Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society » (5th Edition)

Updated in a new 6th edition, Communication in History reveals how media has been influential in both maintaining social order and as powerful agents of change.

With revised new readings, this anthology continues to be, as one reviewer wrote, "the only book in the sea of History of Mass Communication books that introduces readers to a more expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication history". From print to the Internet, this book encompasses a wide-range of topics, that introduces readers to a more expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication history.

Part 1 - Media of Early Civilization

1. The Earliest Precursors of Writing, Schmandt-Besserat

2. Media in Ancient Empires, Innis

3. Civilization with Writing - The Incas and the Quipu, Ascher and Ascher

4. The Origins of Writing, Robinson

Part 2 - The Tradition of Western Literacy

5. The Greek Legacy, Havelock

6. Writing and the Alphabet Effect, Logan

7. Orality, Literacy and Modern Media, Ong

8. Communication and Faith in the Middle Ages, Burke and Ornstein

Part 3 - The Print Revolution

9. Paper and Block Printing – From China to Europe, Carter

10. The Invention of Printing, Mumford

11. Aspects of the Printing Revolution, Eisenstein

12. Early Modern Literacies, Graff

13. The Trade in News, Thompson

Part 4 - Electricity Creates the Wired World

14. Telegraphy – The Victorian Internet, Standage

15. The New Journalism, Schudson

16. The Telephone Takes Command, Fischer

17. Time, Space and the Telegraph, Carey

Part 5 - Image and Sound Technologies and the Emergence of Consumer Society

18. Dream Worlds of Consumption, Williams

19. Early Photojournalism, Keller

20. Inscribing Sound, Gitelman

21. The making of the Phonograph, Sterne

22. Early Motion Pictures, Czitrom

23. Movies Talk, Eyman

24. Mass Media and the Star System, Fowles

Part 6 - Radio Days

25. Wireless World, Kern

26. The Public Voice of Radio, Peters

27. Early Radio, Douglas

28. The Golden Age of Programming, Sterling and Kitross

29. Radio Voices, Hilmes

30. Radio in the Television Age, Fornatale and Mills

Part 7 - TV Times

31. Television Begins, Boddy

32. The New Languages, Carpenter

33. Making Room for TV, Spigel

34. Television Transforms the News, Stephens

35. Two Cultures - Television versus Print, Postman and Paglia

36. TV in the New-age, Jenkins

Part 8 - New Media and Old in the (Digital) Information Age

37. The Control Revolution, Beniger

38. How Media Became New, Manovich

39. Popularizing the Internet, Abbate

40. The World Wide Web, Bolter and Grusin

41. A Mobile Network Society, Castells, et al