The evolution of the media has been fraught with concerns and problems. Accusations of mind control, bias, and poor quality have been thrown at the media on a regular basis. Yet the growth of communications technology allows people today to find more information more easily than any previous generation. Mass media can be print, radio, television, or Internet news. They can be local, national, or international. They can be broad or limited in their focus. The choices are tremendous.
This timeline shows the growing importance of mass communication in increasingly compressed historical time periods. It is not an all-inclusive timeline. It is intended to provide an historical perspective and the basis for further study of the rapid development of modern media.
Rapid technological change in recent years has created an enhanced awareness of the importance and influence of different media in contemporary society. But in fact, mediated communication has been key to human existence ever since the birth of human culture. Media, understood in a broad sense as everything from rock carvings, oral hymns, coins, statues, letters, newspapers, photography, radio, TV, film, advertisements and Twitter, all have histories of their own. Once upon a time, old media were new and introduced fresh modes of connecting peoples and places. Furthermore, some media, once pivotal, are almost forgotten today. Yet, sometimes what we think of as an up-to-the-minute way of communicating actually bears important traces of ancient tradition of human interaction. Throughout history, people have used media in diverse and often unpredicted ways. That is why the power of different media is as relevant to ancient civilisations as it is to the digital age.
Media History has been an academic subject at Lund University since the 1970s, but under different names. Emerging from literature studies, it originally directed its focus towards newspapers as literature, and journalism as an art. Gradually the scope widened, with studies conducted into changes in media power, the production of journalistic ideals, and the formation of journalistic identities. The fundamental assumption of Media History is that history is needed in order to understand the media, but also that knowledge about media is crucial to the interpretation of history. If you are a history student, Media History will help you to improve your comprehension of the complexity and mediality of different historical source materials.
