From Oral to Electronic Culture

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From Oral to Electronic Culture

• Modernity and the Rise of the Mass Media

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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History of Communication

• Re-entering the Time Machine

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Todays Agenda

• Historical Narratives Media and Modernity

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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)

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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

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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?

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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
  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

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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

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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

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Overview of Medium Theory

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

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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
  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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 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

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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)

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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TUTORIAL TIP

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

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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.