HISTORICAL METHODS IN MASS COMMUNICATION (James D. Startt & Wm. David Sloan)
The first chapter outlines and discusses the three elements of historical research : evidence, interpretation, and narrative. Evidence is merely your data. Interpretation involves “history as the reconstruction of the past…. reconstruction as an interpretive act” (3). That is, after the researcher gets the data s/he must interpret the story that fits the data. Narrative is the fact that historians have to tell a story. After that the chapter gets into the debate of if history is a social science or a humanities discipline; certainly it can be placed in either category as “history is sometimes perceived as in part one of the humanities and in part one of the social sciences since it contains elements of both art and science” (10). The last section of the chapter explores the purpose of history: to tell events of the past with truth. They note that “historical time” is an important consideration, as events happened at a certain time and place and understanding that place and context within the time it actually happened is important because meanings change throughout time.
The second chapter is about history as an interpretive act. It opens with a discussion about how history is more than just recalling dates and telling what happened, it is about explaining what occurred. They list different schools of thought/stages of historical research/perspectives: nationalist school, romantic school, progressive school, consensus school, and cultural school. The nationalist school “looked on the history of America as the advancing relation of the nation’s leadership role in mankind’s improvement. To them, America was the nation chosen to lead the world to the fulfillment of mankind’s destiny: greater freedom and liberty” (22). The romantic school followed the same nationalist viewpoints as the nationalist school, however they were novice historians. The progressive school were impacted by positivism and “began to think of history as a science rather than as an art” (29). “They believed the primary purpose of the media was to crusade for liberal social and economic causes, to fight on the side of the masses of common, working people against the entrenched interests in American business and government” (29). The consensus school thought that American was based more on agreement than conflict and that its population was more united than divided. “Consensus historians generally approached communication history from the viewpoint that the media should work with the public and government to solve problems rather than create divisions by emphasizing problems and conflicts” (32). The culture school believed that the media and their culture were connected: the media influenced culture and the culture influenced media.
THE NATURE OF HISTORY READER (Eds. Keith Jenkins & Alun Munslow)
The important aspect of this reading is the outlining of the key positions one might take as a historian: reconstructionism, constructionism, deconstructionism, and endist. Reconstructionism is about getting to the truth about what happened. Constructionism considers theory (such as critical theory concepts that take social, power, political, and cultural aspects into account). It focuses on social history “because of the appeal of its key organizing concepts — class, feminism, gender and race” (81). Deconstruction breaks down previous approaches and is open to multiple perspectives. Endisms seem nihilist and pessimistic; addressing questions of if history research is dead or unimportant.
PERSPECTIVES ON MASS COMMUNICATION HISTORY (Wm. David Sloan)
This reading at first rehashes a lot of the material found in the Historical Methods in Mass Communication selection (not surprising, as they were written by the same author). It lists again the different ideologies (schools, approaches) and then talks about interpretation in historical methods. He talks about the values and problems with using interpretation. The second section of the reading explores the exploration of truth in historical research. He opens the section/chapter with: “Let us begin with a statement of fact: The study of history is one of the most important dimensions of modern thought…. It is worth remembering, however, that the scholarship associated with it is among the best and most vigorous of any field of learning and that it contributes to the well-being of contemporary life” (14). Some roadblocks to the truth that he’s identified include historians coming to conclusions prior to having read/gathered the full record of available information, privileging the narrative interpretation over the collected facts, and by skipping past the primary sources and relying too heavily upon secondary ones.
HISTORICAL THEORY (Mary Fulbrook)
The thesis of this book seems to be the destruction (or criticism, if put more nicely) of the concept of “True Stories” or the obsession with “Important Facts about Things Which Really Happened” (3). She also stresses the importance of theory and history; much of the readings so far have seemed to push away theory (some overtly trivializing its use). Fulbrook embraces it. She says, “the very plurality of approaches in history suggests that there is in fact no single disciplinary approach: that ‘history’ actually only refers to the subject matter — that which has gone, the past — and to a distinctive set of theories and methodologies” (7). In her discussion of Holocaust history, she notes that different historical analyses are possible when using the same data and multiple results can be equally valid (8). By summarizing research by Kershaw, Fulbrook shows how by researching and re-researching and telling new (old) stories of the Holocaust has greatly changed and strengthened our understanding of Hitler’s role in the Holocaust (115).