6/3/2015 cmns -130 camurray history of communication
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TRANSCRIPT
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Today’s Agenda
History of Communication in Canada: the Transmission model ( Part One)
Historical Narratives: Media and Modernity ( Part Two)
Part Three: Harold Adams Innis and the Bias of Communication
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Part One: Technologies & Communication Theory
Key Assumptions
Key Events
Adoption of Innovation
Technological Bases of Modern Society
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Key Assumptions
Communication involves the transmission and extension of information and knowledge
The medium of transmission/shapes a society.. The medium is the key to unlock the riddle of social, economic and political development
More extreme view asserts that the medium of communication technology determines society
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Ideas about Historical Causality
Each communication technology changes the process of selection, production,organization and interpretation of information
Each technology involves a struggle between economic producers of the time for control over the profits and powers arising from the new medium: may contribute to rises of new classes
Each technology is also assessed by the State for its salience in governance & control
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Key Historical Trends
Space and time are compressing
Media are moving from social to individual forms
Each generation of communication technology spreads faster in advanced industrial economies
But, while some media have been displaced( eg. Telegraph) each successive generation of technology causes a restructuring in the priorEg. Talking pictures and radioRadio and TV
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Space/Time Compression
Waves of adoption are compressing in time: In less than three years, the Internet’s World Wide Web
spawned some 10 million electronic documents at a quarter of a million Web sites.
By contrast, the Library of Congress took 195 years to collect 14 million books (Source: Tim Miller, New Media
Resources,1995)
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History of Canadian Communication Studies
Originally tied to policy studies in the university ( policy, political economy and geography disciplines) SFU’s school created in 1983
The second national policy: like the railroad, communication seen as important for the transmission and reception of ideas, goods and services throughout Canada
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The Transmission Model
This view sees communication like transportation: in which some thing is transported from one place or person to anotherThis transmission model is defined in Grossberg et al, page 16Source/Sender-Message/Content-ReceiverKey to the history of communication studies in Canada
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Canadian Transmission Model
Defining markers of transmission model: Size of country: second largest in the world Low population density: 32 million () 200 mile corridor along the 49th parallel: US Initially dependent upon natural resource ( staple) exports, needing
good communication links from centre to periphery or colony Like the railroad, after Confederation, communications
infrastructure seen as central to: Western settlement Economic infrastructure Social development
Much early spending by the Canadian State ( rail, hydroelectric power, telegraph, post system, heavy regulation of telephones to ensure extension of service, and provision of public radio)
What Aitken, a noted economist calls Canada tradition of ‘defensive expansionism’
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Canadian Communication Studies II
Recognized by influential US historians ( James Carey, Daniel Czitrom) as producers of radical and elaborate thinkers Grounded in political economy ( English Canada) Bilingual: strong influence of Quebec Catholic
social thought (French Canada) and emphasis on cultural studies: importance of language and culture
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Adoption of Innovation
Telegraph & rise of international news agencies 1850s-1900s Canada longest telegraph network in the world Canadian inventor introduced standardized time
Telephony-1900s Canada site of first transatlantic phone message
( Cape Breton: Alexander Graham Bell)
Film 1920s-1930s
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Adoption Cont’d
Radio-1930s-50s Canada first radio service on its rail service (CPR)
Television-1950s-70s First and fastest nation to widely disseminate cable
television
Satellite—1980s Canada first geostationary domestic satellite system
Internet—1990s Canada among fasted adopters of Internet: now over 2
in 3 citizen users Among first 3 nations to wire up all schools ( School Net)
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Adoption/ Cont’d II
Canada is among the most developed communications infrastructures in the world
Many key inventors, medium theorists, rapid adoption of communication technologies, often regulated by State
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Paradoxes
Paradox: not a major manufacturer of communication technologies ( TV equipment, computer signalling equipment, satellites, although emerging in fibre etc) where it is still dependent on imports Paradox: content development ( message, production) not kept up with transmission/distribution development– eg. School NetTheme: technological nationalism
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• Part Two : Overview
Social Histories:’Narratives’
Three Main Epochs
Key Canadian Thinkers:Harold Adams Innis What is the bias of communication?What is the relationship between empire
and communication?
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Main Ideas Today
1. History of Communication involves a Selective Story
2. The Story revolves around technology and its relationship to society, communication and culture
3. The development from oral to print to electronic cultures must be understood as the Western story of Modernity.
4. Communication media both help invent/determine and construct our idea of Modernity
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Ideas II
1. Canada’s story is one of technological nationalism- Use of communication technologies to settle the country
from sea to sea- Associated with national railroad( telegraph)- Assertion and protection of national sovereignty in journey
from colony to nation - reflected in the policy focus in the study of communication
itself
2. Major thinker: Innis contributes to political economy and cultural approaches to the study,and produce seminal ideas without borders
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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 inventions—which then shape the movement from oral to print to electronic cultures of communicationThis tendency to technological determinism at the heart of a transmission model of communication
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Overview
Origin of Communication
Major EpochsPre modern Modern ‘Post’ Modern
Additional reading: Gasher and Lorimer, pages 12-27
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Origin of Communication
People have always ‘communicated’:Used non verbal signs, language and later symbols to exchange meaning in all agrarian and hunting societiesto 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 bothExchange of meaning then depends not only the word but its cultural, economic and social contextAs 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 contextFrom orality to literacy From pre modern to modern From human to mass communication
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Major Epochs of Communication History
Pre Modern ( oral and early print media)
Modern ( late print and electronic media)
Post Modern ( digital media)
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Pre Modern ( 1000 BC to 1500s)
Pre ModernClose association of control of
communication with Church or rulers or monarchs
Agrarian, dispersed societies ‘divine right’—rulers chosen by god Elite production and dissemination of
communication ( poets,scribes, monks, priests work by hand)
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Pre Modern Cont’d
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 Major historical event: invention of the alphabet and rise of clay
tablets, parchment manuscripts Custom, cosmology, 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:
Michelle Martin, page 11: Orall 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
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Oral Culture ( from prehistory to 1200s)
No recordsHistory is preserved only in the telling of the story: different sense of time ( see Grossberg, p.39)Past is present only in the speech and social institutions of a peopleCMNS 110: studies Walter Ong
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Oral Culture/Cont’d
Public culture: telling, not authorship is valued, therefore there is a tradition of collective intellectual property ‘ownership’More intimate: reliant on face to face communication, personal and socially involvedOften reinforced hierarchies of ‘elders’ or other truth tellers in society: culture seen as resistant to changeCritical view saw it as a ‘closed’ conservative society Contemporary thinking now realizes oral culture ( common sense ways of knowing, alternative “word of mouth” persist as important communication dynamics today Strictly: Supreme Court of Canada’s Delgamuukw decision accepts
native oral history as a valid basis for pursuing land claims
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Tensions: Oral/Written Cultures
Socrates ( 400 BC) emphasised oral debate at the heart of early city states
Socrates feared that the written word would threaten public discussion
Socrates student, Plato, (300 BC) sought to banish poets-his view was that written poems prevented face to face association and mediation of disputes
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Key Events in Transition to Modernity:
Gutenberg,1454Printing Press: technology of moveable type Key to industrialization, rise of colonial trading
empires, and transition to capitalism Associated with the rise of logical, linear thought,
rise of rule of law, individualism, science A technology of modernity Portable: could extend over large territory Space bias ( Innis: the Bias of Communication)
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‘Reading’ Gutenberg
The Printing Press is presented as probably the most revolutionary development in media historyMechanical production of books allowed wider spread of knowledge Book the first mass-marketed communication
medium– duplication: replaced manual labour; sped up distribution; made books more affordable
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‘Reading Gutenberg’
Press also standardized the alphabet, techniques of public communication
Broke elite control over book production and consumption
BUT: as Martin notes in the custom courseware, technologies of marketing, shipping and distribution take many centuries to become efficient
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The Historical Perspective
Michelle Martin: even in the early stages of the transition between oral and written cultures we can see that the change in the form of communication was not only related to economic factors, but also to political factors, such as legislation that allowed the state to use the new technology to wield ever greater control over the masses.( page 13-14) EG: the development of the book as a mass medium waited until
paper from wood technologies was cheaper then sheep or calfskin, until the state began to require written and signed copies of contracts; and until education in writing and reading began to spread ( literacy)
Contributes to state intervention in licensing guilds and typographers
Note: profession of author born of printing and so was the concept of copyright as legal protection of mental labour
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After Gutenberg
The invention of the Telegraph important for solidifying military and economic control over a distance ( 1850s)Invention of radio ( communication over the airwaves, and not via a printer or electrical impulse down a wire) ( 1900-1910)Invention of television and then satellites ( 1940s)Invention of the Internet ( 1950s)
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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
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Against Gutenberg II
Communication history criticised for its Western bias Asian Scholars: printing press not a Western
invention: existence in China centuries before did not have the same social consequence—therefore Gutenberg /technological determinism less strong than supposed
Read Custom Courseware: Martin page 18-19
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Part Three: Famous Canadian Historians of Pre
Modern PeriodHarold Adams Innis
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Harold Adams Innis
1894-1952Associated with U of T’s school of political economyWrote extensively about the US, communication and the McCarthy era( purge of communists)Writes about the transformation from oral to print to electronic cultureKey Ideas: Oral versus Print Cultures Time versus Space Bias ( or tendency) Empire and Communication Space and Time bias ( medium theory)
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Innis’ Empire and Communication
The fundamental basis of political and social power is to control the media of communication—this is the power to define what reality isRulers and Governors struggle to achieve ever more perfect/control over means of communicationMonopolies on knowledge are built up until the point that equilibrium is disturbedTechnological inventions compel realignmentsInventions often developed at margins, then penetrate to centreThe introduction of print allowed others to attack the temporal monopoly of the church, foster growth of capitalism, rise of nation stateEach improvement in long distance relations leads to a dialectic of de/ re centralization
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Innis’s Space and Time Bias
Posits a dialectic/tension/opposition/between space and time biases in medium theoryIf medium is durable, hard to transport quickly ( eg. clay tablets): a time bias ( pre modern)If medium is light, easy to transport with reasonable speed eg. paper: space bias. ( modern)Ideal type of time bias: oral culture: GreeceIdeal type of space bias:print culture: Rome
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Print Culture ( emergence of Modernity)
Writing changes relationship between communicator and audienceCan widen over space and timeEarly 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 developThe individual reader emerges as separate from the community
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Print Culture/Cont’d
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
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Electronic Epoch
Emergence of electrical messages ( telegraph)
Allowed almost instantaneous transmission over space and time
Fostered international rationalization of time ( standard time a Canadian inventors’ invention)
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Electronic Epoch cont’d
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 massesSearch for larger markets/theory of mass society
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Electronic Epoch Cont’d
Characterised by general interest /mass communicationLate electronic era ( satellite, internet) organized globally, and with global individualsCharacterized by specialised, personalised contentsRarely linear or logical
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“Post Modern Epoch”
Corresponds to digitization, internet and beyondPost industrial capitalism: flexible post production, consumption, individuationGlobalisationShift from nation state to global governanceIncreasing mobility of people and communicationGlobal village: versus villages
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Conclusions
1. History of Communication involves a Selective Story
2. The Story revolves around technology and the relationship to society and culture
3. The development from oral to print to electronic cultures, must be understood in the context of Modernity
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Conclusions II
1. Canada’s 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
2. A major thinkers: Innis contributes to political economy and cultural approaches to the study, with the notion of time and space bias
3. BACK TO LECTURE NOTES4. BACK TO INDEX