CMNS 110 Spring, 2007 “COURSE TEXT”:
WORKING DRAFT
[Intro now moved to bottom of page]
Names followed by a (*) refer to books useful as secondary
or additional sources. These can be located in the
posted bibliography.
---
I.
ARCHAEOLOGY,
PRE-/PROTO-HISTORY: Pheimei- and Phonocentric cultures.
1.
Ricorso (once again, anew): On the somatic origins’ return;
change, continuity, and value of knowledge
2. Material culture: crafts, skills,
intelligence, strategy and
arts (tools, fabrics, vessels, weapons and ornaments)
3. The social
chronotope: Time-space apprehension and
management
4. Gesture, proxemics & communication;
body images and
languages
5. Intention and expression;
perception and interpretation
6. Acoustic space and
oral cultures
7. Shamanism, word (goeteia)-
and atmospheric/situational-magic: “special
effects” in animate worlds.
8. Ritual and social communication
9. Tribe, clan, and beyond: trade,
raiding, and learning: sedentism.
10. Invention of writing
systems: Characteristics and
comparative histories of writing systems: From
cuneiform to papyrus and hieroglyphics
11. Command, hierarchy, and
organization
- Warfare and empire
- Mail: the mobile
command
12. Civilization, empire, and media
- Fertile Crescent
- Sumer
- Akkad
- Egypt
- Indus Valley
- Yellow River
- Persia
- Astronomy & calendars
- Mathematics
- Social organization
- Diplomacy
II.
GREEK LEGACY
13. Myth:
- Myths of communication: Hermes & Iris
- Homer (c. 700/other sources give
900? BCE)
- Hesiod (c. 700 BCE)
14. The alphabet & spread of primary
literacy; visual space
- Julian Jaynes *
- Jack Goody *
15. Orality and
literacy, the emergence of
democracy and the city state
16. Rhetoric
- Isocrates (436–338 BCE)
- Jeffery Walker*
- Thomas Cole *
17. Heralds & healers
- Asclepius’ serpent and the
semeion
- Hippocrates of Cos II or Hippokrates of
Kos (c. 460 BCE — c. 370 BCE)
18. History
- Herodotus (5th century BCE; 484 BC -
ca. 425 BCE)
- Thucydides (between 460 and 455
BC–c. 400 BCE)
- Athens
- Alexandria
- After Alexander: Hellenism
-
19. Sophists and the Paideia
- Werner Wilhelm Jaeger (1888 - 1961)
20. Philosophy
- Socrates (470 BCE-399 BCE)
- Plato (ca. 427-347 BCE)
- Aristotle (384 BC-322 BCE)
III.
ROMAN LEGACY
21. Rhetoric and letters
- Quintilian (35 - 95)
- Cicero (106–43 CE)
- Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis
(534)
22.
Ars Memoria: Mnemonic technique
- Simonides of Ceos (ca. 556 BCE - 469 BCE)
-
Rhetorica ad Herennium
ca. 85 BCE
- Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
23. Roman History and Law
- Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus),
(23–79 CE)
- Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56 – c. 117)
- Mestrius Plutarchus (Greek:
Πλούταρχος;
c. 46- 127)
- Sallustius Crispus, AKA Sallust, (86-34 BCE)
- Decline
IV.
MEDIEVAL EUROPE and NEAR EAST
24.
Light off the page: Culture of the book:
- Hildegard of Bingen
- alternatively,
in German as, von Bingen or in Latin as,
Bingensis,
also known as, Blessed Hildegard and Saint Hildegard, (1098
– 1179)
- Maimonides (1135 or 1138 - 1204)
- Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274)
- Dante; Durante degli Alighieri
(c. 1265 – 1321)
25. Minstrels and troubadours
26. Block prints, heraldry, codex, and cathedrals
27. The clock and lens
- Lewis Mumford *
28. Arabic learning & rhetoric, Persian poetry
29.
“The Middle Ages” Geopolitics
of faith, trade, and war
V.
RENAISSANCE
30.
Humanism, memory and the reinvention of
Classical Antiquity
31. Memory, erotic magic, and
new arts of persuasion
- Giulio Camillo Delminio
(1480 - 1544)
- Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)
- Opera, and new music
- Sculpture and the arts
- Ioan Couliano *
32. Communication,
strategy, and arts politic
- Nicollo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527)
- Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529)
- Erasmus (c. 1469 – 1563)
- Robert Greene *
33. Perspective and print: New ways of seeing
- Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 – 1446)
- Lorenzo Ghiberti (born Lorenzo di Bartolo)
(1378 – 1455)
- Leone Battista Alberti (1404 – 1472)
- Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1398 – c. 1468)
- Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528)
36. New worlds: dawn of the age of
discovery
- Maps
- Scientific revolution
- Compass
VI.
REFORMATION &
AGE OF RELIGIOUS DISCORD
34. The Reformation: Print and
polemics
- Martin Luther (1483 – 1546)
- Ignatius of Loyola, also known as Ignacio
(Íñigo) López de Loyola (1491 – 1556)
- John Calvin (July 10, 1509 – May
27, 1564)
- Counter Reformation
- Elizabeth Eisenstein *
35. New weapons and arts of violence
VII. THE
EARLY MODERN AGE: ENLIGHTENMENT & REVOLUTION
37.
Reading publics: Women, vernaculars, and the nation-state
- Benedict Anderson *
38. French Enlightenment:
Reading, reasoning, writing –
- Denis Diderot (1713 - 1783)
- Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)
- de Condorcet (1743 - 1794)
- Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
- Paul Heyer *
39. European expansion:
exploitation, exo-anthropology and archaeology; relativism
- Chandra Mukerjee *
40. Dominance of empirical
science and experimental method
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
- Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650)
- William Leiss (1939 - )
41. Metaphor and history:
Imagination and Ricorso
- Giambattista Vico (1668–1744)
42. The Counter-enlightenment
and Romanticism
- Johann Georg Hamann (1730 - 1788)
- Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 - 1819)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749 – 1832)
- Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)
43. Civic society and public
agonistics: Birth of the press – English
Enlightenment
- Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)
- John Locke (1632-1704)
- David Hume (1711 – 1776)
44. Industrialization
- Sigfried Gideon (1888-1968)
- Witold Rybczynski *
- Adrian Forty *
VIII.
MODERNITY
45.
New media, time and space
- Stephen Kern *
- Alan Megill *
46. Positivism, circulation and
statistical science
- Claude Henri St-Simon (1760-1825)
- August Comte (1798 – 1857)
- Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874)
47. Expression in animals and
humans: Discovery of selection; ethology
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
- Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821– 1894)
48. Computers are born
- Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871)
- Augusta Ada King (nee Byron), Countess of Lovelace (1815
– 1852)
49. Photography
- Susan Sontag*
50. Social psychology and the management of crowds
- Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931)
- Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904)
- Elias Canetti (1905-1994)*
- Serge Moscovici (1925 - )*
51. Capitalism, political
economy, alienation, ideology and fetishism
- Adam Smith (1723-1790)
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)
52. German philosophy:
- Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)
- Georg Hegel (1770-1831)
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
- Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Brentano (1838–
1917)
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
- Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)
- Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
53. Spiritualism, magic, and
the electronic media
- Erik Davis *
- Randall Styers *
54. German social science:
community, society, rationalization and the work ethic
- Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936),
Voluntarism
- Georg Simmel (1858-1918)
- Max Weber (1864-1920),
charima
55. French social science
& thought: social facts, anomie, habitus
and gift
exchanges, the experience iof vitality and time.
- Émile Durkheim (1858-1917)
- Marcel Mauss (1872-1950)
- Henri Bergson
56. Media, social movements and
revolutions
57. European Hegemony: East
reaches West
- China
- Japan
- India
58. European advertising:
Chromolithography and tradition of European posters
- Jules Chéret (1836 – 1932)
- Alphonse Maria Mucha (1860 – 1939)
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa (1864 – 1901)
- William H. Bradley (1868 - 1962)
- Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942)
- Hans Rudi Erdt (1883 -1918)
- Adolphe Mouron Cassandre (1901 – 1968)
59. American advertising
- Roland Marchand *
- William Leiss, S Kline and S Jhally *
- Michael Schudson *
- Tony Schwartz *
60. Fashion
- Fashion and social process
- Clothing
- Body
- Cosmeisis
- Ornament
- Fragrance
61. Imitation and the publics:
Mass media as contagion
- Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904)
62. Mass education,
telecommunication, moral panic over the telegraph
- Telegraph
- Moral panic
63. Inventing the inventor:
- Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931)
- Alexander Graham Bell (1847 – 1922)
-
Nikola Tesla (Serbian:
Никола
Тесла) (1856
-1943)
64. Music:
- Tin Pan Alley and the music biz
- Attali *
- Eisenberg *
65. News agencies, the Yellow
Press
- Tabloids & yellow press
- Reuters
- Associated Press
66. Ricorso, myth:
- James Frazer (1854-1941)
-
Robert Graves (1895-1985)
- Joseph E Campbell (1904-1987)
- Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)
- Richard Segal *
67. From out of the past
- Herculaneum (1738), and Pompeii (1748)
“rediscovered”
- Jean-François Champollion (1790 –1832)
- Heinrich Schliemann (1822– 1890)
- Sir Arthur John Evans (1851 – 1941)
- Howard Carter (1874 – 1939)
- Vere Gordon Childe (1892 – 1957)
68.
Discovery of the unconscious and depth psychology
- Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
- Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961)
69. Libraries, access and
censorship
70. A scalpel, well-inked
- George Cruikshank (1792-1878)
- Grandville, Jean Gerard (1803-1847)
- Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
- Thomas Nast (1840 – 1902)
- George Grosz (July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959)
- Al Hirschfeld (1903 – 2003)
71. Enter Avant Garde/s (stage
Left)
- Cubism
- De Stijl
- Futurism
- Russian Constructivism
- Dada
72. Mass production and
scientific management
- Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)
- Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 - 1915)
73. Behaviorism
- John B Watson (1878-1958)
74. American Industrial Design
- Raymond Loewy (1893 - 1986)
- Norman Bel Geddes (1893 - 1958)
- Henry Dreyfuss (1904 – 1972)
IX. WW I (The
Great War)
75.
Modernism and the Great War
- Modris Eksteins *
76. Communication and
human ecology: Chicago School & Pragmaticism
- Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929)
- Robert Ezra Park (1864–1944)
- George Herbert Mead (1863 –1931)
- John Dewey (1859–1952)
- Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)
- Thomas Seobok *
- John Durham Peters *
- Daniel Czitrom *
77. Russian Formalism
- Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893 - 1984)
- Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895– 1975)
- Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (1895 – 1970)
- Roman Osipovich Jakobson (1896 – 1982)
- Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman (1922 - 1993)
78. New Crit and Language acts
- I A Richards (1893 1979)
- F R Leavis (1895-1978)
- J R Searle (1932 - )
- J L Austin (1911-1950)
79. Mass leisure and
consumerism
- Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929)
- A P Sloan Jr. (1895-1966)
- Dean MacCannell *
80. Movies & films,
methods, theory and crit
- Sergei Eisentsein (1898-1948)
- Alexander Dovzhenko (1894 – 1956)
- Dziga Vertov (1896-1954)
- Hollywood studio and star systems
- John Grierson (1898-1972)
81. Sciences of commerce and
human engineering:
- Advertising
- Marketing
- Product and retail design
- Stuart Ewen *
82. Roaring 20s: Youth, gin,
media and moral panic
83. Enter self-help &
impression management
- Dale Carnegie (1888 - 1955)
- Norman Vincent Peale (1898 – 1993)
- Robert Cialdini *
- Miki McGee *
84. Class & mass: Culture
and taste wars; the “fate” of radio
85. Games and play
- Johan Huizinga (1872 - 1945)
- Roger Caillois ((1913 – 1978)
- James S Hans *
X. WW II
(Atomic bomb)
86. Propaganda and indoctrination: Methods and theory,
controlled and uncontrolled experiments
- Joseph Goebbels (1897 – 1945)
- Gustav Gustavovich Klutsis (1895 - 1938)
- Alfred Rosenberg (1893 – 1946)
- Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924)
- Carl Iver Hovland (1912-1961)
- Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)
- Jacques Ellul (1912 – 1994)
- Victor Margolin *
87. Empirical,
“administrative,” and quantitative research:
Evidence of the 2-step flow, communities of interest, and
capillary effects
- Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (1901-1976)
88. Critical theory, false
consciousness, reification and the dialectic of
Enlightenment
- Max Horkheimer (1895 – 1973)
- Theodore Adorno (1903-1969)
- Georgy Lukacs (1885-1971)
-
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
- Herbert Marcuse (1898 – 1979)
- Hanna Arendt (1906 - 1975)
89. PR, public opinion,
persuasion and democracy
- Harold D. Lasswell (1902-1978)
- Walter Lippmann (1889 - 1974)
- Edward Bernays (1891-1995)
- Ivy Lee (1877 – 1934)
- Stuart Ewen *
90. Radio method, theory and
crit
- Reginald Fessenden vs. Guglielmo Marconi, & all
comers
- “Golden years of radio”
- Emergence of formats
91. Media power and controversy
- Orson Welles, War
of the Worlds & consequences of
Citizen
Cane.
- Joseph Raymond McCarthy vs. Edward R. Murrow
- Revlon scandal and the $64,000 question
92. Industry regulation (print
& movies), community normative standards
93. Needs and gratifications:
Limited Effects
- Herta Herzog
- Elihu Katz (1926- )
- George Elton Mayo (1880-1949)
94. Mid-range theory
- Robert King Merton (1910–2003)
95. Weapons of mass
destruction, crisis and existence
- Cold War
- Existentialism
96. Sputnik, automobiles and
automation
97. The animates
- Hero of Alexandria
- Vaucason
- Robotics
98. Consumer society, Populuxe,
popcult and Situationism
- Guy Debord & Society of the Spectacle
- Situationism
- Grant McCracken *
- Thomas Hine *
- Greil Marcus *
99. Comparative
media history and critical
determinism (Toronto school)
- Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952)and
Empire
- Herbert Marshall McLuhan
(1911-1981)-
- Eric A Havelock (1903-1988)
- Walter Ong (1912-2003)
- Neil Postman *
- Robert Babe*
- Joshua Meyrowitz *
- Ian Angus *
100. TV method, theory and crit
- Erik Barnouw* (1908-2001)
- Raymond Williams (1921-1988)
101. Information theory
- Claude Shannon (1916 – 2001)
- Norbert Weiner (1894 – 1964)
102. The news and the media
democracy movement
- Avram Noam Chomsky (1928 - )
103. Political communication
practice, theory and criticism
104. Youth culture: celebrity,
fashion, movies and music
- Stewart Ewen*
105. Structuralism, semiosis
and semioclastics
- Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913)
- Claude Levi Strauss (1908 - )
- Louis Althusser (1918 – 1990)
- Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980)
106. Cultural studies (CCCS,
AKA “The Birmingham School”): Ideology,
hegemony, resistance, appropriation and re-appropriation
- Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
- Stuart Hall (1932 - )
- Dick Hebdige (1951 – )
107. Models from physics and
biology
- Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 – 1884)
- Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (1887 –
1961)
- Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901 – 1972)
108.
Systems theory & science: communication, cybernetics
and chiasmus
- Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) Palo Alto Group
- Niklas Luhmann (1927 - 1998)
- Anthony Wilden (1935 - )
109. Pragmatics of
communication: Double bind & chorus line
- Paul Watzlawick (1921 - )
- Ronald David Laing (1927 – 1989)
- Anthony Wilden *
110. Constructivism & Dramaturgy
- Alfred Schütz (1899-1959)
- Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann *
- Erving Goffman (1922–1982),
frames and impression management
- Harold Garfinkel (1917 - )
111. Media Literacy, pedagogy
and curricula
112. Media access (coop,
student, community e-media: radio, zines, TV; film coops,
artist run centres etc.)
113. Communication regulation
and policy analysis studies
114. New rhetoric &
hermeneutics
- Ernesto Grassi (1902-1991),
- Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-2002)
- Jurgen Habermas (1929 - )
- Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984)
- Kenneth Burke (1897-1993)
- Richard McKeon (1900-1983)
- Jean Baudrillard (1927 - )
- Edward Rolf Tufte (1942 - )
- Foss, Sonja K., et al.*
115. Imitation: Desire and
violence; innovation & diffusion;
- René Girard (1923-2005)
- Everett Rogers (1931-2004)
116. Media analysis and
criticism
- Enzensberger/Baudriallrd polemic
- George Gerbner (1919 – 2005)
117. The battle over
advertising to children and media regulation
118. Anthropology and
communication
- Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917)
- Bronslaw Malinowski (1884 – 1942)
- Victor Witter Turner (1920 – 1983)
- Clifford Geertz (1926 - 2006)
- Marshall Sahlins (1930 - )
- Dean MacCannell *
119. Social network analysis
- Pierre Bourdieu (1930 – 2002)
120. Political economy of media
- Dallas Smythe (1907 – 1992)
- Armand Mattelart *
121. User studies, ergonomics
and experience design
- Donald Norman *
122. Imaging futures
- Jules Verne (1828 – 1905)
- Yevgeny Zamiatyn (1884 – 1937)
- E M Forester (1879 – 1970)
- Philip K Dick (1928-1982)
- William Gibson (1948 - )
- Neil Stephenson ((1959 - )
XII. DIGITAL
AGE & POST MODERNITY
123.
Modern and Postmodern
- Anthony, (Baron) Giddens (1938 - )
- Robert Venturi (1925 - )
- John A. Walker *
124. Post-modern criticisms:
Post structuralism; deconstruction; gender, ethnicity and
race
125. Cognitive science
126. Feminism and Gender
studies
- Christine de Pizan (1364–1430)
- Olympe de Gouges (born Marie Gouze); (1748 – 1793)
- Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797)
- The Seneca Falls Convention, Seneca Falls, New York, July
19 - 20, 1848
- Feminist daily newspapers, La
Voix des femmes, France in 1848;
Soziale
Reform,
Germany, 1849.
- Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 – 1928)
- Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962)
- Betty Friedan (1921 – 2006)
- Gloria Steinem (1934 - )
- Luce Irigaray (1930 - )
- Hélène Cixous, (1937 - )
- Julia Kristeva (1941 - )
127. Audience as author: Source
proliferation and prosumerware
128. Internet
- Wade Rowland *
129. New technologies, bodies
and identities
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 – 1961)
- Donna Haraway, (1944 - )
- Drew Leder *
130. Dematerialization,
Immaterials, & Simulations
- Jean-François Lyotard (1924 – 1998)
- Jean Baudrillard (1929)
- Arthur Kroker *
- Marshall Berman *
131. Media wars; wars made for
media
- PROs & WWII
- Vietnam
- Granada
- The Balkans
- Gulf Wars I & II
132. Digital divide & rich
mobile media lifestyles
133. New media method and
criticism
134. Global media,
globalization studies: neocolonialism; multinational
capitalism; global village, ghetto and cosmopolis
- Frantz Fanon (1925 – 1961)
- Manuel Castells (b. 1942 - )
135. Social movements, green
consciousness, and media effects
136. Convergence, media
permutation, and plenitude
A CHRONOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION
AND MEDIA THEORY AND EVENTS
For PDF, see below
Introduction
This
document is a guide – or a table of contents (TOC) --
to a rather diffuse “textbook” for this course,
a text made up of Wikipedia entries.
While only
portions of the entries will be covered
through CMNS 110 (see syllabus), the TOC provides a wide
historical context and an outline or mapping of the ideas
and reflections on communication and media since we have a
human record. The list embodies a concern with the
evolution and history of thinking about, interpreting,
practicing and criticizing, the nature, purpose and place
of communication in the human condition. We might call such
efforts at understanding and explanation communication
theories.
The study of communication, in an almost foundational
sense, operates in an interdisciplinary, perhaps a
transdisciplinary setting. Founded in its academic form and
under that name – communication – near the
middle of the 20th Century, it has produced many
scholars and its own conceptual and theoretical vocabulary.
The founders of the field were themselves often trained in
diverse disciplines, but were drawn to inquiries into
communication and mediation because of the grounding and
enabling roles media and communication processes play in
almost everything and anything else.
Because communication and mediation are integral to all
human undertakings, the study of nearly anything, in one
way or another, comes across some aspect of communication
and /or media. This implies a very large area of study for
the communication scholar – at minimum –
assembling and cataloguing what has been learned about
communication across the many fields that make up modern
scholarship, research and criticism. Rigorous and fruitful
study of any aspect of communication, by an inverse logic,
requires not only command of the subfield or
“specialty” (such as popular culture, TV
advertising and effects on children, media ownership), but
a rich grasp of the communication field overall. And this,
for all practical effects and purposes, requires a
working
knowledge, or grasp
of a “map” of the human and social sciences,
the humanities, as well as some elements of the applied and
pure sciences.
In the current context and its state of development, the
study of communication is one of the most forward-looking
fields concerned with social, economic, political,
community, cultural and psychological effects and
implications of new media and emergent technologies. The
systematic study is also arguably one of the oldest of all
the fields, claiming an unbroken line of descent from at
least development of rhetoric as an art and science during
the earliest phases of the ancient Greek cultural
experiment with ideas, technique, citizenship and reason.
Some might contend that a distinct field under the name
“communication” doesn’t exist and its
objects of inquiry are best housed as subfields of
sociology, or perhaps psychology, anthropology, business,
political science, and so forth. That an interest in
communication and mediation runs deeply in all these areas
is not only true, the contrary is unimaginable. Could any
such phenomena as studied by the other fields exist without
communication processes? Could such fields exist as such?
It is also true that the entire range of communication and
mediation practices, phenomena, and dynamics is rarely
disclosed or discussed in highly area-focused inquiries,
they’re often overlooked, or merely considered as
environmental elements or methodological issues. On the
other hand, if we do look closely at the nature of
communication and mediation phenomena, practices and
processes – especially in their developmental and
historical contexts -- we can see patterns, that repeat, or
whose apparent underlying principles resonate with one
another. It is around a set of such patterns or principles
that the list was assembled; criteria guiding the selection
might be put summed as follows:
1. How
has this person or school of thought contributed to our
understanding of how communication and media uses
articulate relation?
2. How have the person, school, or paradigm, helped us
comprehend the relationship between form and content, the
media and messages, of communication and how this
relationship shapes or conditions relations between those
who are involved in the communication?
3. In which ways have either person, idea, approach or
theory revealed the ways in which communication processes
and phenomena enable or constrain us into certain views of
reality that inform or ground the choices we make as
individuals, communities, and polities with respect to
ourselves, to each other, and the earth, our collective
home
The criteria are fairly abstract as they are meant to
accommodate or help explain a wide range of often-diverse
phenomena. Some elaboration might The first
of these criteria
refers to the bond between relation and communication.
Communication emerges out of a relation or set of relations
and both affects and effects further forms of relation. By
“relation,” we mean the ways that things are
significantly inter-related, or, more forcefully,
co-inter-dependant.
-
Communication affects
relation because it
conditions, colours, or modifies the nature of the
relation, or “the way we are” and what we can
do about our experiences and feelings regarding our selves,
things, and others in such relations.
- Communication also
effects
relation, or is
an effector
of relation, in
that communication makes relation happen, or makes it
“real.” When you think consciously about a
friend who is far off, you “represent” that
person to yourself in memory, perhaps in a wish or feeling.
Your relation to that person, albeit “having only
come to mind,” has also been reaffirmed, realized.
Because communication makes relation “real” and
“objective,” it can be said to be
ontogenetic
or
reality-producing, and therefore it is also
ontomorphic
shaping reality,
and ontoeconomic
because it enables
our management of, or negotiations over, the kinds of
realities we chose or are constrained to live.
The second
criterion -- the
one dealing with the relation between form and content, in
some ways – lies at the very core of reflection on
and inquiry into communication. To translate the two sides
of the formula; on one side we find terms and ideas like
form, media, technique, means, channel, and all expedients,
material and immaterial (e.g. speech) used to convey,
gather, or retrieve and process intelligence or messages.
On the other side, we have the content, the message, the
information, data, account, narrative, story, the
intelligence.
Now, on reflection, it is pretty clear that form and
content are inseparable. Think, for example, of saying or
hearing “That’s great,” and all the
different ways that can be expressed or taken based on: how
you feel, the situation, people in the situation, your
state of mind, their state of mind, and so on? A novel
without the form of the book is a maybe a good oral story
(if a very long one, hard to follow too), perhaps a bad
film, or an interesting TV show, but it is no longer a
novel. “Wait,” I hear someone say, “what
about serialized novels such as (used to) appear in
newspapers and magazines?” Good point. But, what then
makes such a text a “novel,” albeit a
serialized one? Well, there are formal properties we expect
in novels – extensive character and situational
development, description and rich use of language, a plot
that keeps us interested, length of telling the tale
(otherwise we have a short story or a novella), and so on.
Further: The experience of reading a novel from a book is
different in many ways from reading a novel in installments
(piece by piece) that appear periodically (weekly, daily,
monthly). Keeping such a novel in order to reread later it
is also a different matter than putting a book on a shelf,
and so on. So, form in the sense of a material thing, and a
certain quantity and quality of language, and a set of plot
and character conventions, provide some of the formal
properties by which we define a thing we call a novel. We
say movies are based on novels, but do not call or
experience such movies as novels.
The terms “form” and “content” are
abstractions, but can be effectively used to explore many
communication and mediation phenomena. Networks can be
thought of as form and content, people the latter and the
technology and communication conventions developed by them,
as the former. TV is a form, and it is a source of content.
The shows are themselves created within certain TV
narrative conventions and genres (forms), and programmed at
certain times (“form,” again) in order to
optimize on potential audiences. What then is the content
of the shows? Stories, entertainment, interpretation,
framing, ads, and behind all of these are people who
“do it” and, behind all of them, you and me.
The form/content question lies at the core of any inquiry
into communication because it has to do with the relation
between those who communicate as this is
expressed and enabled by a medium (sing.) or media
(pl.). It is this middle
term – the medium, and how
this medium conditions
expression and
reception, or the movement (including storage and
retrieval) of intelligence, what kind of resource it is,
who controls or has what kinds of access to it, with which
effect on message, people, and their current, previous or
subsequent relation? – that informs communication
inquiry and establishes its unique perspective on the human
condition.
The third
criterion has to do
with how the first two criteria (communication making
relations real, articulating them + media as conditioners
of communication, form/content) combine to then influence
our experiences, expectations and efforts imagining,
nurturing, and maintaining our realities, while living in
the larger ones imposed on us by the world and human
affairs. Simply put: How does communication and media
practice shape our personal and social realities? Such
realities are very “real” since they can have
decidedly wide-reaching and muscular consequences. Such
realities – whether we call them laws, cultures,
personal lifestyles and world views, interests, paradigms.
opinions or ontologies – shape what we think is
“real;” right and wrong; what acceptable and
what deplorable; what’s too much and what not enough;
rights and responsibilities; who we are and seek to become;
where and how we belong (or not), to, how and with whom;
what is worth time and energy (attention) and what can or
should be disregarded.
To play all three criteria out in a formula: Communication
makes relations real, articulating them; mediation
conditions or modifies communication, form/content =
together these processes shape personal and social
behaviour with respect to peoples experiences and
expectations of self, others, and things. People, ideas,
institutions, , as well as some events and technological
developments that shed light on any part or combination of
parts of these criteria were included in the list.
Content &
Organization
As
said at the outset, the TOC or chronology is informed by an
interest in the evolution of the ideas, or
“memes,” that make up the explanatory and
critical models used currently to understand, assess, and
inquire into what communication is, its significance it has
for the ways we are, and can be, in the world. The
chronology provides a non-exhaustive, but comprehensive,
survey of key ideas drawn from across the breadth of work
and thought in various disciplines, which have been brought
together into our current systematic study of
communication.
As the interest is in the evolution,
or archaeology
of communication
thought, critique and explanation, the information follows
a roughly chronological plan. The entries are themed, but
focus on figures or people rather than
“disembodied” ideas (although a glossary of
ideas is well in the works, and such are already available
on the Web). I chose this approach not to put the emphasis
on the contribution of a “great individual,” or
advance what was formerly known as “great man”
theory, but rather because biographies are a serviceable
way to “wrap one’s head around” history.
Biographies lend themselves to learning in two ways: First
they set ideas in their lived context, we see ideas evolve
for reasons, thus enriching our grasp of why certain ideas
emerged as they did, what influenced them, how they
influenced others, how they fared in the larger discourse
of their age, and how they changed as they entered into
(and perhaps changed) our field? Secondly, the emphasis on
biographies provides what the practitioners of the
“ars
memoria,” or “the arts of
memory,” would have recognized as a
“mnemonic” aid and tool for developing
“copia.” From the POV of memory, it’s
sometimes easier to remember and recognize abstract ideas
when they have a “human face” and story to go
with them.” “Copia” refers not to
“copying,” but the store of background
knowledge that assists discernment. Discernment enhances
the ability to evaluate an idea with respect to how
effectively it describes communication and mediation
phenomena both as given to experience and described by
other thinkers (thereby obviating reinvention of inferior
wheels).
Why
Wikipedia?
Entries comprising the
chronology on-site (meaning on my website) are all linked
to corresponding Wikipedia entries; it’s therefore
not unfair to say that the text is Wikipedia’s, not
mine. I do assume responsibility, however, for the
selection, sequencing, overall organization, as well as the
introductory glosses and commentaries. Wikipedia does offer
a free e-textbook on communication theory, but – from
my POV – the Wikipedia text is limited in its
historical scope, organizational emphasis, and inclusions.
Students are encouraged to access the text and compare for themselves.
At any rate, this is not meant as a critique of
Wikipedia’s selections or “textbook,”
but rather an effort set the study of communication in
its broader historical, intellectual and practical
contexts, as well as include some of the often
overlooked “fringe,”
“unconscious” or overlooked phenomena and
areas of research and reflection.
Wikipedia, is itself a phenomenon
in the history of
communication and media. Impossible without either the
technological infrastructure supporting it, nor without the
unique voluntary collective efforts realizing and attending
to it, the huge and growing multi-lingual open data-base
seems to realize the goals of the first Encyclopédie
of the French
Enlightenment. Wikipedia is original in the way it creates
and “tends” the entries, Wikipedia’s
organization has a unique internal structure and sense of
corporate (“collective,” Wiki is a
not-for-profit), identity and mission. More on what
Wikipedia works and how it’s organized from
its CEO.
At this juncture to ensure that more than one POV adheres,
one might go to a search engine or two and type
“What’s wrong with Wikipedia?,” or
“How far can I trust Wikipedia?” into the
search field. It is scholarly and research best practice to
exercise diligence with sources, i.e., not accepting
evidence based on one source, regardless of how compelling
it may seem. Search engines provide a ready-to-hand
resource to run quick spot-checks on the data, as well as
on sources and institutions. While search engines and the
sites you find are important learning and research assets,
they cannot supplant the net-based and off-line research
skills and strategies that will be introduced in special
library seminars included in the course.
Search engines and the resources of the Internet do not
obsolesce books, and what is to be gained by thoughtfully
following of a sustained, well-developed and organized
argument. Wikipedia entries are notes or glosses that are
very useful, but they condense large bodies of ideas and
argument into bite-size chunks accessible to nearly anyone
of any reasonable level of literacy. A fine point of
departure and mapping, but not the only, nor the best,
source of information and insight required to either think
“outside the box,” or really master a field.
One of the benefits of Wikipedia, however, is that it
points readers to additional internal as well as external
sources, including, importantly, bibliographies. While it
is true that we need tools like Wikipedia to help us
navigate the ever more quickly unfolding world of
technologies, media, and the social dynamics that circulate
through & around them, it is also true that much of
what Plato said about communication, mediation and human
relations applies today as well as it did 2400+/- years ago
when he wrote it.
How to use
this text?
First
thing to note is that we will not cover all the material in
the TOC. Much of it’s there for context: the more of
the context you get to on your own, of course, the better.
“Going there,” is made easy, once you’re
in Wikipedia, as most of the entries are richly interlinked
opening to explanatory pages and entries. Most entries also
include bibliographies, though some are weaker in this
regard, and often enough Wikipedia asks readers who can to
add citations as these have been left out. That said, we
can use the relational aspect of
Wikipedia-as-cross-referenced-data-base to help us navigate
around the major ideas used today in the field.
Just as I’ve recommended checking Wikipedia entries
using Search engines, you’ll have acquired, James
Watson’s & Anne Hill’s Dictionary
of Media and Communication Studies. (6 ed. London: Arnold; Oxford
University Press, 2003) to facilitate quick cross-checks of
Wikipedia material against authored and peer reviewed
material (which has gone 6 editions, not bad). I think
you’ll find that the two sources don’t always
agree, nor do they always frame discussions in the same way
or arrive at similar conclusions. Additionally, much
technical material and vocabulary available in Watson and
Hill has not been included in the TOC at this stage of the
document’s development. Many of the entries in Watson
& Hill will be in Wikipedia. Ones not in Wiki, or those
from Wiki not represented in Watson and Hill become
automatically interesting – why have they been left
out? What does it tell us about the topic, and about the
sources we’re using to learn about it?, And so on.
Additional places to check on the web:
Martin Ryder’s
Communication Theory (University of Colorado at
Denver School of Education)
Archives by Theory is useful, as is
Communication
theories, from The University of
Twente, Netherlands.
Theory Org. out of the UK is s
serviceable resource, as also the
EServer Cultural Studies and Critical Theory
Collection. A broad range of entries
are also located at
Cultural Theory, Cultural
Studies.
The TOC also provides a broad outline for the course
lectures and tutorial briefings. Readings, that is topics
to be worked through, will usually be assigned in clusters.
For exams, you will be responsible for the substantive
content contained in the course literature. Tutorial
briefings will also be based on Wikipedia and will be drawn
from readings assigned for the week or others, pending your
TA’s approval &/or guidance. The research
assignment will also be related to Wikipedia: You will be
required to either create a proposed Wikipedia entry on a
course related person, idea etc that doesn’t yet
exist in Wikipedia -- or -- following a research-driven
critique of an extant entry, re-write the entry in
corrected form. The final, as opposed to the midterm, will
require both command of assigned readings as well as of
Plato’s Phaedrus.
We’ll cover Plato in the last weeks of the semester.
Finally, a nitty-gritty, if you will: I do not recommend
building your own reading notes using the
“copy-paste” method directly from Wikipedia or
other web entries &/or sites. You may end up with a
pretty niftie set of notes on material you actually know
little if anything about. Recommended, therefore: Write out
your notes by hand, condense them, add such pertinent
explanatory information as you dig up following links, THEN
input your notes. Takes longer, no doubt, but may have a
very positive effect on the learning process. If you have a
photographic memory, good for you; for the rest of us,
non-automated processing by hand is usually helpful.
Compiler: R Onufrijchuk,
January 2007.