A Plausible Look on the Evolution of Media

The evolution of media, in basic terms, is the study of the progression of methods used to communicate a message. To study this progression we must first understand two things; the nature of history and the process of mass communication.

The Process of Mass Communication
The process of mass communication is very similar to the linear model of communication created by Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver in 1948.

Shanon weaver model of communication

 

1. It begins with professional communicators (sender) who gather, edit or design media content. They decide on the message being presented to the audience (receiver).
2. The message is encoded by production specialists who prepare it for transmission.
3. It is then quickly transmitted as information via the particular media. This stage is continuous not irregular, meaning it is done on a schedule.
4. The audience receive and interpret the information. What people interpret is heavily influenced by the people around them. Now due to the influence of social media, telephones etcetera their ability to interpret what they receive has been enhanced as the people that we can communicate with is now of a much wider variety.
5. The individuals develop their own personal opinion of the information as he/she is drawing on their own meaning of the verbal/non-verbal symbols.
6. This then influences them to some degree due to the learning and interpreting the possibly new information.

The Nature of History

“History is a continuous, systematic narrative of past events…”
-Laurence Urdang

History is the study of past events. It is widely composed of theory and conjecture making it difficult to be viewed as truth unless compared with relevant sources and found to be consistent to those sources. In fact it is commonly believed that it is impossible to have impartial history. One reason is that we infuse any understanding we have of the past with our own bias. Also the history we know could have been altered by the current rulers to fit their image. Not to mention objects don’t stay the same. If something is added or broken from the object it will remain from the accounts of history making it appear that it originated like its current state. It is things like this that make history doubtful.

Conclusion
Now that we have a decent understanding of history and mass communication I can begin to explain why it is important to have this understanding of how history works when studying the evolution of media.

George Santayana

 

Everything has a beginning and an end. In order to understand the result you must first analyse the cause. Disregarding this principal would be like running a race without first learning how to walk. The same applies to media. In order to understand how it works we have to learn where it comes from. This allows us to learn from the mistakes that have been made in the past by our predecessors.

Since we have learnt that most of history cannot be taken at face value we know to be careful when investigating the study of the progression of methods used to communicate a message i.e. the history of EOM. We know that the only way to achieve an impartial view in history is to take two writings about the story and compare them in order to check their accuracy.

In order to apply this to the evolution of media we could read an extra book as well as the readings set by the teacher. As the course is open to other views, as long as facts/evidence supporting the view can be provided, we can use this logic to create a more accurate course enhancing and sharpening our knowledge.