Film as a Mass Medium

From the Beginning to Mass Media

The occurrence of human communication over time and at a distance is much older than are the mass media now in use. This process was integral to the organization of early societies, which persisted for long periods and extended over large areas.

In general, the more open the society, the more inclination there has been to develop communication technology to its fullest potential, especially in the sense of being universally available and widely used.

The history of media already shows up certain important differences between societies, for instance the large variation in the readership of books and newspapers or in the rates and pace of Internet diffusion.

Print Media: the Book

The history of modern media begins with the printed book – certainly a kind of revolution, yet initially only a technical device for reproducing a range of texts the same as, or similar to, what was already being extensively copied by hand. Only gradually does printing lead to a change in content – more secular, practical and popular works (especially in the vernacular languages) as well as political and religious pamphlets and tracts – which played a part in the transformation of the medieval world.

Books were meant both to last and to be disseminated within limited circles. The modern book is a direct descendant of this model, and similar uses are embedded within it.

The later development of the library has given it some claim to be considered not only as a medium but even as a mass medium. It is certainly often organized as a means of public information and was envisaged from the mid-nineteenth century onwards as an important tool of mass enlightenment.

The book as a medium and institution: key features 2.1

Print Media: the Newspaper

It was almost two hundred years after the invention of printing before what we now recognize as a prototypical newspaper could be distinguished from the handbills, pamphlets and newsletters of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The seventeenth-century commercial newspaper was not identified with any single source but was a compilation made by a printer-publisher. In a sense the newspaper was more of an innovation than the printed book – the invention of a new literary, social and cultural form – even if it might not have been so perceived at the time. The later history of the newspaper can be told either as a series of struggles, advances and reverses in the cause of liberty or as a more continuous history of economic and technological progress.

2.2 The newspaper as medium and institution: key features

The newspaper did not really become a true ‘mass’ medium until the twentieth century, in the sense of directly reaching a majority of the population on a regular basis, and there are still quite large inter-country differences in the extent of newspaper reading (see Box 2.3). Percentage of non-readers in the adult population of some European countries

2.3

The party-political press

One common early form of the newspaper was the party-political paper dedicated to the task of activation, information and organization. The party newspaper (published by or for the party) has lost ground to commercial press forms, both as an idea and as a viable business enterprise. The idea of a party press, even so, still has its place as a component in democratic politics.

The prestige press

The late-nineteenth-century bourgeois newspaper was a high point in press history and contributed much to our modern understanding of what a newspaper is or should be. The new prestige or ‘elite’ press was independent from the state and from vested interests and was often recognized as a major institution of political and social life (especially as a selfappointed former of opinion and voice of the ‘national interest’). It tended to show a highly developed sense of social and ethical responsibility (in practice fundamentally conformist) and it fostered the rise of a journalistic profession dedicated to the objective reporting of events.

The popular press

The last main type of newspaper has been with us for a century or so without much change of essential character. This is the truly ‘mass’ newspaper that was created for sale to the urban industrial masses and designed to be read by almost everyone. It was a fundamentally commercial enterprise.

Other Print Media

The printing press gave rise to other forms of publication than book and newspaper. These include plays, songs, tracts, serial stories, poems, pamphlets, comics, reports, prospectuses, maps, posters, music, handbills, wall newspapers and much more.

Film as a Mass Medium

Film began at the end of the nineteenth century as a technological novelty, but what it offered was scarcely new in content or function. It transferred to a new means of presentation and distribution of an older tradition of entertainment.

· film as ‘show business’

· the use of film for propaganda is noteworthy

· the emergence of several schools of film art

· the rise of the social documentary film movement

Last 2 strands have a link, partly fortuitous, with film as propaganda in that both tended to develop at times of social crisis.

The main turning points in film history have been: the ‘Americanization’ of the film industry and film culture in the years after the First World War (Tunstall, 1977); the coming of television and the separation of film from the cinema. The ‘separation of film and cinema’ refers to the many ways in which films can be seen, after initial showing in a film theatre. These include television broadcasting, cable transmission, videotape and DVD sale or hire, satellite TV and now digital broadband Internet and mobile phone reception.

2.4 The film medium and institution: key features

Broadcasting

Radio and television have, respectively, a ninety and a sixty-plus-year history as mass media, and both grew out of pre-existing technologies – telephone, telegraph, moving and still photography, and sound recording. A distinctive feature of radio and television has been their high degree of regulation, control or licensing by public authority – initially out of technical necessity, later from a mixture of democratic choice, state self-interest, economic convenience and sheer institutional custom.

A second and related feature of radio and television media has been their centralized pattern of distribution, with supply radiating out from metropolitan centres, with little or no return flow.

Broadcasting was thought too powerful as an influence to fall into the hands of any single interest without clear limitations to protect the public from potential harm or manipulation.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 362