content.
  • Listing features without consequences. Push for what does this make easy, hard, default, rewarded?
  • All-or-nothing judgments. Many features help some users and harm others.