A History Of Mass Communication

This exciting new text traces the common themes in the long and complex history of mass communication. It shows how the means of communicating grew out of their eras, how they developed, how they influenced the societies of those eras, and how they have continued to exert their influence upon subsequent generations. The book is divided into six periods which are identified as 'Information Revolutions' writing, printing, mass media, entertainment, the 'toolshed' (which we call 'home' now), and the Information Highway. In looking at the ways in which the tools of communication have influenced and been influenced by social change, A History of Mass Communication provides students of media and journalism with a strong sense of the way their chosen field affects how society functions. Providing a broad-based approach to media history, Dr. Fang encourages the reader to take a careful look at where our culture is headed through the tools we use to communicate with one another. A History of Mass Communication is not only the most current text on communication history, but also an invaluable resource for anyone interested in how methods of communication affect society.

This book is a unique inquiry into the history and the ongoing moral significance of mass communication as an idea and social form.

The Handbook of Communication History addresses central ideas, social practices, and media of communication as they have developed across time, cultures, and world geographical regions. It attends to both the varieties of communication in world history and the historical investigation of those forms in communication and media studies. The Handbook editors view communication as encompassing patterns, processes, and performances of social interaction, symbolic production, material exchange, institutional formation, social praxis, and discourse. As such, the history of communication cuts across social, cultural, intellectual, political, technological, institutional, and economic history. The volume examines the history of communication history; the history of ideas of communication; the history of communication media; and the history of the field of communication. Readers will explore the history of the object under consideration (relevant practices, media, and ideas), review its manifestations in different regions and cultures (comparative dimensions), and orient toward current thinking and historical research on the topic (current state of the field). As a whole, the volume gathers disparate strands of communication history into one volume, offering an accessible and panoramic view of the development of communication over time and geographical places, and providing a catalyst to further work in communication history.

This book argues that the no-Marxists mostly have it wrong. Although corporate media are structurally organized to maximize profits and produce content that generally helps elites achieve their goals, this does not mean corporate media have less capacity to facilitate social change than entrepreneurial or other forms of media. In fact, historical evidence and comparative critical studies presented in this book show that mass media become more, not less, critical of dominant power groups, institutions and value systems as they become more "corporatized."This proposition is part of a larger theoretical model that integrates the role of both social structure and human agency in explaining the persistence of modern capitalism. The structural part of the theory also enables scholars to make predictions about the future of mass media, including the ideas that the Internet is "stealing" some of the mediating power of traditional mass media, and the market power of global media will grow in absolute terms but will shrink in relative terms because of increasing competition from new and traditional media.

A History of Communications advances a theory of media that explains the origins and impact of different forms of communication - speech, writing, print, electronic devices and the Internet - on human history in the long term. New media are 'pulled' into widespread use by broad historical trends and these media, once in widespread use, 'push' social institutions and beliefs in predictable directions. This view allows us to see for the first time what is truly new about the Internet, what is not, and where it is taking us.

This book is a comprehensive illustrated account of the technologies and inventions in mass communication that have accelerated the advancement of human culture and society. A History of Communication Technology covers a timeline in the history of mass communication that begins with human prehistory and extends all the way to the current digital age. Using rich, full-color graphics and diagrams, the book details the workings of various mass communication inventions, from paper-making, printing presses, photography, radio, TV, film, and video, to computers, digital devices, and the Internet. Readers are given insightful narratives on the social impact of these technologies, brief historical accounts of the inventors, and sidebars on the related technologies that enabled these inventions. This book is ideal for students in introductory mass communication, visual communication, and history of media courses, offering a highly approachable, graphic-oriented approach to the history of communication technologies. Additional digital resources for the book are available at https://comtechhistory.site/

In this critical examination of the beginnings of mass communications research in the United States, written from the perspective of an educational historian, Timothy Glander uses archival materials that have not been widely studied to document, contextualize, and interpret the dominant expressions of this field during the time in which it became rooted in American academic life, and tries to give articulation to the larger historical forces that gave the field its fundamental purposes. By mid-century, mass communications researchers had become recognized as experts in describing the effects of the mass media on learning and other social behavior. However, the conditions that promoted and sustained their authority as experts have not been adequately explored. This study analyzes the ideological and historical forces giving rise to, and shaping, their research. Until this study, the history of communications research has been written almost entirely from within the field of communications studies and, as a result, has tended to refrain from asking troubling foundational questions about the origins of the field or to entertain how its emergence shaped educational discourse during the post-World War II period. By examining the intersection between the individual biographies of key leaders in the communications field (Wilbur Schramm, Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, Hadley Cantril, Stuart Dodd, and others) and the larger historical context in which they lived and worked, this book aims to tell part of the story of how the field of communications became divorced from the field of education. The book also examines the work of significant voices on the rise of mass communications study (including C. Wright Mills, William W. Biddle, Paul Goodman, and others) who theorized about the emergence of a mass society. It concludes with a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the theory of a mass society to educational thought and practice.

The influence of the mass media on American history has been overwhelming. History of the Mass Media in the United States examines the ways in which the media both affects, and is affected by, U.S. society. From 1690, when the first American newspaper was founded, to 1995, this encyclopedia covers more than 300 years of mass media history. History of Mass Media in the United States contains more than 475 alphabetically arranged entries covering subjects ranging from key areas of newspaper history to broader topics such as media coverage of wars, major conflicts over press freedom, court cases and legislation, and the concerns and representation of ethnic and special interest groups. The editor and the 200 scholarly contributors to this work have taken particular care to examine the technological, legal, legislative, economic, and political developments that have affected the American media.