BSCOM/320T: Mass Communication And Media

Chapter 1: The History of Print and Storytelling to the Masses
1.1Introduction: We’ve Been Telling Stories for
Thousands of Years
Topic 1 Introduction Transcript
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The cave paintings of Chauvet in France, Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Book of Kells,
the Popol Vuh including the Mayan creation myth, the Dead Sea Scrolls—humans
have been leaving their marks on stone walls and various forms of books for
thousands of years. In fact, our designation of what we call “history” begins with the
writing that our ancestors have left behind (evidence of things before that time is
known as “prehistoric”).
Figure 1.1: Paintings of lions in Chauvet Cave.
Photo by Claude Valette, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
To be fair, cave paintings and the earliest manuscripts weren’t seen by all that many
people. It would be a stretch to call any of those early works of art a form of mass
communications in any way. They were important to be sure; they just didn’t have
much of an audience. For communications to begin to have a mass impact, we
needed them to be seen or distributed in a way that would reach more people. And
in the days before electricity and cell towers, the revolutionary technology that made
this possible was the mechanical printing press.
1.2Printing: A German Man Named Gutenburg and a
Buddhist Monk Named Baegun
Many have heard that it was a sacred text that inspired the first mechanized printing
efforts, and that is true. But rather than look to Germany and the Christian Bible, we
need to really start in Korea in the year 1377. Here we find the first evidence of
movable type being used to print ink onto paper (or vellum, which was specially
treated animal skin) to produce multiple copies of a document called the Jikji. The
Jikji was a collection of Zen Buddhist teachings, 307 chapters in length, printed by a
monk named Baegun. While we don’t know how many copies were originally printed,
multiple copies of several chapters have survived the centuries, showing this to be
the first mass-produced book using moveable type (where each character or letter
was cast independently and each printed line was locked into place). Using movable
type and a printing press allowed the monk to make multiple copies of each page
quickly and accurately, at least compared to the earlier method of hand copying
manuscripts (the word manuscript is Latin for “handwritten”). Movable type also
allowed the actual metal type sets to be reused for the next page or next book. Prior
to this, all printing was done with individually carved wood or stone blocks.
Figure 1.2: Moveable type used to print the Jikji in 1377.
Photo by Daderot, CC0 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 1.3: Replica of the Jikji.
Photo by Daderot, CC0 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Evidence suggests that both Eastern and Western cultures were on this
technological trajectory independently, yet at roughly the same time. Why is the
invention of the printing press considered a transformational human technology?
Because it was printing that allowed knowledge to be mass-produced, transported
over distance, and stored over time. It truly was a civilization creator.
Some 75 years later in 1455, Johann Gutenberg published 180 copies of the Bible in
Mainz, Germany. As in Korea, it was the creation of moveable type (with each letter
being cast into a small piece of metal, which could then be arranged to build words,
sentences and pages) that was the key to creating the first “mass production” of the
written word. And for the next 200 years, printing presses and their stories began to
fill the libraries of the royal, the rich, and the powerful around the world. But it wasn’t
until the forces of industrialization began pushing cities into being that the printed
word made the jump from the elite to the masses.
1.3Urbanization: Cities That Never Sleep
Prior to the early 1700s, the world was a collection of agrarian kingdoms, mostly
ruled by the rich and powerful. Small villages were the norm, and the few big cities
that did exist were supported by legions of peasant farm workers. Not exactly the
ideal economic or cultural conditions needed to support any form of mass media. But
slowly (first in Europe and then later in the West and Far East), agricultural societies
began to adopt the first glimmers of industrialization. Machines were being
invented that could do the work of multiple workers (weaving, harvesting,
manufacturing). Factories were being built that could produce hundreds of
household items in a single day.
And all these new machines, work systems, and factories needed workers. Workers
that lived close enough to those jobs that they could walk to work every day. Bring a
bunch of people together in close proximity, and just like that, BAM—cities were
born, and masses of illiterate peasants began to have two things they had never
before: a little money and lots of new places to spend that money.
Figure 1.4: California Western Railroad locomotive.
Photo by R.A. Sallinen III, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Town criers of previous centuries may have been able to shout the “official business”
of a small village, but the printed word was growing to serve the needs of business
and commerce. This explosion of workforce specialization of all kinds gave rise to
the need to advertise and communicate these goods and services now available in
these brand new cities. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight, and further advances
in transportation (trains, canals, shipping) and technology (electricity, plumbing, and
so on) slowly brought millions of people in from the farmland and put them together
in ways that practically demanded new channels of communication. Enter the
newspaper and advertising.
1.4Read All about It: The Birth of the Newsfeed
Figure 1.5: The New York Sun.
Photo from Defunct Publishers, CC0 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
While some early newspapers, political tracts, academic bulletins, and other printed
sheets were gaining ground in Europe and Japan from the early 1600s through the
first decades of the 19th century, it took a broke businessman in New York City to
understand the power of reach and frequency for the medium to become
profitable. You see, in 1833 in New York City, most newspapers were costly luxuries,
selling for 6 to 10 cents a copy. But then Benjamin Day started publishing a
newspaper called The Sun, selling copies for just one cent. These new, lower-priced
papers suddenly had much higher readerships, and as they were partially funded
by advertisements (it sounds more old-timey if you pronounce it “ad-VER-tis-ments”)
Mr. Day quickly realized that as he printed and sold MORE copies of The Sun, he
could also charge the advertisers in the paper MORE money for the same size ads
because they were reaching more potential buyers of their products.
Of course, advances in printing press efficiencies, lower shipping costs, and an evergrowing community of readers didn’t hurt either. Within a decade, other “penny
press” papers had started up both in New York City and in other growing markets
along the Eastern seaboard. These inexpensive papers helped create a common
culture among a nation of immigrants. News, politics, sports, and gossip were made
available to the working classes and brought them together as never before.
Prejudice and racism and poverty were perhaps commonplace. But the American
Dream of freedom and opportunity were being experienced and embraced by more
of her citizens than ever before.
1.5The Explosion of Print: A Newspaper for Each
Political Party, and a Magazine for Every Need
The Explosion of Print Transcript
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It may seem like the partisan nature of some news organizations we live with today
and the general public’s distrust of them is an outgrowth of Fox News, MSNBC, and
CNN competing for viewers. In reality, these party line divisions have existed from
the very beginning of the newspaper era. American politics have carved up, created,
and nurtured “conservative” and “liberal” alliances from the very founding of our
Republic. As cities grew from the middle of the 19th century through the opening of
the 20th, so did the political divide among papers and readers. Each major city had
at least one newspaper that was favorable to one major political party and
contemptuous of the other. This tribalism helped fuel the explosion of print media
that grew to include multiple newspapers (dailies, weeklies, specialty papers) and
dozens of new magazine titles that were introduced each year—each covering a
wide variety of topics and interests.
The distinction between newspaper and magazine is a little less black-and-white
than it would seem (that was a pun on the fact that color printing—while a staple in
magazines today—didn’t appear for many years after magazines made their debut in
the late 1600s). As printed publications became more numerous, they began to be
differentiated based on content they contained and the audiences they served.
Religious tracts were different from political papers, which were different from literary
works, which were different from the news of the day.
By the 1700s, several of these longer form, general-interest periodicals were seen
throughout Europe. They represented a middle ground between the more in-depth
exposition found in books and the brief recaps seen in the newspapers. In 1731, an
Englishman published a periodical called The Gentleman’s Magazine. The
word magazine was derived from an Arabic word, makhazin (meaning “storehouse”).
With the term coined, and populations growing in literacy and number, the stage was
set for the modern magazine to emerge.
And emerge it did. Magazine advertising revenue, for example, grew from modest
beginnings in the late 1800s to over $650,000,000 for the year 1955 with hundreds
of titles reaching many hundreds of millions of subscribers.
1.6What Hath God Wrought?
Steam engines and rudimentary motors could only get us so far. We needed
electricity to really jump-start the communications revolution. Pioneers such as
Samuel Morse, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi, and Philo Farnsworth all played
roles in bringing electric technology to communications and modern media.
Figure 1.6: Morse code receiver.
Photo by Rauantiques, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Before the electric light bulb took center stage at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago,
Illinois, there was a New England painter-turned-inventor who would change the
world in 1844. While studying painting in Europe, Samuel Morse heard about
“electromagnets” and how they could send electrical currents through wires.
Although he struggled as a painter, his interest in electricity would lead him to
develop the first commercial, long-distance telegraph. His test transmission from
Baltimore, Maryland, to Washington, DC—more than 50 miles—arrived instantly.
His first test message, “What hath God wrought?” was sent via Morse code (a series
of dots and dashes), zipping along the wires. What indeed. For the transmission of
information through wires and electricity would transform the exchange of written
information from the speed of a newsboy, a Pony Express rider, or a steam-powered
locomotive—to information moving at the speed of light (even if it was just one
character at a time).
How the Telegraph Works
“Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) and other inventors, the
telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical
signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel
Morse developed a code (bearing his name) that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each
letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages
across telegraph lines. In 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message, from Washington,
D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland; by 1866, a telegraph line had been laid across the Atlantic
Ocean from the U.S. to Europe. Although the telegraph had fallen out of widespread use by
the start of the 21st century, replaced by the telephone, fax machine and Internet, it laid the
groundwork for the communications revolution that led to those later innovations.”1
As telegraph wires began connecting distant cities and towns, communication began
to bring these growing cities together. News stories, election results, sports, and
business updates could happen in New York, and be printed and sold in papers in
Chicago or Detroit later that afternoon. Literacy rates increased, and the urban
population grew in both number and influence. Access to information fueled this
growth alongside the economic expansion and the creation of a brand
new segment of society: middle-class consumers.
1.7The Miracle of Electricity and Invisible Waves
Thomas Alva Edison and His Role in Media Development
Most everyone knows that Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, but his work in the
communication field was just as groundbreaking. He invented the phonograph that
would record and playback music and voices on physical disks, sounds captured and
then recalled whenever the hearer wanted to re-hear them. This was magical stuff.
These phonographs were not initially powered by electricity (making them all the more
amazing as we look back) but by hand-cranked springs that powered the rotating
cylinder or turntable.
He pioneered work on motion pictures—known as the kinetoscope or kinetograph,
which cracked the code of using many “frames per second” of still images projected
rapidly to create the illusion of motion. His inventions included the camera needed to
record these multiple frames per second, and the projector that allowed him to play
back the recording to a viewer at a later time. Which, by the way, is exactly how your
4K UHD TV performs the same miracle today—just a little bit more digital and a little
less analog.
Figure 1.7: Edison’s Kinetograph.
Photo by U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site. Public domain image.
The photo above shows Thomas Edison’s 1889 Kinetograph, the first camera to take
motion pictures on a moving strip of film.
The Rescue of the Survivors of the Titanic and Today’s 5G
Networks
Edison wasn’t the only genius inventor of the late 1800s, and the United States wasn’t
the only place that was pushing the envelope of the magic of electricity.
Figure 1.8: The Titanic’s Marconi apparatus.
Photo by Cliff1066, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1901, Italian engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi would prove that electricity
and the “invisible waves” of electromagnetic energy (radio waves) could send signals
through the air with no wires needed. He was 30 years old. His early experiments
were conducted in Italy, but he realized that the money he needed to fund the
commercialization of this technology might be more plentiful in London. His
radio transmitters and receivers were soon being installed throughout Europe and
the US, thus enabling Morse code to be sent across long distances with no wires
needed.
Luckily, this new technology found its way onto the RMS Titanic along with other cargo
and passenger ships being built at that time. The Titanic’s ship-board Marconi radio—
often just called a “wireless”—allowed the sinking ship to call for help that frigid April
night in 1912.
As World War I broke out in 1914, both the Central Powers and the Allies were
actively using wireless sets in directing ground troops, guiding bombing runs from a
giant dirigible (blimp), and yes, coordinating the first wartime airplanes toward their
targets. These early signals started as Morse code, but with advances in frequency
modulations and amplification, radio waves were soon able to carry not just dots and
dashes, but voices, and even full stereophonic symphonies.
After the war was over, radio broadcasting became so omnipresent, and the overlap
of radio transmissions so cluttered, that governments around the world had to step in
and create order. In the United States, the Radio Act of 1927 (the precursor to
today’s Federal Communications Commission, or the FCC), established the
Federal Government’s right to regulate the use of the electromagnetic spectrum with
registries and licenses to determine who could broadcast on which frequency.
A recent auction of radio spectrum occurred as the development of 5G networks was
granted to the highest bidders for radio spectrum that spans the 450 MHz to 6 GHz
range. This “Millimeter Wave Frequency” is capable of carrying vast amounts of digital
data, and high speeds, but for relatively short (a mile or so) distances. Verizon
reportedly spent 1.9 billion for spectrum allocation in mostly heavy urban areas in the
US.1
It didn’t take Madison Avenue (the traditional home of the US advertising industry) to
recognize radio for its true and highest calling: a new platform from which to sell ads
and paid sponsorships. By the end of the 1920s, the majority of American households
had at least one radio in the home, and there were over 600 licensed radio stations
nationwide broadcasting news, sporting events, and entertainment in the homes of
millions. The 1930s is known as the golden age of radio, and it produced some
content and entertainment characters that continue to find audiences today: Sherlock
Holmes, the Green Hornet, Dragnet, the Lone Ranger, and Tarzan, just to name a
few. You might also recognize the names of the radio broadcasting companies that
came into the world in the 1920s: the National Broadcasting Company, (NBC), the
American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and the Columbia Broadcasting System
(CBS).
“There is nothing on it worthwhile, and we’re not going to
watch it in this household.”—Philo T. Farnsworth
It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to take the magic of
motion pictures (movie theaters were big business in the 1930s and 1940s) and find a
way to send those moving images streaming through the air on the radio waves that
were already lighting up homes around the world. What nobody expected though was
who that someone would turn out to be.
Philo Taylor Farnsworth was born in a log cabin on August 19, 1906, in the rural town
of Beaver, in central Utah. As a high school student, Farnsworth converted his family’s
home appliances to run on electric power and then sketched out an idea for a vacuum
tube that he would later use to create his “image dissector” that would make the dream
of television possible. This was 1922. He was 16 years old. By 1926, he was able to
raise the money he needed to continue his scientific work, and he moved to San
Francisco with his new bride. The very next year, on September 7, 1927, he debuted
his all-electronic television prototype in his research laboratory. Patents were filed,
and the 21-year-old inventor and his sponsors were ready to reap the rewards of their
hard work. But it was not to be.
When RCA (the largest radio production company in the United States) offered
Farnsworth $100,000 for the rights to the television camera, transmitter, and receiver,
Farnsworth and his partners rejected it as “much too low.” RCA then spent the next
nine years in court trying to have Philo’s patent protections struck down. In the end,
Philo didn’t get rich, and RCA didn’t win their lawsuits—the long-contested patents
expired in 1947, and neither party was able to declare victory. Perhaps, that
contributed to Mr. Farnsworth’s other famous quote about television to his children: “I
don’t want it in your intellectual diet.”2
1.8Summary
Before we could have the information, entertainment, and mass communications
industries, we needed masses of people gathered together in urban environments.
This gathering came about because of the Industrial Revolution, which created the
conditions for technology to flourish and the public to be able to use these developing
tools. Advances in electricity and electronics allowed our communications to
accelerate both literally and through customer adoption. From the earliest books to the
wireless 5G networks that power our smartphones, we continue to find ways to record
and share information with those around us, and in doing so, we change how we
interact with each other and the world we live in.
BSCOM/320T: Mass Communication And Media
Materials
Textbook
Gray P, & Rackham S, (2021). Mass communication and media (1st ed.). MyEducator, LLC.
Tools
MyEducator®
This week, the textbook covered the history of print and storytelling to the masses as well as
mass media today and the explosion of content in the digital age. By understanding the history
of mass media communication, we can better understand today’s technologies and how they
impact the way we communicate with each other. Respond to the following in a minimum of
175 words:
•
•
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Identify ways technology and advances in communication have changed the way you
communicate with yourself and with others.
Share in what ways technology has changed your behavior.
Discuss how these processes and behaviors remained consistent through your life. If
not, when did they change?
Share what communication medium would you like to see in the future.
To help answer these questions, consider these communication processes and activities:
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Routines or tools you use to stay up to date with current events
Mediums you use for entertainment
Tools and activities to manage communication to yourself. Such activities may include
calendar reminders, journaling, blogging, vlogging, and goal setting.
Communication with others, such as physical notes, traditional mail, social media, or
email