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Historical and Cultural Context

Chapter 3

© 2009, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER OUTLINE• Language• Writing• Printing• Conquering Space and Time: The Telegraph and

Telephone• Capturing the Image: Photography and Motion Pictures• News and Entertainment at Home: Radio and Television

Broadcasting• The Digital Revolution• Mobile Media• Concluding Observations

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LANGUAGE

• Major development in evolution of human race

• Oral cultures required good memories

• Knowledge and information base grew slowly

• Accuracy was a challenge

• Record keeping was difficult

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WRITING

• As the need for better record-keeping grew, two problems needed to be solved:– What symbols to use to represent

sounds/ideas– On what surface to record these symbols

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Sign Writing vs. Phonetic Writing

• Sign writing – Graphic symbols represent objects, sounds,

ideas • Chinese pictographs;

Egyptian hieroglyphics

• Phonetic writing– Symbols represent sounds, grouped to make

words, grouped to make sentences• Phoenician alphabet

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Clay vs. paper

• Evolution of writing surfaces:– Soft clay tablets– Woven papyrus plants– Parchment (sheep, goat)– Paper from tree bark pulp

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Social Impact of Writing

• New social division based on ability to read– Unequal access to power via knowledge

• Birth, growth, maintenance of powerful empires

• Accumulation and preservation of knowledge

• Codification of laws, consistently applied

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The Middle Ages

• 6th century: demand for books rose but supply was low, and copies had errors– Monks hand-copied each manuscript– No standard filing or cross-referencing system

• By 1150: more need to store information– Developments include trade routes,

universities, strong central governments, secularization of books, widespread introduction of paper, scriptoria (writing shops)

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PRINTING

• China: Paper; Block printing (oldest surviving book 9th Century); Movable type

• Korea: Metal movable type (15th Century)• Germany: Gutenberg (15th Century)

movable metal type printing press– Gutenberg’s use of movable metal type

revolutionized communication– Communication could be cheap, quick, error-

free

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Effects of the Gutenberg Revolution

• Standardized and popularized vernacular languages; spawned growth of nationalism

• More accessible information• Literacy increased• New schools of thought (Luther’s Protestantism)• Encouraged exploration• Increased growth of accumulated knowledge• Led to development of concept of “news”

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Technology and Cultural Change

• Technological Determinism– The belief that technology drives historical

change

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CONQUERING SPACE AND TIME: THE TELEGRAPH AND

TELEPHONE

• These two related technologies foretold many features of today’s media world

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Development of the Telegraph

• Speed of communication increased from 30 mph to 186,000 miles per second

• Telegraph: Greek for “to write at a distance”

• Digital technology: dots and dashes– Morse code

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Cultural Impact of the Telegraph

• By 1850, most Western frontier cities were linked with other cities

• 1866: trans-Atlantic cable

• The telegraph affected– How we moved goods– How we coordinated services– Standardization of market prices– News flow and news story length

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Government and Media

• Some countries saw telegraph as extension of postal service

• U.S. followed model of private ownership and commercial development of the telegraph

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A Change in Perspective

• The telegraph changed how we thought of distance– Marshall McLuhan’s Global Village

• Soon after the telegraph, the telephone began linking people– People didn’t need to understand telegraphic

codes– The telephone industry became dominated by

big business

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CAPTURING THE IMAGE: PHOTOGRAPHY AND MOTION

PICTURES

• Advances in the field of chemistry allowed photography and motion pictures to develop

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Early Technological Development

• Two things needed to permanently store images– A way to focus light rays from a subject onto a

surface– A way to permanently alter the surface

• 16th Century: camera obscura• 1830s: daguerreotypes• 1830s: ability to store images• 1890: box camera

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Mathew Brady

• Brady was the first to capture war extensively on film– U.S. Civil War photographs gave accurate

record of war

• Photography also affected art– Artists freed to interpret the world in new ways– Photography became its own art form

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Photography’s Influence on Mass Culture

• Allowed people to keep permanent records of personal histories

• Created profession of photojournalism

• Photographic news as timesaving device

• Changed definition of news

• Cell phone cameras: privacy concerns

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Pictures in Motion

• Demand for film entertainment helped by– Industrialization– Urbanization– Immigration

• Nickelodeons: 1900s crude store-front theaters– Helped create motion picture industry

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Motion Pictures and American Culture

• Large film companies survived and dominated film production, distribution, exhibition.

• Film industry altered concept of leisure activities.• Hollywood produced cultural icons, helped bring

about concept of popular culture• 1930s: Payne Fund studied media effects• Through 1950s: Newsreels continued to

influence broadcast news reporting

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NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT AT HOME: RADIO AND TELEVISION

BROADCASTING

• Radio was first medium to bring live entertainment into the home

• World War I: Radio seen as useful to warfare

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Broadcasting

• By the 1930s– Broadcasting was a national craze– Radio boomed, leading to creation of Federal

Radio Commission (FRC)• FRC is precursor to current FCC

– Two national radio networks emerged (later 3)– Content moved to mass appeal programs– Professionalism and appeal increased– Radio became more important news source

than newspapers

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Cultural Impact of Radio

• Popularized different kinds of music• Introduced new entertainment genre, the soap

opera• Introduced mass content for children

– Saw children as viable commercial market• Introduced situation comedies• Radio news came of age in 1930s-40s• Radio personalized news, created news

celebrities• Radio changed how people spend free time

– Became prime source of entertainment

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Television

• 1950s– Following World War II, television’s growth

surged• Sales of TV sets • Amount of time watching TV

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Cultural Impact of TV

• Television is in 99% of households• Set is on over 8 hours per day• Third-largest consumer of time

– Only sleep and work consume more time

• Transformed almost every aspect of our culture• We expect live coverage of events from

anywhere, at any time• We can share a national or global

consciousness

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THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION (1 of 2)

• Nicholas Negroponte: Digital revolution is the difference between atoms (material goods) and bits (electronic 0s and 1s)

• Digital technology: system of encoding information as series of off-on pulses (0, 1)– Digitized information is easy to copy and

transmit– Digital revolution affected mass media,

business owners, audience members

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THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION (2 of 2)

• Social/cultural implications of the digital age– Rethink notion of community– Everyone can be a mass communicator– Effects on politics

• Is a true direct democracy possible?

– Effects on the arts– Information glut– Digital divide

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MOBILE MEDIA (1 of 2)

• Cell phones, laptop computers, PDAs (personal digital assistants)– Wireless technology– Portable, allowing access to information from

anywhere– Interconnected– Blur distinction between mass communication

and interpersonal communication

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MOBILE MEDIA (2 of 2)

• Serve some of traditional media functions– Surveillance– Entertainment– Linkage– Culture

• Mobile parenting• Time softening

• Downsides– Driving distractions– Privacy issues– Interfere with interactions– Cost

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CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

• Predicting the ultimate use of any new medium is difficult

• Any new communication advance may change, but does not make extinct, the advances that came before.