Revolutions in

Communication
Media History from
Gutenberg
to the Digital Age

Slides based on the Bloomsbury book by Bill Kovarik

About Media History -- #3

Web site & textbook
http://www.revolutionsincommunication.com

Textbook:

1st edition – 2011 2nd edition – 2016

This lecture is about …
 Historiography of Media
◦ Social histories and critiques of media
◦ Four revolutions in mass media
 And related / competing ideas
◦ Early media historians
◦ Walter Lippmann
◦ Elizabeth Eisenstein
◦ Harold Innis – Empire and communication
◦ Marshall McLuhan – theories of media
change and influence
Media
historians
 S. Palmer
◦ General
History of
Printing

◦ London,
MCCXXXIII
Supporting the temple
of memory,
We transmit the facts
to posterity,
The arts, the sciences,
history,
We have immortality

Pierre Fourdriner
Manuel Typographique, 1737
US Media historians
 Isaiah Thomas
◦ History of printing in America, 1808

 James Parton
◦ Life of Horace Greeley, 1855

 James Melvin Lee

◦ History of American Journalism, 1917
Media history textbooks
 American Journalism, a History, 1690-
1960
◦ -- Frank Luther Mott 1962
 Men and Machines of Am Journalism
◦ - Peter C. Marzio, 1973
 The Press and America
◦ – Edwin Emery 1976
 Voices of a Nation
◦ Jean Folkerts 1988
 Mainstreams of American Media History
◦ – Hiley Ward 1990
 Media in America – Wm. Sloan 1999
MEDIA HISTORY
Current Trends:
 From national to international
 From only journalism to all fields
 From political to tech & culture
 From Euro / male to inclusive
 From “great men & machines” to
cultural and social histories
What’s a revolution?

 Sudden change in status quo

 Profoundly upsets social / economic /
cultural order
Four media revolutions
 Printing
◦ Moveable type – 1455
 Associated with religious revolution 1500s – 1700s
◦ Industrial scale printing
 Associated with political revolutions 1700s – now
 Imaging
◦ Engraving, photography and cinema
◦ Ads and PR as image making
 Both associated with popularization of media
 Electronic – radio, TV, satellites
 Associated with nationalization of media
 Digital – computers, networks
 Associated with emerging global culture
Alternate approaches …
 Language / Human
◦ Natural ability
 Writing / Literate
◦ Has to be learned
 Typographic
 Hypergraphic
 Electronic
 Cybernetic
Five noted media historians
 Wilbur Schramm
 Walter Lippmann
 Elizabeth Eisenstein
 Harold Innis
 Marshall McLuhan
Wilbur Schramm (1907-1987)
The story of human communication
(Harper Collins 1988)
 Images -- Cave paintings, calendars
 Writing – from symbols to phonetics
 Mass media, news, ads, pr, elite &
popular press
 Sound, film, radio, TV, photography,
phone
 Microelectronics, satellites
Lippmann’s 4 stages of media
history
◦ Authoritarian
 (censored)
◦ Partisan
 (political parties)
◦ Commercial / Penny Press
Walter Lippmann
Public Opinion, 1922  (often sensationalistic)
◦ Organized intelligence
 (future development)
Elizabeth Eisenstein
(1923–2016)

• Theme was the printing press

as an agent of social change
• Role of press especially
important during the
Protestant Reformation
• Noted effects of printing: dissemination,
standardization, and preservation of information
• Observed that recovery of previous cultures
(Greek, Roman) was the first major task of
printing
• Saw printing as one of the major influences in the
Protestant Reformation and the formation of the
modern world
Harold Innis (1894 – 1952)
Empire and Communications

Stressed balance between:

Durable, time – binding media

(including oral culture)

Flexible, space – binding

media

Both needed for “empire building”

but lack of balance led to loss of
empires
Marshall McLuhan (1911-
1980)
 Foresaw enormous changes in & with media
 Wrote Gutenberg Galaxy, Understanding Media
 “Medium is the message”
 Deterministic view of media type as shaping the
content of a message
 Printing had a huge impact in de-tribalizing people
 Radio re-tribalized people
 Hot and cool media
 “Hot” media immerses audience and allows less
participation – cinema
 “Cool” media requires involvement and thought
 -- printed media, possibly radio
McLuhan’s technology tetrad
1. Enhance 2. Make obsolete

What does the new medium What becomes obsolete or

enhance or amplify? reduced in prominence?

3. Retrieve 4. Reverse

What is retrieved from an earlier How does the medium “overheat”

time that had nearly been or warp under pressure?
forgotten?
What

New

Media

Changes
What

New

Media

Changes
What

New

Media

Changes
Useful basic concepts
 Tech. determinism vs social
construction
◦ Does the technology advance due to its
own properties or do social, political and
economic forces shape the technology?
 Utopians versus Luddites
◦ Will a new technology improve things or
make them worse?
 Technological fallacies
◦ Predictions about future uses for
technology that turn out to be off base
Sociological historians &
critics
 Upton Sinclair -- The Jungle, The
Brass Check, Muckraker, press critic 1900s –
1930s
 A. J. Liebling -- New Yorker media critic
1940s
 I. F. Stone, also George Seldes
◦ Independent editors and press critics 1950s – 70s
 Ben Bagdikian – 1970s – 90s
◦ Media Monopoly, press concentration
 Neil Postman -- 1980s - 90s
◦ Amusing Ourselves to Death
Critical theorists as historians
 Sociologists -- Max Weber and Michael
Schudson
◦ Ideational model helps observe the clash of ideas
around social reform
 Communications theorists -- Michel Foucault
◦ Discourse analysis to understand the information
content and structure of mainstream cultural products
and “subjugated knowledges.”
 Critical theorists
◦ Frankfurt School -- Theodor W. Adorno, Walter
Benjamin and Jürgen Habermas
 Conflict of classes / Marxist analysis
 Mass media is structured to subvert identity and assimilate
individuality into the dominant culture
◦ Noam Chomsky -- libertarian socialist
 propaganda model – media supports ruling elites.
Review: People
 Isaiah Thomas, James Parton, James
Melvin Lee, Walter Lippmann, Wilbur
Schramm, Elizabeth Eisenstein,
Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan,
Upton Sinclair, Jurgen Habermas,
Noam Chomsky
Review: Concepts
 History becoming more inclusive of
women and minorities, more
international, more interdisciplinary;
 Determinism vs social construction;
utopians vs luddites; technological
fallacies; durable media vs flexible
media
 Medium is the message, hot and cool
media, global village, technology
tetrad
 Sociological and critical theory about
Next: Chapter 1
The printing revolution