Cultural History of the Media

Catalog description

Credits 3. 3 Lecture Hours. COURSE OVERVIEW. Explores the origins and development of media systems across historical eras, from early symbolic communication to contemporary digital networks to technological platforms. Examines how media technologies, institutions and practices have shaped — and have been shaped by — political power, cultural values, social movements and/or economic forces. Considers media not only as tools of expression but as infrastructures that organize public life, regulate access to information and influence how communities govern, remember and relate. Engagement with real-world historical cases may include political conflict, cultural controversy, censorship, access and/or control, presented for purposes of scholarly analysis. RELEVANCE AND APPLICATION. Supports careers and advanced study in media industries, journalism, archiving or educational work. Builds understanding of how media systems evolve, why regulatory structures matter and how technological change alters public discourse, democracy, everyday life and civic participation. Provides historical perspective useful for interpreting present-day debates on platform governance, free speech, misinformation and media consolidation. Strengthens civic literacy by tracing how media systems reflect and reshape democratic values, cultural identity and public power. DEEPENING UNDERSTANDINGS. Clarifies that media history is not a linear story of innovation but an ongoing struggle over access, authority and meaning. Highlights how technologies such as printing, broadcasting, telephony and internet platforms have been shaped by policy decisions, economic interests, political desires and/or cultural anxieties and not just by invention and innovation. Encourages reflection on how present-day media assumptions differ from historical practices and how contemporary systems may one day be viewed as contested rather than inevitable. TOPICS AND THEMES. Study of media origins from oral and symbolic communication to print, telegraphy, broadcasting, film and digital networks; how media system relate to state power, commerce, religion, social movements and everyday life; impacts of infrastructure and regulation, censorship and press freedom, media monopolies and public access; and recurring questions such as: Who controls communication? How do new media displace or transform older systems? When does media empower or exclude? Course material may draw on historical examples involving political dissent, propaganda, moral regulation and cultural conflict to illustrate dynamics of media change. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.