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From Oral to Electronic Culture

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Title: From Oral to Electronic Culture


1
From Oral to Electronic Culture
  • Modernity and the Rise of the Mass Media

2
Agenda
  • In the first hour
  • Explore how the history of communication in
    Canada typifies the transmission model of
    communication
  • In the second hour
  • How is the history of communication told over
    wider space and time?

3
STUDY QUESTIONS FOR THIS WEEK
  • Why are Canadian media( esp. radio) central to
    the stories of Canadian nation-building?
  • What are narratives and why are they important in
    the study of communication history?
  • What is modernity and how are communication
    media implicated in the emergence of modernity?

4
History of Study in Canada
  • Originally tied to policy studies in the
    university
  • ( policy, political economy and geography
    disciplines)
  • SFUs school created in 1983
  • Focus on transmission, the medium, the physical
    difficulties of communication over vast space
    time
  • Thus, focussed on media and the emergence of the
    nation state
  • CANUCK QUIZ Q WHAT IS THE FIRST NATIONAL POLICY?

5
History of Canadian Communication Studies
  • Originally tied to policy studies in the
    university
  • ( policy, political economy and geography
    disciplines)
  • SFUs school created in 1983
  • Focus on transmission, the medium, the physical
    difficulties of communication over vast space
    time
  • Thus, focussed on media and the emergence of the
    nation state
  • CANUCK QUIZ Q WHAT IS THE FIRST NATIONAL POLICY?

6
The Second National Policy
  • like the railroad, communication seen as
    important for the transmission and reception of
    ideas, goods and services throughout Canada
  • central to
  • Western settlement
  • Economic infrastructure
  • Social development
  • Much early spending by the Canadian State was to
    connect cities, peoples and markets
  • rail, hydroelectric power, telegraph, post
    system, heavy regulation of telephones to ensure
    extension of service, and provision of public
    radio
  • An early Tariff Wall until the 1930s to stimulate
    national business and manufacture ( See CC 26-30)

7
A Multi Party Pact
  • The Second National Policy sustained high
    political consensus
  • Overspill of US radio signals and predatory
    competition, combined with the social needs of
    Canadian citizens led to creation of the Aird
    Committee and unanimous resolution to create a
    public radio corporation
  • Widespread public movements rallying cry was
    The State or the United States ( Graham Spry
    see Spry foundation www.com.umontreal.ca/spry
  • A national royal commission studied the
    National Development of Arts and Letters (
    Massey Commission) and argued for a national
    interest in unity and identity in 1952-- values
    embedded in successive broadcast acts since with
    multi party consensus until the 1990s

8
Framing the Canadian History
  • The Mass Media were seen through the lense of a
    history of cultural nationalism, focussed on
    sending, and receiving Canadian information,
    ideas and entertainment
  • But, they were also seen through a lense of fear
    of fascism ( CC 52)
  • That new technologies like radio could make the
    individual part of a mass, undifferentiated,
    unsupported, and easy prey for authoritarian
    appeals.
  • That mass media would inevitably carry low
    social status

9
Canadian Transmission Model
  • Defining markers of transmission model
  • Size of country second largest land mass in the
    world
  • Low population density 32 million or about 3
    people per sq k among the lowest in the world
  • 200 mile corridor along the 49th parallel US
  • Initially dependent upon natural resource (
    staple) exports, needing good communication links
    to imperial country
  • What Aitken, a noted economist calls Canada
    tradition of defensive expansionism

10
Adoption of Innovation
  • Telegraph rise of international news agencies
    1850s-1900s
  • Canada longest telegraph network in the world
  • A Canadian invented standardized time
  • Sir Sandford Fleming
  • Telephony-1900s
  • Canada site of first transatlantic phone message
  • ( Cape Breton Alexander Graham Bell)

11
Adoption Contd
  • Radio-1930s-50s
  • Canada first public monopoly radio service on its
    rail service (CNR)
  • Television-1950s-70s
  • First and fastest nation to widely disseminate
    cable television
  • Satellite1980s
  • Canada first geostationary domestic satellite
    system
  • Internet1990s
  • Canada among fasted adopters of Internet now
    over 3 in 4 citizen users
  • Among first 3 nations to wire up all schools (
    School Net)

12
Adoption/ Contd II
  • Canada is among the most developed communications
    infrastructures in the world
  • Many key inventors, medium theorists, rapid
    adoption of communication technologies, often
    promoted by the State

13
Paradoxes
  • Paradox Canada is not a major manufacturer of
    communication technologies
  • dependent on imports for TV equipment, computer
    signalling equipment, satellites, although
    emerging in fibre optics blackberry handset etc
  • Paradox content development ( message,
    production) not kept up with transmission/distribu
    tion development eg. School Net

14
Fast Facts
  • Canadian Share of Prime Time English TV
    Entertainment 9
  • Canadian Share of Sound recording..11
  • Canadian Share of Film 3
  • Canadian per capita advertising is ¾ that of the
    US
  • Suffers the small market problem
  • Overspill from the US

15
A Canadian Thumbnail History of a Medium
  • Radio
  • As a technology, uses the electromagnetic
    spectrum
  • Considered a scarce resource
  • Compelled nations to cooperate to allocate it
    territorially
  • Compelled rationing of licenses thus a form of
    regulation
  • Radio first used as a marine navigational aid in
    1905
  • The War demonstrated the even greater importance
    of radio to national security
  • RCA/Westinghouse emerged from WWI as major
    electrical manufacturers in the US who had branch
    plants in Canada ( CC 74)
  • Marconi in Montreal set up the first Canadian
    radio station ( CFCF)
  • By 1923 30 stations in operation..growing to 60
    by 1930 when about one in three Canadians had a
    radio set
  • But with a limited capital base, stations turned
    to advertising, or joined US radio networks NBC
    and CBS
  • non aligned stations were knocked off their
    frequencies by US super-radiostations

16
Thumbnail Contd
  • Market chaos and the absence of Canadian
    programming precipitated demands for a Royal
    Commission hearing
  • A proposal to nationalize radio
  • Caused a debate for citizens at the time
  • Is it important for Canada to have its own mass
    media?
  • Who should own the mass media?
  • Who should control them?
  • How should they be financed?
  • The answers Yes, Government, and tax or licence
    fee money
  • But, expropriation never occurred, and through a
    lack of political will subsequently the CBC
    became reliant on private stations to reach coast
    to coast to coast, and then reliant on
    advertising
  • Canada had a mixed system from the outset, but
    did borrow from the Imperial model of the BBC

17
Thumbs and nails 3
  • As a medium, broadcasting then, took very
    different path than print
  • It was seen as too important to be left to the
    market
  • The Canadian government, like many around the
    world, broke with the pattern of private
    ownership
  • Radio could be the 20th century equivalent to the
    railroad, reasoned then PM Bennett
  • A very special industry in its ability to foster
    nationwide inter-communication (CC73).
  • Given the protective language barrier in Quebec,
    french radio thrived, even producing dramas
  • A nationalist, middle class elite later argued
  • there are important things in the life of a
    nation which cannot be weighed or measured
  • National traditions, national unity, national
    pride and national identity exist not only the
    material sphere but in the realm of ideas
  • Saw broadcasting as quintessentially a cultural
    policy a public trust and public service
  • With extensive social responsibilities to
    educate, uplift, and entertain

18
Thumbs and Nails 4
  • To reinforce the nation-building cultural
    responsibilities, the Canadian government
  • Passed a Broadcasting Act
  • Established a public corporation
  • Required private broadcasters to air 35 Canadian
    music over the day since 1971
  • MAPL
  • Music composed by a Canadian
  • Artists artists performing lyrics are Canadian
  • Performance in or recorded in Canada
  • Lyrics written by a Canadian

19
Fast Forward
  • Canadians listen to 19 hours of radio a week
  • There are 913 English stations, 275 French and 35
    third language stations
  • Total revenues around 1.3 billion with about
    277 million in profit
  • 78 million is paid by private stations to
    promote Canadian artists
  • Source CRTC Broadcast Monitoring Report, 2006

20
History of Communication
  • Re-entering the Time Machine

21
Todays Agenda
  • Historical Narratives Media and Modernity

22
STUDY QUESTIONS
  • What are Narratives?
  • Identify Three Main Epochs of Communication
  • What is technological determinism? What is the
    cultural critique of it? ( CC 58-59)

23
Big Picture Ideas Today
  • History of Communication involves a Selective
    Story or Narrative
  • Narrativea story or depiction of actual or
    fictional events
  • Narrative the telling of a story in a certain
    way
  • The Story revolves around communication
    technology and its relationship to society and
    culture
  • Story can be technology centric--even determinist
  • Story can have broader focus on social change
    the emergence of modernity

24
Ideas II
  • Canadas story is one of technological
    nationalism
  • Use of communication technologies to settle the
    country from sea to sea
  • Associated with national railroad(
    telegraph)(national public radio CBC)
  • Assertion and protection of national sovereignty
    in journey from colony to nation
  • reflected in the policy focus in the study of
    communication itself
  • But what is the Global Story?

25
Social Histories Narratives
  • Mediamaking ( Grossberg et al, 2000) argues
    typically that the history of communication is
    presented as a march of progress or triumph of
    National Will
  • a series of adoptions of technological
    inventionswhich then shape the movement from
    oral to print to electronic cultures of
    communication
  • This tendency to technological determinism is at
    the heart of a transmission model of
    communication

26
Key Concept
  • Technological Determinism
  • Ascribing the main cause of social change to
    technology
  • In this case, communication technology
  • Thus, a theoretical or academic point of view
    that prioritizes the causal influence of
    communication media, and especially mass media,
    in social change

27
Canadian Communication Thinkers
  • Two key historians focus on the specificity of
    the communication media
  • Pioneers of the study of medium technology
    theory
  • Often seen as determinist
  • Harold Adams Innis
  • The Bias of Communication
  • Empire and Communication
  • Marshall McLuhan
  • The Gutenberg Galaxy
  • Cited extensively by Grossberg et al

28
Overview of Medium Theory
  • Origin of Communication
  • Oral,
  • writing and
  • electronic forms of culture

29
Origin of Communication
  • People have always communicated
  • Used non verbal signs, language and later symbols
    to exchange meaning in all agrarian and hunting
    societies
  • To exchange meaning the two people have to share
    assumptions about what the words or symbols mean,
    to agree that they mean the same thing to both
  • Exchange of meaning then depends not only the
    word but its cultural, economic and social
    context
  • As technology begins to mediate communication,
    the relation of the words to their context
    changes another person distant over space and
    time may experience a word or meaning fragment
    from a totally different context

30
Oral Culture
  • Face to face interaction
  • A different sense of time
  • No record or fixation, thus history resides in
    the moment
  • Myth and fact intertwined
  • No concept of authorship there is only
    performance
  • Social, interactive, collective
  • Elders become the repositories of knowledge, so
    may be resistant to change
  • Source Walter Ong (CMNS 110 see CC 55)

31
Writing Culture
  • Invention of the alphabet, and ways to fix
    print in clay tablets, then papyrus, and then
    paper, change culture
  • Changes way of thinking
  • No longer face to face, so can reach larger
    audiences the concept of space and time enters
  • Fixation allows writer to ensure story how it
    intended to be so the idea of individual
    authorship emerges
  • Texts allow fixed, written or permanent codes or
    rules of law to develop
  • Texts can now be verified, separate from the
    subject, allowing for the separation of object
    from subject and scientific discovery
  • Allows for linear thought a fundamentally
    different kind of consciousness ( McLuhan) CC
    56-57

32
Print Culture ( emergence of Modernity)
  • Writing changes relationship between communicator
    and audience
  • Can widen over space and time
  • Early print media centralized and made knowledge
    hierarchical
  • The beginning of Empire ( Innis, quoted in
    Grossberg et al, p. 41).
  • In a writing culture, fixed written rules or
    codes of law can develop
  • The individual reader emerges as separate from
    the community

33
Print Culture/Contd
  • Literacy allows power to be hoarded
  • This transformed with Gutenberg/ but printing
    press allowed the emergence of new classes ( no
    longer priest but merchant classes) but then a
    rehoarding of power
  • Innis monopolies of knowledge can develop/be
    challenged and reemerge which challenge the rigid
    hierarchies of Church or State

34
Impact of the Printing Press
  • Control of writing harder to monopolize by elites
    or the Church
  • Allows for consumption of communication in
    private spread of literacy
  • Allows the emergence of newspaper and novel

35
Gutenberg
  • The inventor of moveable type in Europe
  • Celebrated as a western invention
  • Celebrated as a democratic one breaks elite
    church or feudal monopoly over communication
  • Seen as the turning point of modern communication
  • Positive/Progressive narratives abound

36
Against Gutenberg I
  • Innis
  • The conditions of freedom of thought are in
    danger of being destroyed by science, technology
    and mechanization of knowledge
  • In Empire and Communication
  • Why? The printing press ( has) permitted the
    production of words on an unprecedented scale and
    increased the difficulties of thought words have
    become powerless,
  • Gutenberg succeeds only in the devaluing of
    words, information and knowledge

37
Against Gutenberg II
  • Communication history criticized for its Western
    bias
  • Asian Scholars printing press not a Western
    invention existence in China centuries before
    did not have the same social consequencetherefore
    Gutenberg /technological determinism less strong
    than supposed
  • -Michele Martin page 18-19

38
Electronic Culture
  • Emergence of electrical messages ( telegraph)
  • Allowed almost instantaneous transmission over
    space and time
  • Fostered international rationalization of time (
    standard time a Canadian inventors invention)

39
Electronic Contd
  • Carey thesis quoted in Grossberg et al
  • Telegraph (1840s)marked the decisive separation
    of transportation and communication
  • Telegraph key to rise of international
    news/newspaper industry
  • Finalised the transformation of information into
    a commodity or thing
  • Together with the institution of advertising,
    contributes to rise of mass marketing,
    Industrialization
  • Rise of computers, satellites, internet further
    compress space and time
  • Early electronic era ( radio, TV) organized
    around nation states, and national masses
  • Search for larger markets/theory of mass society

40
Electronic Contd
  • Characterised by general interest /mass
    communication
  • Late electronic era ( satellite, internet)
    organized globally, and with global individuals
  • Characterized by specialised, personalised
    contents
  • Rarely linear or logical more of a role for
    emotion and affect

41
Problems with Medium Theory
  • Speculating how the form and technology of
    communication changes culture often ascribes it a
    total power
  • Can lead analysts to say content context are
    irrelevant
  • This is too simple a model of social or cultural
    causality

42
Major Epochs of Communication History
  • Pre Modern
  • ( oral and early print media)
  • Modern
  • ( late print and electronic media)
  • Post Modern
  • ( digital media)

43
Pre Modern ( 1000 BC to 1500s)
  • Pre Modern
  • Close association of control of communication
    with Church or rulers or monarchs
  • Agrarian, dispersed societies
  • divine rightrulers chosen by god
  • Elite production and dissemination of
    communication ( poets,scribes, monks, priests
    work by hand)

44
Pre Modern Contd
  • Much reliance upon spoken word
  • Transmission of values by word of mouth, elders
  • oral communication
  • Epic poems, sacred myths, storytelling
  • Focus on flexibility, traditional community
    knowledge

45
Pre Modern Contd
  • Major historical event invention of the alphabet
    and rise of clay tablets, parchment manuscripts
  • Custom, cosmology ( or coherent world view),
    unwritten rules
  • Time bias social goal is to conserve and
    transmit core values of a society over
    generations ( (Innis in The Bias of
    Communication)
  • Oral communication has its limits
  • Oral communication lasts only as long as it takes
    one to speak and it only reaches those within
    earshot
  • Yet social organizations have an eternal drive to
    communicate with long lasting and ever more far
    reaching effect

46
Modern Epoch
  • Dates from the Enlightenment and challenge to
    Church and rulers
  • 1700s-20th century
  • The twin economic and political process of
    modernization
  • Accelerates after the invention of the Gutenberg
    Press and wider dissemination of knowledge

47
Modernization
  • In economic organization, the changes to forms of
    capitalist production
  • the emergence of machineries applied to increase
    the scale of production industrialization
  • Routinization of labour, processes to maximize
    profits develop access to larger markets
  • Urbanization, transportation and communication
    essential to develop mass markets
  • Political modernization discussed next week
  • Modernization, however, creates a social
    institution with the characteristics of modernity

48
The Enlightenment and Modernity
  • an idealist vision of humans as rational
    creatures, capable of choosing between right and
    wrong
  • Refers to a period characterized by
  • End of the Middle Ages and rise of the
    Renaissance where a great chain of being (
    vertical in line to a divine authority) placed
    man in a subservient position
  • Ideal of the free and creative man
    humanistic vision
  • As the printing press spreads, so to does
    literacy and thirst for ideas
  • The rise of the individual author/freedom of
    expression emerges

49
Features of the Enlightenment
  • The enlightenment (1700 and 1800s) features the
    rise of science over religion
  • rule of reason, scientific experimentation and
    proof, notion of science, technology and progress
    ruling society
  • The enlightenment gives rise to scientific
    experimentation
  • Rise of electricity, experiments with sending
    sounds and images over the electromagnetic
    spectrum and broader technical dissemination of
    communication
  • The Enlightenment sets the stage for invention of
    printing press, and successive waves of
    technological innovation/ displacement of
    technologies over time
  • Related to the historical construction of
    Modernity

50
What do We Mean by Modernity?
  • An Epoch
  • A set of qualities associated with the condition
    of modern or recent times
  • refers to a constellation of social,
    economic,philosophical changes associated with
    modernization and modernism
  • It emphasizes Science and Reason
  • Science and Reason could challenge established
    orthodoxies ( eg. Galileo said the earth revolved
    around the sun and was persecuted during the
    Catholic Inquisition for his sins)

51
The Transformations of Modernity
  • From
  • Religion to science
  • Agrarian to industrial economies
  • Small scale to large scale production
  • Rural to urban cities
  • Communal to Individual Values
  • Kinship to Distributed Networks
  • Tribal or feudal to democratic politics

52
The Mass Media and Modernity
  • As technological inventions, a product of the
    Enlightenment
  • And rise of Modern Science
  • Mass media can be regarded as one of the most
    powerful expressions of the spirit our age
  • Part of economic modernization/development
    process
  • But also part of political modernization/developme
    nt process

53
The Cultural Expression of Modernism
  • Modernity is associated with modernism, or its
    cultural or symbolic expression
  • Impressionism, abstract
  • Clean, simple lines in architecture
  • A set of authors or schools or traditions in
    literature
  • Jazz
  • Emergence of new popular forms like the dime
    novel or Hollywood film CC61
  • Modernism and its opposite, post modernism are
    the focus of cultural studies

54
Post Modern Epoch
  • Corresponds to digitization, internet and beyond
    in media technology
  • Post industrial capitalism flexible production,
    consumption, individuation
  • Shift from nation state to global governance
  • Increasing mobility of people and communication
  • The penetration of capitalism into every aspect
    of everyday life CC 61
  • Global village versus villages
  • An historical argument over whether there is a
    radical, discontinuous rupture in postmodernism,
    or a gradual change

55
Conclusions
  • History of Communication involves a Selective
    Story
  • The Story most often revolves around technology
    and the relationship to society and culture
  • The development from oral to print to electronic
    cultures, must be understood in the context of
    Modernity

56
Conclusions II
  • Canadas story is one of technological
    nationalism/protection of sovereignty in journey
    from colony to nation reflected in the policy
    focus in the study of communication itself
  • Canada has two of the most famous communication
    historians and medium theorists in the field
    Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan

57
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
  • History is a retelling of the pastbut the story
    of the past can be told in many different
    waysCC33
  • History is a useful guide to understanding the
    present and the future CC33.
  • IRONY
  • Most mass media content is ephemeral. Studies of
    the news and prime time entertainment in Europe,
    for example, show less than 15 of the content
    actually refers to the past ( source
    Eurofiction,2000)
  • Narratives of media history offer insights into
    the role of the forms and modes of communication
    in human historyCC63

58
TUTORIAL TIP
  • Start reading Chomsky and Hermans Propaganda
    Model of Communication as a variant on the
    Transmission Model

59
WRITING TIP
  • Space and time are important concepts in
    communication.
  • Watch your sense of place North America? Canada?
    Much literature hides mention to place, but is
    written from a US perspective
  • Watch your use of verb tenses.
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