media history 2
TRANSCRIPT
Media HistoryMedia History
22ndnd session: The Press session: The Press
Steen ChristiansenSteen [email protected]@hum.aau.dk
12/21/09 2
Exam deadline
April 20th
Exam workshop
Moved to April 2nd
Still this room
Course blog
dissemination.wordpress.com
Topics
Newspapers and societyNewspapers and the public sphereNewspapers and technologyNewspapers and economyNews as institutionsNews and Radio/TVNews and the Internet
Newspapers and society
Source of information and opinionOne-to-many
Benedict Anderson and ‘imagined communities’
A nation “is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, 6-7)
Imagined communities
Nation building takes place through language“Print-capitalism” - nations for around national print-languageThis language standard continues in radio and TV with enforcement of a standardized spoken language
Imagined communities and media
Media texts articulate a nation’s cultural and social identityUnifying
Imagined communities and news
Newspapers determine what issues are importantComplex relationObjectivity/fact over opinionDo newspapers reflect public opinion or lead and shape?
News and war
Propaganda and social orderA ban on photos of dead American soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan
Total war
Newspapers and the public sphere
Critical self-reflection and reflection on the stateAllows participation
by the propertied, rational, male bourgeoisie
Public sphere and electronic media
Positive: complex, critical and culturally demanding material is made widely available
Public sphere and electronic media
Negative: consumption becomes increasingly privatized
Public sphere and electronic media
Argument: public sphere broken up, loss of unified participation
Public sphere and imagined communities
Fragmented media makes for a fragmented nationNo longer unified view of cultural and social identityLoss of national unity and national identity
Newspapers and technology
Telegraph 1844Transatlantic cable 1850s
Telephone 1870s
News and technology
News moves fastThe typewriter enables papers to produce faster
News and technology
Attempts at making telephone news channels in the 1880s.
Radio precursor
Media types
Time-biasedDurable, stable, immobileClay, rockCreates social reproduction over long periods of time
Space-biasedTemporary, unstable, mobilePaperExpansive over large territories
Media types
Electronic mediaProliferate, mutate, omnipresentAnnihilate space and timeInvasive, relocating, deterritorializing
Newspapers and economy
Restricted economically by “The Stamp Act”An attempt of moderate state control
Advertising frees the pressComics are introduced in papers to increase popularityConglomerates ariseFree newspapers
Not as successful as expected
News as institutions
Institutions are socially interpreted factsThey help us think about societyBasic, stable structures of society
Institutions are carriers of ideology
News as institutions
Ideology“The ruling ideas of the ruling class”Our understanding and knowledge of the world is determined by political interestsPropagated by mass media(CT 189-191)
Ideological slants
News as institutions
Party pressCommunication tool for a political partyAgitation/propaganda
News as institutions
Public newsCommunication channel between social institutions and citizensService for the public
News as institutions
Commercial newsContact between organization and audienceService
‘Great men’ of news
The ‘Great Men’ concept of historyInfluential and significant, but how much remains uncertain
William Randolph Hearst
Newspaper magnateInfluencing public opinion for the Spanish-American war in 1898
“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”
William Randolph Hearst
Rupert Murdoch
Media mogulFOX News
Talking points from Bush White House to FOX News commentatorsBill O’Reilly
Rupert Murdoch
Randolph Hearst and Rupert Murdoch
Radio and TV
Commercial vs public broadcastingNews become a group activity
Especially family-orientedPublic sphere
Newspapers vs radio
British newspapers hostile towards radioregulation
US complimentary and competitive1933 attempt at limiting broadcasting to specific times of the day
News and the media
Replicate the format of the newspaperNews is to some extent considered independent of media
News and the Internet
Official channelsRemediation of paper-versionWeb-onlyAlternative news proliferateOne-to-many, still
News and the Internet
BloggingDifferent authority“Live”Part of the action, not detachedMany-to-many
But in fact, many-to-few and few-to-many