COMMUNICATION IN HISTORY (John B. Thompson and Ulrich Keller)
Thompson’s chapter talks about the development of periodical, printed news. Early news consisted of announcing events and conveying political news (113). He suggests that, initially, there four types of communication networks: (1) Religious networks controlled by the Catholic church, (2) political networks, (3) commercial networks, and (4) local networks (113). From the 14th through 16th centuries, communication was changed by the development of a post service and a printing service. Thus, printed news surfaced in the mid-16th century (114). He says that most early newspapers (or periodicals) focused on international news, so people could learn what was happening in other places. In the mid-1600s, newspapers (at least in Britain) began running local news stories. Early newspapers had to deal with censorship and tax issues, both were efforts put forth by the government to run newspapers out of business. Thus, the article describes the struggles of the original independent press (116). This makes the reader understand and appreciate what slow progress led to the free press we enjoy now.
Keller’s article talks about early photojournalism. The first news photographer is speculated to have been in the late 1800s, because earlier photography wasn’t an economical option. Keller suggests that photojournalism is an act of teamwork, as it involves the photographer, editor, and director (162). He identifies the Spanish-American war as the first war that was described in photographs (165). He says that most early papers still used drawings to illustrate their news stories (168). Like the previous article talked about the progress of printed communication, this article talks about the progress of photojournalism and emphasizes the technological determinism involved.
HOW MEDIA BECAME NEW (Lev Manovich)
Manovich opens his article describing the “media frenzy” caused by the invention of the daguerreotype. It first recorded architecture but then people wanted to be photographed by a daguerrotype. He notes that some early technology succeeded (like the daguerrotype) and some failed (like The Engine) (320). He also said that computers and modern media came about at around the same time (320). Mass society was dependent on machines: “Mass media and data processing are complementary technologies, they appear together and develop side-by-side, making modern mass society possible” (320). Mass media and data processing technology crossed paths with the development of cinema. The article focuses on tracking the development and crossed-paths of these two technologies.
THE BLACK PRESS (Robert S. Levine and Todd Vogel)
“Circulating the Nation” explores the development of the black press. Levine says that “Appeal” was the first series of articles penned by an African American that had massive influence (17). The series of articles instructed slaves to “kill or be killed” (17); calling for an uprising. By publishing the trio of articles, the author, David Walker, reached a national audience in print. Thus, Levine suggests that Walker’s articles in “Appeal” gave rise to the black press. Walker [after “Appeal”] “came to understand the importance of print to the creation of a black nationalist consciousness” (21). He joined MGCA in order to fight against the group of people seeking to create a white nation, ACS. It was suggested to Walker that black people were not welcome. The ACS published a paper to forward this mission of creating an all-white country by sending the black people back to Africa. The black response to the ACS is a sort of oppositional reading as the ACS published how great Africa was in order to send the people they thought didn’t belong in the country, thus othering them; yet the black people used it to create a sense of community and pride. It became important for the development of a black press so that their ideas could be heard in opposition to the ACS (22). Thus, the Freedom Journal was born.
Levine identifies the importance of the black press by framing it in terms of Habermas’ “public sphere” — by saying, “[w]ithin Walker’s dialogical model, then, which is not all that different from Habermas’s imaginings of a productive and rational public sphere, black newspapers, and the Appeal itself, participate in a national conversation” (29). The importance of the rise of the black press is, of course, a matter of representation and acknowledgement. Making sure people get to speak for themselves and are able to build a community that allows for discourse.
Vogel’s article describes the role of the black press for “redefining their [African Americans] role in the nation” (37). It allowed the African American people to fight back against subjugation and marginalization and fight for their place in society.
NEGLECTED NEWS: WOMEN IN PRINT MEDIA (Maria DiCenzo and Leila Ryan)
This chapter talks about Women’s suffragist print media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. DiCenzo and Ryan stress throughout the chapter that women’s print media had a dual role of first, talking to the general public to explain what women were up to and were fighting for and second, to rally the women together to keep them informed of the suffragist movement (239). They open the article by expressing their surprise that even though women were in the news and were making news that little attention has been paid academically to these types of publications in this time period. They say, “[t]hese print media are crucial to gaining an understanding of the scope and activities of a women’s public sphere at the turn of the twentieth century because they were instrumental in shaping opinion and establishing and mobilizing large- and small-scale activist networks and reform campaigns” (240).
An interesting goal of the chapter, I thought, was that they didn’t seek to examine the differences between the women’s publications at the time or how they differ from social reform publications of today; but were interested in finding the connection between these publications and similar ones of today. They also note that these publications are so important because they provide “articulation of feminist ideas through a range of print media came to influence attitudes toward women’s roles in public life” (240-1).
They also emphasize that these publications not only allowed members of the movement to have conversations with each other, but they established a “relationship with authorities and the general public” (246). Additionally, they say that these publications cannot only be thought of as propaganda, saying that such reductionism isn’t an accurate portrayal of these publications at all. Instead, they say, “alternative media [including these women’s publications] provide information about and interpretation of the world which we might not otherwise see and information about the world that we simply will not find anywhere else” (246-7). Indeed, they not only discussed issues directly related to the movement, but also general news items that related to women’s concerns such as the “women and children first policy” during the Titanic shipwreck.
Another interesting thing that I found about this chapter is that they suggest not viewing these alternative movements (such as suffragists) separately, but to consider them together “because such a move emphasizes their collective resistance to increasingly monolithic commercialized media systems…” (353).