Bachelor of Communication (Communication and Media Studies)

“Archiving Print, Screen & Broadcast Media”

Or….. a glimpse into the history of

Communication & Media Studies

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for.

-- Socrates

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

-- Isaac Newton

You don’t know what you don’t know.-- Modern axiom

Let’s start with

print media’s history…

Modern mass communication is the liberation of the communication form from its place of creation.

-- Hirst & Harrison 2007, 81

The 1st Printer - otherwise known as the “movable type” developed by Johann Gutenberg (1398-1468)

Encouraged literacy

Disseminated ideas more

rapidly

Fostered greater

standardisation of texts

Cultural effects of print

1450 ... 1455

Gutenberg Bible – the 1st full book published

Took 5 years to produce... And we can’t stand waiting 1 or 2 minutes for a page to print!!

The print media has undergone major cultural shift over many decades…

From: Agitational party press(agenda-driven print media)

To: Capitalist conglomerate(profit-driven print media)

•Media concentration•Oligopoly

•Partisan•Propaganda•Handbills

Ask yourself:

What’s the point of printing?Or why do we bother to print anything?

ANSWER: We print because…..

Daniel Defoe, 1660-1731Best known for his book Robinson Crusoe

Defoe, the ‘father of modern journalism’ - he printed, and was therefore a:•Propagandist•Pamphleteer•Social commentator

Journalism & Print =

1) Active citizenry2) Agenda setting 3) Freedom & Power

That’s why…..

Freedom of the Press (as the 4th estate) is very much defended in liberal democratic societies today.

But there are risks to this model….

The primary content of newspapers today is

commercialised news and designed to appeal to broad

audiences, to entertain, to be cost effective and

whose attention can be sold to advertisers.-- Picard 2004, 61

Risk 1: Economic shift

Risks 2 & 3:

2) Regulatory Interferences(Censorship, Media Policies, Controls, etc.)

3) Imperialism/Homogenisation (or too many of the same mass content/programmes, especially from Hollywood..)

Risk 4: From hot metal to Hotmail (or The Internet)…

Okay… now we know a bit about print media.

What about Screen & Broadcast Media???

Churchill: “We shall never surrender”

Churchill: The power of radio

The power of radio:- Flexible & economic production (cheaper, lighter, more immediate)- Mobility in use (not fixed in one location like TV)- Participant potential (talk back)

Churchill (1940) maximised the power of radio to boost and maintain morale in World War II.

Radio used as a means to bypass gatekeepers of print and television.

Still being used today…..

End of an era? Or start of another?On 1 August 1981, at 12.01am, MTV aired its first music video, Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles.

This debut is remembered as the breakthrough cultural event of the early 1980s, marking the beginning of the music video era.

This video celebrated the birth of one new medium – the music video – and mourned the waning of another – radio.

You can view the music video on youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvvCupfpric

Historically, radio persists as a technology of mass populism, evolving from broadcast to podcast.

What programs are we watching on free-to-air television today?

(What’s free-to-air? You can surely find out on www.wikipedia.com, can’t you? Isn’t screen-based media technology amazing?)

Free-to-air TV: Who pays?

Commercial BroadcastingCommercial Broadcasting

BBC Public Service ModelBBC Public Service Model

Indeed, there’s no business like show business….

Commercial impetus

Public service ‘dialogue’

Tension

Public service broadcasting must also be good for business.

-- Phelan, 1991 (in Hirst & Harrison, 2007, 146)

TV Screen enables mediated participation

[Television has become] such a formidable instrument for maintaining the symbolic order.

-- Bourdieu 1998 (in Hirst & Harrison 2007, 147)

Citizenship and participation are mediated by television programming, especially via television news.

Ironically, television being the “arena for both entertainment (mass culture) and for political participation” (Hirst & Harrison 2007, 146), it is also the site for reinforcing and perpetuating deeply entrenched ideologies (or hegemony).

Reality TV: Really?

Make money all the way

Make money all the way

Looking ahead...

On 6 June 2000, eStudio.com helped usher in another paradigm-breaking medium with a parody of the original MTV video – Internet Killed the Video Star.

Like the video it parodies, Internet Killed chronicles the explosive growth of a whole new medium: the Internet!!!

The Internet as the new risk?

After video was purported to supplant radio, the Internet appears to at first directly threaten future of television.

See video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiB0VgOKojg

Form and content of programming has changed.

Free-to-air model under threat from ‘pay per view’ and Internet-based TV series.

Crisis of TV networks, future of broadcasting is uncertain.

There’s only one way to find out and explore further….

Study Communication and Media Studies at Murdoch Uni.

For more information, visit: www.murdoch.edu.au

Thank you for checking this presentation out.

Presented by A/Prof Terence Lee & Daniel Chan