History of Media and Communication
The long history of communication technologies and institutions, from speech and writing through print, electric media, and broadcasting.
Definition
The history of media and communication is the study of how communication technologies, practices, and institutions have developed over time and reshaped culture, knowledge, and social organization.
Scope
This area traces how successive media have transformed the storage, transmission, and reception of information and shaped social and cultural life. It covers the transitions from orality to literacy, the printing revolution, the rise of electric telecommunication, and the emergence of mass broadcasting, attending to both technological change and its social consequences.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How have successive media reshaped the storage and transmission of knowledge?
- What social and cultural changes accompanied major shifts such as writing and print?
- How did electric and broadcast media transform space, time, and audiences?
- How should media history balance technological and social explanation?
Key concepts
- Orality
- Literacy
- Print culture
- Telecommunication
- Broadcasting
- Mass communication
Key theories
- Print as an agent of change
- Eisenstein's thesis that the printing press catalyzed standardization, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge, contributing to the Reformation, science, and modern culture.
- The technologizing of the word
- Ong's account of how writing and print restructured thought and consciousness by transforming the spoken word into a fixed, visual object.
- Social history of the media
- Briggs and Burke's integrative framework treating media history as embedded in social, political, and economic change rather than driven by technology alone.
History
Media history matured as scholars such as Innis and McLuhan linked communication technologies to civilizational change, and historians such as Eisenstein documented the consequences of print. Later social historians, including Briggs and Burke, integrated technological narratives with social and institutional history, producing the synthetic accounts that frame the field today.
Debates
- Technological cause versus social context
- Whether major historical changes should be attributed to media technologies themselves or to the social and economic contexts in which they were adopted.
Key figures
- Elizabeth Eisenstein
- Walter J. Ong
- Asa Briggs
- Peter Burke
- Harold Innis
Related topics
Seminal works
- eisenstein1979
- ong1982
- briggsburke2009
- innis1951
Frequently asked questions
- Is media history just the history of technology?
- No; it studies technologies alongside the institutions, practices, and social changes that surround them, treating media as social as well as technical phenomena.
- Why begin with orality and literacy?
- Because the shift from speech to writing is the earliest and most consequential media transition, establishing patterns that later media history extends and complicates.