JOUR 230 Technological Change and Human Communication

(1 Term; 3 Credits)

Modes of human communication have been radically affected by changes in the technology of communication - from orality to literacy, from handwriting to print, and from print to electronic manipulation and transmission - and these changes are continuing. This course will explore the connections between media technologies and changing understandings of culture in the 20th century. It focuses on how innovations in print and photographic technologies, telegraphy and telephony, sound recording, radio, film exhibition, TV and video, and the transformation of analogue to digital technologies, have enabled changing visions of culture. It studies terms such as mechanical reproduction and the culture industry, the optical unconscious, massification, public sphere and media literacy, fragmentation and globalisation. Students will be introduced to the history of key media technologies, and they will try to theorize the significance of those technologies within cultural contexts.
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to understand the cultural (qualitative) approach in media studies, in addition to the social approach. Students will also have a critical knowledge of how history of media technologies is essential to contemporary culture.