Communication in History: Stone Age Symbols to Social Media [Hardcover]

This updated eighth edition provides a thorough and engaging history of communication and media through a collection of essential, field-defining essays.

The collection reveals how media has been influential in both maintaining social order and enabling social change. Contributions from a wide range of voices offer instructors the opportunity to customize their courses while challenging students to build upon their own knowledge and skill sets. From stone age symbols and early writing to the internet and social media, readers are introduced to an expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication media. New case studies explore the Black Press, the impact of photography on journalism, gender and civil rights discourses in the media, and the effects of algorithmic data on modern social media platforms.

This book can be used as a core text or supplemental reader for courses in communication history, communication theory, and introductory courses in communication and media studies.

Part One: The Media of Early Civilization 1. The Earliest Precursor of Writing  2. Media in Ancient Empires 3. Civilization Without WritingThe Incas and the Quipu 4. The Origins of Writing Part Two: The Tradition of Western Literacy 5. The Greek Legacy 6. Writing and the Alphabet Effect 7. Writing Restructures Consciousness Part Three: The Print Revolution 8. Paper and Block PrintingFrom China to Europe 9. The Invention of Printing 10. Early Modern Literacies 11. Sensationalism and News Part Four: Electricity Creates the Wired World 12. Time, Space, and the Telegraph 13. Anti-Lynching Imagery as Visual Protest in in the 1890s Black Press 14. The Telephl“¤