8th Edition
Communication in History Stone Age Symbols to Social Media
This updated eighth edition provides a thorough and engaging history of communication and media through a collection of essential, field-defining essays.
The collection reveals how media has been influential in both maintaining social order and enabling social change. Contributions from a wide range of voices offer instructors the opportunity to customize their courses while challenging students to build upon their own knowledge and skill sets. From stone age symbols and early writing to the internet and social media, readers are introduced to an expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication media. New case studies explore the Black Press, the impact of photography on journalism, gender and civil rights discourses in the media, and the effects of algorithmic data on modern social media platforms.
This book can be used as a core text or supplemental reader for courses in communication history, communication theory, and introductory courses in communication and media studies.
Part One: The Media of Early Civilization
1. The Earliest Precursor of Writing
Denise Schmandt-Besserat
2. Media in Ancient Empires
Harold Innis
3. Civilization Without Writing—The Incas and the Quipu
Marcia Ascher and Robert Ascher
4. The Origins of Writing
Andrew Robinson
Part Two: The Tradition of Western Literacy
5. The Greek Legacy
Eric Havelock
6. Writing and the Alphabet Effect
Robert K. Logan
7. Writing Restructures Consciousness
Walter Ong
Part Three: The Print Revolution
8. Paper and Block Printing—From China to Europe
Thomas F. Carter
9. The Invention of Printing
Lewis Mumford
10. Early Modern Literacies
Harvey J. Graff
11. Sensationalism and News
Mitchell Stephens
Part Four: Electricity Creates the Wired World
12. Time, Space, and the Telegraph
James W. Carey
13. Anti-Lynching Imagery as Visual Protest in in the 1890s Black Press
Amanda Friskin
14. The Telephone Takes Command
Claude S. Fischer
15. Dream Worlds of Consumption
Rosalynd Williams
16. Wireless World
Stephen Kern
Part Five: Image and Sound
17. Visual Reportage I
Thierry Gervais
18. Visual Reportage II
Richard Meyer
19. Inscribing Sound
Lisa Gitelman
20. The Making of the Phonograph
Jonathan Sterne
21. Early Motion Pictures
Daniel Czitrom
Chapter 22 “Talkies” and Stardom
Michael Slowick
Part Six: Broadcasting
23. Early Radio
Susan J. Douglas
24. The Golden Age of Programming
Christopher Sterling and John M. Kittross
25. Race on Radio
Barbara Savage
26. Television Begins
William Boddy
27. Making Room for TV
Lynn Spigel
28. From Turmoil to Tranquility
Gary Edgerton
Part Seven: New Media and Old in the Digital Age
29. How Media Became New
Lev Manovich
30. Popularizing the Internet
Janet Abbate
31. The World Wide Web
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin
32. A Cultural History of Web 2.0
Alice E. Marwick
33. Social Media Retweets History
Tom Standage
34. How Algorithms Rule Online
Eiri Elvestad and Angela Phillips
Discussion Questions
Suggested Readings
Credits
Index
Biography
Peter Urquhart is Associate Professor in the Communication Studies Department at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.
Paul Heyer was Professor Emeritus in the Communication Studies Department at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.
