Digital communication technologies have fundamentally transformed the relationship between political institutions and citizens. Social media platforms no longer function merely as channels for disseminating political information but have evolved into participatory communication environments in which citizens actively interpret, redistribute, and negotiate political meaning through commenting, sharing, reposting, reacting, livestream participation, and algorithmically mediated recommendation systems (Meraz, 2023). Consequently, contemporary political communication is increasingly shaped not only by message content but also by the technological architectures that organize participation, visibility, and interaction. Contemporary social media research suggests that platform affordances are associated with differences in communicative opportunities, visibility, interaction, and political participation (Bucher & Helmond, 2018; Dvir-Gvirsman et al., 2023; Shen, 2023). This transformation raises an important theoretical question regarding whether communication theories developed during the era of analogue mass media remain capable of explaining communication processes within today’s algorithmically mediated digital environments.

One of the most influential theoretical perspectives for understanding the relationship between communication technology and society is Marshall McLuhan’s proposition that the medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964). Rather than treating media simply as neutral channels for transmitting information, McLuhan argued that communication technologies fundamentally shape human perception, patterns of interaction, and social organization. Within this framework, he distinguished between hot media, which provide highly defined information and therefore require relatively limited audience participation, and cool media, which present comparatively incomplete information and consequently invite audiences to participate more actively in constructing communicative meaning. For McLuhan, the defining distinction between hot and cool media lies not in their technological form alone but in the degree of audience participation required to complete the communication process. McLuhan’s hot–cool media framework was not developed specifically for governmental communication; rather, it offers a broader account of how media forms, audience participation, and communicative experience are related. This study applies that broader framework to parliamentary communication as a specific political communication context in order to examine its relevance within contemporary digital environments.

Although McLuhan formulated this distinction in relation to analogue media such as print, radio, film, and television, contemporary social media increasingly challenge the original binary classification. Digital platforms simultaneously integrate high-definition audiovisual communication, user-generated content, algorithmic recommendation systems, networked interaction, and collaborative participation. Within this study, media temperature is conceptualized as an emergent characteristic associated with the interaction among platform affordances, institutional communication strategies, and audience participation. Recent scholarship similarly argues that platform affordances significantly shape communicative behavior by determining opportunities for interaction, visibility, and collaborative meaning construction (Dvir-Gvirsman et al., 2023; Theocharis et al., 2023). In this study, however, platform affordances are treated as contextual and relational conditions that provide opportunities for particular forms of communication rather than as deterministic causes of audience behavior or media temperature. Reinterpreting McLuhan’s framework within contemporary digital communication therefore provides an important opportunity to examine how platform characteristics and institutional practices are associated with audience participation in algorithmically mediated environments.

Despite the rapid expansion of research on digital political communication, existing scholarship has predominantly examined platform affordances, political participation, audience engagement, and social media interaction as separate streams of inquiry. Studies on platform affordances have examined how technological architectures shape communication practices and political participation, whereas research on audience engagement has primarily focused on behavioral outcomes such as likes, comments, shares, reposts, impressions, and click-through rates (Shen, 2023; Trunfio & Rossi, 2021). Conversely, studies examining McLuhan’s hot–cool media distinction remain largely conceptual and have rarely translated media temperature into observable analytical dimensions suitable for empirical investigation across contemporary social media platforms. Consequently, empirical evidence regarding the continuing relevance of McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory within algorithmically mediated political communication remains limited.

A second theoretical gap concerns the relationship between media temperature and audience engagement. Within McLuhan’s framework, audience participation constitutes the defining distinction between hot and cool media. However, contemporary engagement research generally conceptualizes engagement as a performance indicator reflecting users’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses toward communication content and digital platforms (Trunfio & Rossi, 2021). While engagement is widely measured through observable behaviors such as commenting, reacting, sharing, reposting, and participating in online discussions, relatively few studies explicitly interpret these behaviors as manifestations of audience participation within McLuhan’s theoretical framework. Consequently, it remains theoretically unclear whether social media engagement represents merely a communication outcome or an empirical expression of media temperature in digital communication environments.

To address these conceptual limitations, the present study operationalizes McLuhan’s concept of media temperature through four analytical dimensions: information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances. Information richness refers to the quantity and completeness of information communicated through a platform. Sensory intensity concerns the degree to which communication integrates multiple sensory modalities, including text, images, audio, and video. Audience participation refers to the cognitive and behavioral involvement required for users to interpret, respond to, and recirculate communication content. Interaction affordances refer to technological features that facilitate reciprocal communication, including commenting, sharing, reposting, reacting, livestream interaction, and algorithmic recommendation mechanisms. Collectively, these dimensions translate McLuhan’s conceptual distinction into observable analytical categories that enable systematic empirical comparison across contemporary digital platforms.

Within this framework, audience engagement should not be interpreted merely as a measure of communication performance. Rather, engagement represents the observable manifestation of audience participation in constructing communicative meaning. Interactive behaviors, including commenting, sharing, reposting, reacting, and collaborative discussion, reflect the extent to which communication environments provide opportunities for audiences to respond to, reinterpret, and redistribute information. Accordingly, engagement provides an empirical bridge connecting McLuhan’s theoretical distinction with measurable communication practices across contemporary social media platforms. Platforms characterized by relatively cooler media attributes may be associated with more visible forms of audience engagement because their communicative environments provide greater opportunities for audience participation, whereas relatively hotter platforms may place greater emphasis on information transmission and comparatively fewer opportunities for participatory interaction.

The Indonesian Parliament (DPR RI) provides an appropriate empirical context for examining these theoretical propositions because it simultaneously utilizes Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube to communicate parliamentary activities and engage citizens. Although these platforms are employed by the same political institution and communicate similar political content, each platform possesses distinct technological affordances that structure information presentation, interaction opportunities, and audience participation in different ways. The parliamentary setting therefore allows the study to examine how a single institutional actor uses different platform environments and communication strategies, rather than assuming that platform design alone determines participation. Examining parliamentary communication across multiple platforms therefore enables systematic comparison of how platform affordances and institutional communication practices are associated with media temperature and visible audience engagement within the same institutional communication setting.

Accordingly, the study addressed the following research question:

RQ1: How do Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube differ in media temperature when analyzed through information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances in the context of Indonesian parliamentary communication?

These questions position platform affordances and institutional communication strategy as contextual conditions for audience engagement rather than as deterministic causes of engagement. The study therefore examines how these elements are associated with different forms of observable participation across the three platforms.

This study makes three principal contributions to public opinion research. First, it extends public opinion research by examining the communicative conditions through which citizens encounter and respond to parliamentary information across different platform environments, rather than treating engagement only as a generic communication-performance measure. Second, it operationalized McLuhan’s concept of media temperature through four analytical dimensions that enabled systematic empirical investigation across contemporary social media platforms. Third, it reconceptualized audience engagement as an empirical manifestation of audience participation within McLuhan’s hot–cool media framework, thereby providing a platform-sensitive perspective on visible participatory behavior that may contribute to public opinion formation and public engagement. By analyzing parliamentary communication across Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube, we demonstrated that media temperature is better understood as a dynamic continuum associated with platform affordances, institutional communication strategies, and audience participation rather than as a fixed binary distinction. In doing so, we extended McLuhan’s theory to algorithmically mediated communication environments while contributing to contemporary scholarship on public opinion, digital political communication, platform studies, and media ecology.

Methodology

Research Design

This study employed a qualitative case study design supported by qualitative content analysis to examine the continuing relevance of Marshall McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory within contemporary parliamentary communication. The qualitative case study approach was selected because the research sought to explain a contemporary communication phenomenon within its real-life institutional context, where the boundaries between communication practices, technological affordances, and audience participation were not clearly separable (Yin, 2018). Rather than evaluating social media merely as technological tools, this study conceptualized Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube as communication environments through which media temperature was socially constructed and experienced.

The study adopted a single-case embedded design. The Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI) constituted the primary institutional case, while Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube functioned as embedded analytical units. This design enabled systematic comparison of communication practices, information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances across platforms within the same institutional setting, while recognizing that observed patterns could also reflect differences in institutional communication strategy. The embedded case design was considered appropriate because the three platforms communicated similar parliamentary content while exhibiting different technological architectures and interaction mechanisms.

Although qualitative interpretation remained the principal analytical orientation, descriptive engagement metrics—including impressions, views, likes, comments, reposts, shares, and click-through rates—were incorporated to support interpretive analysis. Accordingly, this study adopted a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods design, in which quantitative indicators served as complementary evidence rather than as the primary basis for statistical inference (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018). Engagement metrics were interpreted as empirical manifestations of audience participation within McLuhan’s hot–cool media framework rather than as isolated measures of communication performance.

Research Context and Units of Analysis

The Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI) was selected as the research context because it actively utilizes multiple social media platforms to disseminate parliamentary information, communicate institutional activities, and facilitate interaction with citizens. As one of Indonesia’s principal democratic institutions, DPR RI provides an appropriate setting for examining how platform affordances and institutional communication practices are associated with audience participation while maintaining relatively similar institutional communication objectives across platforms.

The embedded analytical units consisted of the official DPR RI accounts on Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube. These platforms were selected because they represent the institution’s primary digital communication channels and simultaneously demonstrate different technological affordances, communication formats, and participation mechanisms (Bucher & Helmond, 2018; Theocharis et al., 2023). Their contrasting communication structures make them suitable for comparative analysis of media temperature across contemporary social media environments.

The period of observation covered July 4–31, 2020. The period was selected because primary analytics data from the official DPR RI Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube accounts were collected within the same observation window, allowing the three platforms to be examined under a common temporal context. The dataset included platform-specific engagement indicators and publicly accessible communication content recorded during this period.

The observation period also coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, when restrictions on physical mobility and social interaction may have increased reliance on digital communication and influenced patterns of online audience engagement. This contextual condition is therefore considered when interpreting the findings and limits their generalizability to non-pandemic periods.

Facebook

  1. Page Views: 35,881

  2. Post Reach: 5,294,662

  3. Post Interactions: 1,443,744

  4. Video: 4,548,781

Twitter/X

  1. 28-day Impressions: 886.9K

  2. Daily Impressions: 31.7K

  3. Retweets: 428

  4. Engagement Rate: 1.4%

YouTube

  1. Views: 1.1M

  2. View CTR: 5.4%

Data Sources

The study employed two complementary sources of qualitative evidence.

Social Media Content

The primary dataset consisted of publicly accessible social media content retrieved from the official DPR RI Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube accounts. The corpus included posts, videos, captions, audience comments, interaction patterns, livestream activities, and visible engagement indicators published during the observation period.

Engagement indicators—including impressions, views, likes, comments, reposts, shares, and click-through rates—were documented descriptively. Rather than being interpreted as indicators of communication effectiveness, these metrics were analyzed as empirical manifestations of audience participation within McLuhan’s conceptual distinction between hot and cool media. Consequently, engagement served as supporting qualitative evidence for interpreting differences in media temperature across platforms.

Because these engagement indicators are defined and measured differently across platforms, they were not treated as directly equivalent measures of communication performance. Facebook reach, Twitter/X impressions, and YouTube views were interpreted within their respective platform contexts. Cross-platform comparison therefore focused primarily on the type, pattern, and relative prominence of visible audience participation rather than on raw numerical values alone.

Semi-Structured Interviews

The second source consisted of semi-structured interviews with two institutional informants directly responsible for parliamentary social media communication: the Head of the Public Relations and Reporting Bureau of the Secretariat General of the DPR RI and the DPR RI social media administrator.

These participants were purposively selected because their positions involved direct responsibility for the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of parliamentary digital communication. Their direct institutional knowledge made them information-rich sources for addressing the research questions, rather than participants selected through random sampling (Patton, 2015). In qualitative case study research, participant selection prioritizes information richness and contextual expertise rather than statistical representation.

The interviews were used primarily to explain institutional communication objectives, platform management practices, and communication strategies. They were not treated as representative of audience perceptions or experiences. Accordingly, claims concerning audience participation were based primarily on publicly visible content and interaction patterns, while interview data provided institutional context for interpreting those observations.

The interviews explored institutional communication objectives, platform selection strategies, audience engagement practices, interaction management, algorithmic visibility, and organizational perceptions regarding differences among Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube. Interview findings also functioned as triangulation data supporting interpretations derived from content analysis.

Data Collection Procedures

Data collection was conducted through three interconnected stages.

First, all publicly accessible content published through the official DPR RI Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube accounts during the observation period was identified, documented, and organized according to platform characteristics and communication formats. Particular attention was given to information presentation, audiovisual characteristics, audience responses, interaction mechanisms, and platform affordances.

Second, visible engagement indicators, such as impressions, views, likes, comments, reposts, shares, and click-through rates, were recorded descriptively. Because these indicators vary in definition and measurement across platforms, they were used as contextual and descriptive evidence rather than as directly comparable measures of communication effectiveness. These indicators were not subjected to statistical analysis but were incorporated as complementary evidence supporting qualitative interpretation of audience participation across platforms.

Third, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the selected institutional informants. The interview protocol was developed from McLuhan’s theoretical framework and contemporary scholarship on parliamentary communication, platform affordances, and digital political engagement.

Analytical Framework

To contextualize McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory within contemporary digital communication environments, this study operationalized media temperature through four analytical dimensions derived from McLuhan’s theoretical framework and contemporary platform studies.

Information Richness

Information richness refers to the degree of informational completeness, structural organization, and communicative detail presented within platform content.

Sensory Intensity

Sensory intensity refers to the extent to which communication integrates multiple sensory modalities, including text, images, graphics, audio, video, and livestream communication.

Audience Participation

Audience participation refers to the degree of cognitive and behavioral involvement required for users to interpret, respond to, discuss, and redistribute communication content.

Interaction Affordances

Interaction affordances refer to technological features that facilitate reciprocal communication, including comments, reactions, reposts, sharing systems, hashtags, livestream interaction, and algorithmically supported recommendation mechanisms.

Collectively, these four dimensions functioned as the primary analytical framework throughout the coding process. Rather than classifying media as hot or cool, the framework conceptualized media temperature as a continuum reflecting different combinations of informational richness, sensory intensity, technological affordances, and audience participation.

Data Analysis

The collected data were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis supported by descriptive content analysis. The analytical process consisted of four iterative stages.

Coding

The initial stage involved coding recurring communication patterns, audience responses, engagement behaviors, interaction mechanisms, and platform affordances across Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube. Coding was conducted inductively within the boundaries of the four analytical dimensions. Emerging communication patterns identified during analysis were incorporated through constant comparison until thematic consistency was achieved.

Each unit of analysis was examined across the four dimensions using predefined coding indicators concerning informational completeness, sensory presentation, visible audience participation, and available interaction mechanisms. Illustrative examples from each platform were retained to support interpretation and cross-platform comparison.

Categorization

Following coding, the data were organized into categories corresponding to the four dimensions of media temperature: information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances.

This categorization enabled systematic identification of communication characteristics associated with relatively hotter and relatively cooler media environments.

Cross-Platform Comparison

The third stage involved comparative analysis across Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube. Attention was given to similarities and differences in platform affordances, communication structures, interaction mechanisms, and engagement patterns. Rather than comparing platforms solely on numerical engagement metrics, the analysis examined how technological affordances were associated with differences in media temperature and visible audience participation.

The comparison also considered institutional communication strategy, recognizing that the same platform affordances may be activated differently through practices such as routine information dissemination, polls, public consultations, hashtags, discussion threads, and livestreams.

Interpretation

Finally, empirical findings from content analysis, engagement observations, and interviews were integrated through interpretive thematic analysis. The findings were interpreted using McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory to explain how media temperature emerged as a dynamic continuum rather than as a fixed binary distinction within contemporary social media environments.

Trustworthiness and Ethical Considerations

To enhance the trustworthiness of the study, methodological triangulation was employed by integrating three complementary sources of evidence: qualitative content analysis, descriptive engagement observations, and semi-structured interviews. Credibility was strengthened through continuous comparison between empirical findings and theoretical interpretation. Dependability was maintained through consistent application of the four analytical dimensions across all datasets, while confirmability was supported through transparent documentation of coding decisions and analytical procedures. Rich contextual descriptions of parliamentary communication practices further enhance the transferability of the findings to comparable institutional communication settings (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

The study analyzed only publicly accessible social media content. No private user data was collected or disclosed. Prior to the interviews, all participants voluntarily provided informed consent. Interview transcripts were de-identified before analysis and reporting, and personal names, interview dates, and other directly identifying details were excluded from the manuscript. Because the informants held distinctive institutional positions, the study does not claim that complete anonymity can be guaranteed.

Results and Discussion

Institutional Transformation of Parliamentary Digital Communication

The findings indicate that the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI) progressively institutionalized social media communication as part of a broader transformation toward digital parliamentary communication. Rather than representing a simple technological modernization, the adoption of Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube reflected an organizational effort to strengthen institutional transparency, improve public accessibility, and facilitate more participatory communication with citizens.

Documentary evidence from the Centre for Parliamentary Studies and Information Data Processing (P3DI) was also used to contextualize this institutional transformation. The documents (Ardiyanti, 2015; Iskandar et al., 2020) were treated as institutional documentary sources. They provided contextual information concerning institutional discussions about the strategic use of social media in parliamentary communication. The documents indicated that discussions concerning the strategic use of social media emerged from institutional concerns regarding declining public trust, limited interaction between parliament and society, and the inability of conventional communication channels to accommodate increasingly interactive forms of political communication. These concerns were associated with a broader institutional interest in moving parliamentary communication beyond one-way information dissemination toward more reciprocal and participatory practices.

The P3DI documents were used solely as contextual documentary evidence concerning the institutional development of parliamentary social media communication and were not used as a source for the platform engagement figures reported below.

Interview findings further demonstrated that this transformation occurred through a gradual process of institutional adaptation rather than spontaneous technological adoption. The establishment of the DPR RI Social Media Management Team in 2014, followed by the development of a Social Media Management Blueprint, standard operating procedures (SOP), and the subsequent formation of the Social Media Subdivision in 2016, illustrates the institutionalization of digital communication within parliamentary governance. Rather than treating social media as supplementary publication channels, DPR RI increasingly recognized digital platforms as communication environments that provided opportunities for interaction, visibility, and citizen participation.

These findings are consistent with previous studies arguing that legislative institutions worldwide increasingly rely on social media to strengthen transparency, institutional legitimacy, and public engagement (Haman & Školník, 2021; Leston-Bandeira & Bender, 2013). However, unlike earlier research that primarily interprets parliamentary social media as instruments of digital transparency, our findings suggest that different platforms create distinct communicative environments. Consequently, understanding parliamentary communication requires attention not only to institutional communication strategies but also to the technological affordances through which communication is produced, circulated, and interpreted.

From the perspective of McLuhan’s media ecology, this institutional transformation is significant because it demonstrates that the communication environment – not merely the political message – conditions how audiences participate in parliamentary communication. The institutional adoption of multiple social media platforms therefore created an opportunity to examine whether different communication environments were associated with different forms of audience participation and different manifestations of media temperature.

Platform Affordances and the Construction of Media Temperature

The comparative analysis demonstrates that Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube do not merely represent different communication channels but constitute distinct communication environments characterized by different combinations of information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances. Consistent with the analytical framework developed in this study, these four dimensions collectively provide a basis for interpreting relative media temperature across platforms.

Rather than treating hot and cool media as fixed technological categories, the findings indicate that media temperature can be understood as an emergent and relational characteristic associated with the interaction among platform affordances, institutional communication strategies, and audience participation. Platform affordances therefore provide opportunities for forms of communication and interaction, but they do not determine audience engagement independently of institutional communication practices and user participation.

Consistent with Bucher and Helmond (2018), affordances are understood not merely as technical features but as relational capacities that enable or constrain particular forms of communication. Likewise, recent scholarship argues that platform architectures provide interaction opportunities that can affect political participation (Theocharis et al., 2023). The present findings support this perspective while extending McLuhan’s distinction between hot and cool media to contemporary digital communication environments.

Facebook: Participatory Affordances and Relatively Cool Media

Among the three platforms examined, Facebook exhibited the strongest visible participatory communication environment. During the observation period, the official DPR RI Facebook account recorded a post reach of 5,294,662, 1,443,744 post interactions, and an engagement rate of 27.26%. These figures were obtained directly from the platform’s native analytics and are reported descriptively rather than as directly equivalent measures of engagement across platforms.

The qualitative analysis indicated that Facebook’s relatively strong visible engagement coincided with its extensive interaction affordances. Facebook integrates multiple communication features, including threaded comments, reactions, sharing systems, embedded multimedia, and livestream interaction, which provide opportunities for users to respond to, discuss, reinterpret, and redistribute parliamentary information. These affordances provided opportunities for reciprocal communication between the institution and citizens, while the extent of observable engagement also depended on how the DPR RI used these features.

Within McLuhan’s theoretical framework, these characteristics correspond to a relatively cool media environment. McLuhan (1964) argued that cool media require audiences to participate more actively in completing communicative meaning. In the present study, audience engagement on Facebook was therefore interpreted not simply as a numerical measure of popularity but as visible evidence of participatory interaction through comments, reactions, sharing, and other forms of audience response.

This interpretation aligns with contemporary research demonstrating an association between political participation and platform affordances. Theocharis et al. (2023) examined how interaction design relates to political participation, while Durotoye et al. (2025) similarly discussed differences in engagement across platform environments. Accordingly, Facebook’s relatively strong observable engagement should be interpreted in relation to its participatory communication architecture and the DPR RI’s use of interactive features, rather than as evidence that platform affordances alone caused higher engagement.

The findings therefore suggest that media temperature is associated with the extent to which communication environments provide opportunities for audiences to participate in communication. Facebook demonstrates that contemporary cool media may be characterized not by technological simplicity but by communication environments that provide extensive opportunities for digitally mediated interaction.

Twitter/X: Hybrid Affordances and the Dynamic Continuum of Media Temperature

Compared with Facebook, Twitter/X demonstrated a substantially different communication environment. During the observation period, the official DPR RI Twitter/X account recorded 886.9K impressions over 28 days, 31.7K average daily impressions, 428 retweets, and an engagement rate of 1.4%. These figures reflect the reporting format available in the historical platform analytics and are therefore presented in their original abbreviated form.

Because Twitter/X analytics used different measurement conventions from Facebook analytics, the figures are not treated as directly equivalent measures of audience engagement. Qualitative analysis instead suggests that numerical engagement alone does not adequately explain the communicative characteristics of the platform.

Twitter/X represents a communication environment in which rapid information dissemination coexists with opportunities for audience participation, resulting in a hybrid manifestation of media temperature. Analysis of the platform revealed that Twitter/X primarily supported concise textual communication organized around immediacy, hashtag visibility, repost mechanisms, and algorithmic content circulation. Parliamentary announcements, policy updates, and legislative activities were distributed through short messages designed to facilitate rapid information delivery and public visibility. These characteristics correspond to relatively hot media because communication emphasizes informational efficiency and rapid transmission while providing comparatively limited contextual depth.

However, Twitter/X simultaneously exhibited communication characteristics associated with cool media. Unlike traditional hot media, the platform incorporates numerous affordances that facilitate reciprocal interaction, including replies, reposts, quote posts, hashtags, mentions, polls, and discussion threads. These features provide opportunities for users to respond to institutional communication, reinterpret political messages, and participate in wider public conversations. Consequently, communication on Twitter/X cannot be classified as exclusively hot or cool because visible audience participation also depends on how institutional actors use these interactive affordances.

Interview findings support this interpretation. Parliamentary social media managers explained that communication strategies on Twitter/X were modified to encourage greater audience participation. Rather than relying solely on textual announcements, administrators integrated short videos, visual infographics, interactive polls, and public consultation campaigns into parliamentary communication. These practices indicate that the communicative character of Twitter/X was associated with both platform affordances and institutional communication strategy.

A notable example identified during the observation period was the Open Parliament Indonesia (OPI) online survey disseminated through the @DPR_RI account. The survey recorded 7,039 impressions and 1,786 engagement interactions, including replies, reposts, profile visits, and hashtag interactions. Unlike routine informational posts, the survey explicitly invited citizens to contribute opinions regarding parliamentary openness. The observed interaction therefore provides evidence of visible participatory behavior associated with an institutional communication strategy that actively invited audience response.

From the perspective of McLuhan’s theory, this finding is particularly significant. The observed increase in engagement coincided with a communication environment that explicitly invited audiences to participate through interactive affordances.

The same platform therefore exhibited characteristics associated with a relatively cooler communication environment when its affordances were mobilized for collaborative interaction rather than primarily for one-way information dissemination. This observation suggests that media temperature was not determined exclusively by technological characteristics but was associated with the interaction between platform affordances, institutional communication strategies, and audience participation.

The findings therefore challenge a conventional binary interpretation of McLuhan’s hot–cool media distinction. Rather than occupying a fixed position, Twitter/X illustrates that media temperature can vary according to communication objectives, the use of platform affordances, and visible audience participation. Consequently, Twitter/X is more appropriately conceptualized as a hybrid medium positioned along a dynamic continuum between hot and cool media.

YouTube: High Information Richness and Relatively Hot Media

Among the three platforms analyzed, YouTube demonstrated the highest level of information richness and sensory intensity, thereby creating a communication environment substantially different from Facebook and Twitter/X. During the observation period, the official DPR RI YouTube channel recorded 1.1 million video views and a click-through rate of 5.4%, based on the historical platform analytics available for the period.

As with Twitter/X, the YouTube figures are reported according to the level of precision available in the historical platform analytics. The 1.1 million views should therefore not be interpreted as directly equivalent to Facebook reach, Facebook interactions, or Twitter/X impressions.

The channel primarily disseminated parliamentary hearings, committee meetings, legislative debates, policy briefings, and official institutional events through long-form audiovisual content. These communication practices emphasized comprehensive information delivery rather than rapid interaction or conversational exchange.

The qualitative analysis indicates that YouTube differs from the other platforms because communication is organized around highly structured audiovisual narratives. Videos generally combine extended verbal explanations, visual documentation, subtitles, official graphics, and livestream recordings that provide audiences with relatively complete political information. Such communication characteristics correspond to McLuhan’s concept of hot media, which provide relatively high levels of sensory information and reduce the degree of audience completion required during interpretation.

From the perspective of the analytical framework developed in this study, YouTube consistently demonstrated high information richness and high sensory intensity. Parliamentary livestreams frequently exceeded one hour in duration and documented legislative proceedings in their entirety. Unlike Facebook or Twitter/X, where communication often occurs through fragmented updates or short interactions, YouTube enables institutions to present political events with extensive contextualization and narrative continuity.

However, the findings also demonstrate that YouTube cannot be classified as an entirely hot medium within contemporary digital communication environments. Although information was delivered through highly elaborated audiovisual presentations, the platform simultaneously incorporated interaction affordances such as comments, subscriptions, livestream chats, content sharing, recommendation systems, and personalized algorithmic distribution. These features provided opportunities for audience participation that were less characteristic of the broadcast media originally described by McLuhan.

Interview findings further revealed that DPR RI intentionally utilized YouTube not only as a repository of parliamentary documentation but also as a platform for increasing institutional accessibility and public transparency. Livestream broadcasts enabled citizens to observe parliamentary proceedings directly, while comment sections provided opportunities to express opinions, respond to legislative debates, and discuss public policy issues with other users. Consequently, although visible participation was less prominent than on Facebook, YouTube nevertheless supported forms of communicative interaction extending beyond passive viewing.

This finding partially supports Trier’s (2007) argument that YouTube creates opportunities for participatory communication through user interaction and community engagement. Nevertheless, the present study extends this interpretation by demonstrating that participatory affordances did not fundamentally alter the platform’s dominant communication orientation during the observation period. YouTube was therefore positioned toward the relatively hotter end of the media temperature continuum while retaining participatory affordances.

More importantly, the findings reinforce the argument that information richness alone does not determine media temperature. Instead, media temperature emerges through the interaction of information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances. Although YouTube exhibited high informational completeness and audiovisual richness, its comparatively less visible audience participation positioned the platform toward the hotter end of the continuum.

Cross-Platform Engagement and Media Temperature

The engagement figures across Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube were derived from the native analytics associated with the official DPR RI accounts. Because each platform defines and reports engagement differently, the figures were not treated as directly comparable measures of communication performance. Facebook reach and post interactions, Twitter/X impressions and retweets, and YouTube views and click-through rates represent different platform-specific measures.

Accordingly, the numerical indicators were used descriptively to contextualize the qualitative analysis. The primary cross-platform comparison focused on observable forms of participation, including commenting, reacting, sharing, reposting, polling, discussion, and livestream interaction, rather than on ranking platforms according to raw engagement totals.

This approach is consistent with the study’s qualitative-dominant design. Engagement metrics provided complementary evidence for interpreting audience participation, while the classification of relative media temperature was based on the interaction among information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances.

Taken together, the analyses of Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube demonstrate that contemporary social media platforms cannot be adequately classified using McLuhan’s original binary distinction between hot and cool media. Rather than representing discrete categories, media temperature varies according to the configuration of platform affordances, institutional communication practices, and visible audience participation. These findings therefore suggest that McLuhan’s theory remains relevant for understanding digital political communication, provided that media temperature is reconceptualized as a dynamic continuum rather than a fixed platform characteristic.

Extending McLuhan’s Hot-Cool Media Theory in Algorithmically Mediated Political Communication

Our findings suggest that McLuhan’s hot-cool media theory remains highly relevant for understanding contemporary digital political communication. However, its relevance does not lie in preserving the original binary distinction between hot and cool media. Rather, the theory requires conceptual extension to accommodate communication environments characterized by algorithmic recommendation systems, participatory platform architectures, and continuously evolving patterns of audience interaction.

McLuhan originally developed the concepts of hot and cool media in relation to analogue communication technologies whose technical characteristics were relatively stable and predetermined. Hot media were understood as providing highly defined information that required limited audience participation, whereas cool media invited audiences to complete communicative meaning through greater interpretive involvement (McLuhan, 1964). While this distinction provided an influential foundation for media ecology, contemporary social media differ fundamentally from the communication technologies that informed McLuhan’s original formulation. Digital platforms are no longer passive channels of communication; they actively organize visibility, participation, and interaction through algorithmically mediated infrastructures that continuously adapt to user behavior.

The present findings demonstrate that platform affordances constitute the principal mechanism through which McLuhan’s concept of media temperature can be reinterpreted for digital communication environments. Across Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube, differences in communication practices were not explained solely by technological format or message characteristics. Instead, communication environments emerged from the interaction of informational richness, sensory presentation, participatory opportunities, and interaction affordances embedded within each platform. Consequently, media temperature should be understood as an emergent property of communication environments rather than as an intrinsic characteristic of individual media technologies.

This reinterpretation has important implications for media ecology. Whereas classical media ecology primarily emphasized how communication technologies shape human perception, the present findings indicate that algorithmically mediated platform architectures now play an equally significant role in shaping communicative experience. Recommendation systems, interaction interfaces, comment structures, sharing mechanisms, and personalization algorithms regulate how political information circulates and how citizens participate in democratic communication. Accordingly, the contemporary “medium” is no longer represented solely by technological hardware but also by computational infrastructures that govern communicative visibility and participation.

The study also contributes to scholarship on digital political communication by demonstrating that audience participation cannot be separated from platform architecture. Previous studies have generally explained political engagement through message characteristics, political attitudes, or campaign strategies. While these factors remain important, the present findings suggest that platform affordances condition the communicative possibilities available to both institutions and citizens. Consequently, communication outcomes are jointly produced by institutional communication strategies and the technological environments within which those strategies are enacted.

A second theoretical contribution concerns the reconceptualization of audience engagement. Existing research frequently treats engagement as a performance metric indicating the effectiveness of communication campaigns or the popularity of online content. The present findings propose a different interpretation. Engagement should be understood as the observable manifestation of audience participation, thereby providing an empirical indicator through which McLuhan’s theoretical distinction between hot and cool media can be examined within digital communication environments. Observable behaviors such as commenting, sharing, reposting, reacting, and participating in online discussions represent not merely behavioral outcomes but varying degrees of communicative participation required by different media environments.

These findings further support the argument that media temperature should be conceptualized as a dynamic continuum rather than a dichotomous classification. Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube did not occupy fixed positions as cool, hybrid, or hot media. Instead, their relative positions shifted according to the interaction between platform affordances, communication strategies, and audience participation. Even within the same platform, media temperature varied depending on whether communication emphasized one-way information dissemination or participatory interaction. This observation challenges deterministic interpretations of media technology by demonstrating that media temperature emerges through ongoing interactions among technological design, institutional communication practices, and audience behavior.

Taken together, the findings extend McLuhan’s theory in three important respects. First, they operationalize media temperature through four analytical dimensions-information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances – thereby providing a systematic framework for empirical investigation across contemporary digital platforms. Second, they establish audience engagement as an empirical manifestation of audience participation, linking McLuhan’s conceptual framework with measurable communication practices in social media environments. Third, they demonstrate that media temperature is better understood as a dynamic continuum shaped by platform affordances and institutional communication strategies rather than as a fixed binary distinction. Collectively, these contributions reaffirm the continuing relevance of McLuhan’s media ecology while adapting it to the realities of algorithmically mediated political communication.

Our framework, which emerged from the empirical findings of this study, proposed an extension of McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory to contemporary social media communication. Rather than positioning Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube within fixed hot or cool categories, the framework conceptualizes these platforms along a continuum of media temperature. This continuum is constructed through the interaction of four analytical dimensions—information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances—which collectively shape how communication is produced, experienced, and interpreted across different platform architectures. Audience engagement should be understood as the observable outcome of these interacting dimensions, reflecting the degree to which platform affordances encourage audiences to participate in constructing communicative meaning. Consequently, the framework provides a conceptual bridge between McLuhan’s original media ecology perspective and contemporary scholarship on platform affordances and digital political communication.

The findings suggest that the distinction between hot and cool media should no longer be interpreted as a rigid binary classification within contemporary digital communication environments. Rather, media temperature is better understood as a dynamic continuum emerging from the interaction of four analytical dimensions: information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances. Together, these dimensions explain how different platform architectures shape distinctive communication environments despite disseminating similar institutional content. In this framework, audience engagement is interpreted not merely as an indicator of communication performance but as an empirical manifestation of audience participation generated through platform-specific affordances. Consequently, contemporary social media platforms simultaneously exhibit both relatively hot and relatively cool characteristics, reflecting the convergence of rich audiovisual communication, participatory interaction, and algorithmically mediated visibility. This conceptualization extends McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory by demonstrating that media temperature is not an inherent property of communication technologies, but an emergent characteristic continuously negotiated through the interaction between technological affordances, institutional communication strategies, and audience participation.

Audience Engagement as an Empirical Manifestation of Media Temperature

A central objective of this study was to examine whether audience engagement can be interpreted as an empirical manifestation of media temperature within McLuhan’s hot–cool media framework. The comparative analysis demonstrates that engagement should not be understood merely as a numerical indicator of communication performance or content popularity. Rather, engagement reflects the extent to which a communication environment encourages audiences to interpret, respond to, redistribute, and co-construct communicative meaning through platform-specific interaction affordances. In this sense, audience engagement provides an observable expression of the participatory demands embedded within different digital communication environments.

The findings consistently show that engagement emerged from the interaction among the four analytical dimensions proposed in this study – information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances. Platforms characterized by richer interaction affordances, such as commenting, sharing, reposting, reactions, and livestream participation, generated substantially higher levels of audience engagement because they required users to become active participants in the communication process. Conversely, platforms emphasizing comprehensive information delivery through highly structured audiovisual content encouraged comparatively lower levels of participatory interaction, positioning them toward the relatively hotter end of the media temperature continuum. Accordingly, engagement should be interpreted not as an isolated performance metric but as empirical evidence of how different platform architectures shape audience participation.

This interpretation extends McLuhan’s original conceptualization of hot and cool media. While McLuhan associated media temperature primarily with the degree of audience participation required by analogue communication technologies, the present findings demonstrate that participation in contemporary digital environments is increasingly mediated by platform affordances and algorithmic communication infrastructures. Consequently, media temperature is not determined solely by technological format but emerges through the interaction between communication design, institutional communication strategies, and opportunities for audience participation. The findings therefore reposition media temperature as a relational characteristic continuously negotiated within algorithmically mediated communication environments.

The findings also reinforce recent scholarship emphasizing that digital political communication is shaped by platform architecture as much as by message content. Studies on platform affordances demonstrate that technological design regulates how users interact with political information, participate in public discussion, and circulate communication within digital networks (Meraz, 2023; Theocharis et al., 2023). Similarly, recent research argues that participatory communication increasingly depends on interaction mechanisms embedded within platform infrastructures rather than on informational content alone (Efendi et al., 2025; Faisal et al., 2026). The present study supports these perspectives by showing that engagement metrics – including comments, shares, reposts, reactions, impressions, and click-through rates – acquire theoretical significance only when interpreted within the broader communicative structures that generate audience participation.

More broadly, the findings suggest that audience engagement constitutes the empirical mechanism through which McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory can be examined in contemporary social media environments. Rather than treating engagement as an endpoint of communication, this study conceptualizes engagement as the observable outcome of media temperature produced through the interaction of information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances. This interpretation provides a conceptual bridge between classical media ecology and contemporary platform studies by demonstrating how participatory communication emerges from the interaction between technological architecture and communicative practice.

Overall, the findings reaffirm the continuing relevance of McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory for understanding digital political communication. However, the study also demonstrates that contemporary social media platforms cannot be rigidly categorized as exclusively hot or cool media. Instead, Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube occupy different positions along a media temperature continuum, with their relative positions shaped by platform affordances, institutional communication strategies, and varying degrees of audience participation. The enduring relevance of McLuhan’s theory therefore lies not in preserving a binary classification of media, but in explaining how communication environments organize participation, interaction, and engagement within increasingly algorithmically mediated political communication ecosystems.

Theoretical Implications

The findings of this study contribute to the ongoing development of media ecology, platform studies, and digital political communication by demonstrating that McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory remains conceptually relevant but requires reinterpretation within algorithmically mediated communication environments. Rather than preserving McLuhan’s original binary distinction between hot and cool media, the findings support a relational understanding of media temperature as a dynamic property emerging from the interaction between communication technologies, institutional communication strategies, and audience participation.

A primary theoretical contribution concerns the operationalization of media temperature. While McLuhan originally described hot and cool media as conceptual categories, the present study translates this distinction into four observable analytical dimensions: information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances. This operationalization provides a systematic framework through which media temperature can be examined empirically across contemporary digital platforms. Consequently, the study extends media ecology from a predominantly conceptual perspective toward an analytical framework capable of supporting comparative communication research.

The findings also contribute to contemporary platform studies by demonstrating that platform affordances constitute the principal mechanism linking communication technologies with audience behavior. Previous research has frequently explained audience engagement through message characteristics, communication strategies, or individual user motivations. The present study complements these perspectives by showing that technological architectures actively organize opportunities for interaction, visibility, and collaborative meaning construction. Accordingly, platform affordances should be understood not simply as technical features but as communicative infrastructures that shape the participatory character of digital political communication.

A further contribution concerns the reconceptualization of audience engagement. Existing scholarships commonly interpret engagement as a behavioral outcome or a performance indicator reflecting communication effectiveness. The present findings suggest an alternative interpretation by positioning engagement as the empirical manifestation of audience participation within McLuhan’s theoretical framework. Observable engagement behaviors, including commenting, reacting, sharing, reposting, and participating in online discussions-reflect the degree to which communication environments invite audiences to contribute to the production of communicative meaning. This perspective establishes a direct conceptual connection between media ecology and contemporary engagement research.

More broadly, the study contributes to the field of digital political communication by demonstrating that differences in public engagement cannot be attributed solely to institutional communication strategies or message content. Instead, communication outcomes emerge through the interaction between platform affordances and communicative practice. The comparative analysis of Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube illustrates that identical institutional actors generate different patterns of audience participation because each platform organizes communication through distinct technological architectures. Consequently, platform selection should be regarded as a strategic component of political communication rather than merely a distribution decision.

Taken together, these theoretical contributions reaffirm the continuing relevance of McLuhan’s media ecology while extending its explanatory capacity to contemporary social media environments. The study demonstrates that media temperature is best understood as a dynamic continuum produced through the interaction of technological affordances, communication strategies, and audience participation. This reconceptualization provides a more comprehensive framework for analyzing communication processes in digital environments where algorithmic systems, participatory cultures, and platform convergence increasingly shape how political communication is produced, circulated, and experienced.

Conclusion

The findings indicate that McLuhan’s hot–cool media theory remains analytically relevant for understanding contemporary digital political communication, but its original binary distinction requires reinterpretation. Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube occupied different relative positions along a media temperature continuum during the observation period. Facebook was positioned toward the relatively cooler end because its communication environment provided extensive opportunities for reciprocal interaction. Twitter/X occupied a hybrid position because rapid information dissemination coexisted with participatory features whose use varied according to institutional communication strategy. YouTube was positioned toward the relatively hotter end because communication was primarily organized around information-rich audiovisual content, although participatory features remained available.

The findings further indicate that these differences cannot be attributed to platform affordances alone. Observable audience engagement was associated with the interaction between platform affordances, institutional communication strategies, and audience participation. Accordingly, engagement metrics are most useful as supporting empirical evidence of visible participatory behavior rather than as direct measures of audience interpretation, opinion, or communication effectiveness.

The study therefore extends McLuhan’s framework by conceptualizing media temperature as a relational continuum rather than a fixed technological property. The four analytical dimensions—information richness, sensory intensity, audience participation, and interaction affordances—provide a systematic framework for examining this continuum across contemporary social media environments. However, because the study focused on a single parliamentary institution and a pandemic-era observation period, further comparative and longitudinal research is needed to assess whether these patterns persist across institutions, political contexts, and periods of normal social interaction.

Limitations

First, the analysis focused exclusively on Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube as communication platforms used by the Indonesian House of Representatives during a specific observation period. The observation period, July 4–31, 2020, coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, when restrictions on physical mobility and social interaction increased reliance on digital communication. This contextual condition may have influenced audience engagement patterns, as audiences may have spent more time online and interacted more frequently through social media than they would under non-pandemic conditions. Therefore, the engagement patterns observed during this period may partly reflect the exceptional communication environment of the pandemic and may not fully represent audience behavior in subsequent periods.

Second, because the study examined a single parliamentary institution, the findings should not be generalized directly to other governmental organizations or political systems without further comparative investigation.

Third, the study relied on two institutional informants whose perspectives primarily represented organizational communication practices rather than audience experiences. Consequently, the findings cannot establish how ordinary users interpreted or made meaning from parliamentary content.

Fourth, engagement metrics were not directly equivalent across platforms because Facebook reach, Twitter/X impressions, and YouTube views represent different platform-specific measures. Future research could strengthen comparison through standardized measures such as engagement per post, engagement relative to follower base, content-type-specific comparison, and longitudinal analysis across comparable periods.

Fifth, although media temperature was operationalized through four analytical dimensions, the interpretation remained primarily qualitative and relied on descriptive engagement indicators rather than computational analysis or statistical modeling.