Spring 2007CMNS 1301 From Oral to Electronic Culture Modernity and the Rise of the Mass Media.

Spring 2007 CMNS 130 1

From Oral to Electronic Culture

Modernity and the Rise of the Mass Media


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?


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’?


History of Study in Canada

• Originally tied to policy studies in the university– ( policy, political economy and geography disciplines)

– SFU’s 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?


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

• 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?


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)


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 movement’s 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

http://www.com.umontreal.ca/spry


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


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’


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)


Adoption Cont’d

• 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

• Satellite—1980s– Canada first geostationary domestic satellite system

• Internet—1990s– Canada among fasted adopters of Internet: now over 3 in 4 citizen users

– Among first 3 nations to wire up all schools ( School Net)


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 promoted by the State


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/distribution development– eg. School Net


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


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


Thumbnail Cont’d

• 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


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 (CC:73).• 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


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


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


History of Communication

Re-entering the Time Machine


Today’s Agenda

• Historical Narratives: Media and Modernity


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)


Big Picture Ideas Today

1.History of Communication involves a Selective Story or Narrative- Narrative:a story or depiction of actual or fictional events

- Narrative: the telling of a story in a certain way

2.The Story revolves around communication technology and its relationship to society and culture1.Story can be technology centric--even determinist

2.Story can have broader focus on social change: the emergence of modernity


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)(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?


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 communication

• This tendency to technological determinism is at the heart of a transmission model of communication


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


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


Overview of Medium Theory

• Origin of Communication– Oral,– writing and – electronic forms of culture


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


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)


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


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


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


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


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


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


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 consequence—therefore Gutenberg /technological determinism less strong than supposed

-Michele Martin page 18-19


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)


Electronic 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 masses

• Search for larger markets/theory of mass society


Electronic Cont’d

• 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


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


Major Epochs of Communication History

• Pre Modern– ( oral and early print media)

• Modern – ( late print and electronic media)

• Post Modern– ( digital media)


Pre Modern ( 1000 BC to 1500s)

• Pre Modern– Close 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)


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


Pre Modern Con’td

– 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


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


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


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


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


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)


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


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/development process


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 CC:61– Modernism and its opposite, post modernism are

the focus of cultural studies


“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


Conclusions

1. History of Communication involves a Selective Story

2. The Story most often 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


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.Canada has two of the most famous communication historians and medium theorists in the field: Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan


QUOTES OF THE WEEK• History is a retelling of the past…but the story of

the past can be told in many different ways…CC:33

• History is a useful guide to understanding the present and the future… CC:33.– 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 history…CC:63


TUTORIAL TIP

Start reading Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model

of Communication as a variant on the

Transmission Model


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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Spring 2007CMNS 1301 From Oral to Electronic Culture Modernity and the Rise of the Mass Media.

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