Media and Culture: Media Culture in Transformation
Summary
Summary Exam Media & Culture
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Course
Media and Culture: Media Culture in Transformation
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
In this document you will find all the information told in the lectures of Media & Culture. With clear highlights pointing to different themes within the document. It is especially meant for Media Studies scholars that want to check if they have noted everything told in the lectures or want to have...
What were modern communication media and which infrastructures did they rely on?
How did technological infrastructures inform the modern experience of time and space?
How were modern communication media introduced differently (EU vs. USA)?
1500 -1800 EARLY modern period
1800 - 1970 Modernity
Earliest routes of communication
Did the silk road exist before the early modern period? > YES
150 BCE - 1450s CE Silk road
200 BC - 200 CE Roman roads
Use: trading, war, etc.
New world routes
1600s - 1800s Translantic slave trade
Use: slave trade, spices, gold, etc.
1563 European Postal routes
Why could different routes/infrastructures emerge?
● Industrialisation
○ Important shift in energy sources: wood/wind/water energy became
iron/coal/steam power.
○ Strong increase of productivity.
○ Because of these innovations the productivity increases also, there is a fast
growth in populations: Urbanisation = is the increase in the proportion of
people living in towns and cities.
1
,Two waves of industrialization
1. First wave – 1800 - 1860
- Canals
- Postal networks (more expensive, wider range)
- Railroads
- Telegraph (optical & electrical)
2. Second wave – 1860 - 1900
- Gas and electrical supplies
- Urban transit systems
- Telephone
- Wireless: telegraphy
Transport infrastructures: Trains
1800: Invention of steam locomotive
1810: Steam powered trains to transport coal
1825: First passenger trains in England (Stockton & Darlington)
Trains started to change perspective WOLFGANG SCHIVELBUSCH
Before trains
Traveling meant “full sensory experience of the surrounding landscape”. Traveling
with horse and wagon meant that you could smell and feel your surroundings and engage.
But it was also a struggle, because of the terrain.
With trains
The railroads eliminate obstacles in the terrain and ignore the landscape. By
traveling on a higher speed level, the landscape gets split where necessary. Panoramic view.
Different uses of trains
Middle class and bourgeoisie
● Used to ride in carriages.
● Loss of spatial continuity, turning away from the window.
● Reading as a substitute for engagement with landscape and for interaction with other
people.
2
, ● Impact on media production and distribution novels and newspapers become highly
popular pastimes on the trains.
Working class
● Were not used to traveling.
● Large crowds in 3rd & 4th carriage.
Pre modern communication Gabriela Galdy
Before communication was unreliable > message could be intervened with.
Telecommunications
1. Message transmission – point-to-point.
2. Sending a message without physical transportation (reliable).
3. Interactive: people can reply, both ways.
Inventions pre modern communication
Optical telegraph
- Tele = at distant – Graph = to write
- Disconnects communication from transport.
Electrical telegraph
- 1830s: networks in US, UK, Germany
Telephony
- Tele = at a distance – phone = voice
- First domestic (in home) telecommunication
Cultural importance of telegraphy
● Military use
● Integration in stock market
● Integration of railway networks
● Private communication
● Changes professional communication
○ Journalism: better access to news and reliable reporting
3 Main business models
Commercial and private use of communication. It wasn’t available to everyone.
- Public monopoly: state took ownership of the entire business (eu).
- Private businesses: (north america) state licensed private companies.
3
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