Figure and ground (media)

Figure and ground is a concept drawn from Gestalt psychology by media theorist Marshall McLuhan in the early 1970s. This concept underpins the meaning of his famous phrase, "The medium is the message". The concept was an approach to what was called "perceptual organization." He began to use the terms figure and ground as a way "to describe the parts of a situation"^[1] and "to help explain his ideas about media and human communication."^[1] The concept was later employed to explain how a communications technology, the medium or figure, necessarily operates through its context, or ground.