Transcript ch0-1-mediahistoryx - Environmental history timeline

Brief lectures
in Media
History
Introduction
Media history and technology
Topics

About history
◦ Historians and their motives
◦ Social histories and critiques of media

About media technology
◦ Four revolutions in mass media
◦ Harold Innis – empire and communication
◦ Marshall McLuhan – theories of media change
and influence
What is history?
Collective memory
 Allows broad questions – when and who,
but also why and how …
 Not a search for exact answers
 Not science, not social science
 Duty to accuracy and truth
 Same facts / different interpretations
 Historians often have different
motivations

Why do historians write history?

Herodotus (484–420 BCE) preserve the
memory of great heroes
◦ Often in conflict with the next idea:

Thucydides (460–400 BCE) learn the
lessons of the past as a guide to the
future
◦ George Santayana (1863–1952), “Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to
repeat it.”
Is history objective?
Leopold Von Ranke (1795–1886) said that
historians should take a “scientific”
approach and report “the way things
really were.
 Moral and progressive historians –
Charles Beard, Lord Acton

◦ Acton said – Power corrupts, absolute power
corrupts absolutely. )

Is objectivity a “noble dream” as Peter
Novick said?
Is objectivity the problem?

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979)
objected to “whig” history
◦ Whig history honors the heroes, emphasizes
progress, ignores the roads not taken, deemphasizes minorities, and generally glorifies
the inevitable present.
◦ Whig history is what happens when the
winners get to write history.
End of history
Francis Fukuyama (1952–present) and Jean
Baudrillard (1929–2007)
 End of the idea of progress
 Abandonment of utopian visions shared by both
the right- and left-wing political ideologies

Social history – Lippmann

Walter Lippmann
◦ 1922 book, Public Opinion

Press should be part of a system of checks
and balances
◦ This is “the original dogma of democracy”


Not working – press is too weak
Media and historical change
◦
◦
◦
◦
Authoritative (censored)
Partisan (political parties)
Commercial (often sensationalistic)
Organized intelligence (future development)
Other social historians

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 media theory

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.
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
Media technology & history
To what extent is media technology
at the center of human history?
 Two theorists – Innis & McLuhan

◦ 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
Media technology & history
◦ Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
 Technical change in media (the Tetrad)
 What does a new media enhance, obsolete, retrieve, and
reverse?
 Medium is the message
 Deterministic view of media type as shaping the content of
a message
 Hot and cool media
 “Hot” media immerses audience and allows less
participation – cinema
 “Cool” media requires involvement and thought
 -- printed media, possibly radio
Useful basic concepts

Determinism versus 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
Next: the printing revolution