The History of Media - JKM245

• Title: The History of Media
• Czech title: Dějiny médií
• Guaranteed by: Department of Media Studies (23-KMS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2025
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 5
• Examination process: summer s.:combined
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:2/0, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: 40 / unknown (40)
• Min. number of students: 10
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English, Czech
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment; priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
• Guarantor: Györgyi Rétfalvi, Ph.D.; prof. MgA. Martin Štoll, Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): Györgyi Rétfalvi, Ph.D.
• Class: Courses for incoming students

Annotation

This course offers a comprehensive overview of media history from a sociocultural perspective, from primary orality to secondary literacy. To be able to understand how the current new media world works, this course provides a background perspective about how these developments originated and evolved over time. Students will be able to analyze the key events and epochs in the technological and social history of media. This course basically has a European and North American focus. The theoretical background comes from Marshall McLuhan, Walter J. Ong, Eric Havelock and Asa Briggs, Peter Burke, Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini, etc.
If you would like to find out the connection between folktales’ or Homer’s epithets and the nicknames Donald Trump sticks on his political enemies, like ‘Sleepy Joe’, ‘Comrade Harris’, you can discover that too during this course.
The course delivered in English.

Last update: Rétfalvi Györgyi, Ph.D. (13.01.2025)

Aim of the course

The aim of the course is to give an overall, brief picture about the historical milestones of the history of media. Students will be able to understand the key events and epochs in the technological and social history of media.

Last update: Rétfalvi Györgyi, Ph.D. (13.01.2025)

Course completion requirements

10% Book review 2 pages

30% Group presentation

60% Written on the spot essay exam

Last update: Rétfalvi Györgyi, Ph.D. (13.01.2025)

Literature

Obligatory readings:

Briggs, A., & Burke, P. (2018). A social history of the media: From Gutenberg to the internet. Polity Press.

Chadwick, A. (2017): The Hybrid Media System. Second edition. Oxford University Press.

Kovarik, B. (2011): Revolution in Communication. Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age. Continuum.

Ong, W. J. (1988). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. Methuen. pp. 16-57, 

 

Recommended readings:

Arnold, K. (2020b). The Handbook of European Communication history. John Wiley et Sons, Inc.

Bignell, J., & Fickers, A. (2009). A European television history. Wiley-Blackwell.

Castells, M. (2019). Rupture: The crisis of liberal democracy. Polity Press.

Eisenstein, E. L., & Cox, J. (2021). The Printing Revolution in early modern Europe. Tantor Media, Inc.

Havelock, E. A. (2005). The Muse learns to write: Reflections on Orality and literacy from antiquity to the present. Yale University Press.

Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing Media Systems. pp. 87-248.

McLuhan, M. (1970). Counterblast. Rapp and Whiting Limited.

Last update: Rétfalvi Györgyi, Ph.D. (23.01.2025)

Teaching methods

Offline frontal presentation with interactive discussions and presentation by the students. 

Last update: Rétfalvi Györgyi, Ph.D. (13.01.2025)

Syllabus

1. 1. Introduction: defining media and mass media and the historical periods of mass communication and mass self-communication
   2. The primary orality, or the first period of the pre-Gutenberg galaxy
   3. Primary literacy, alphabet and the effects of handwriting and the invention of printing press
   4. Gutenberg Galaxy, the rise of printing press, newspapers
   5. Telecommunication and the birth of radio and the brief history of photography
   6. Secondary orality: radio as a medium and the rebirth of mnemonic formulas
   7. Brief history of film as a medium of mass communication
   8. Television and the continuation of secondary orality
   9. Media systems, the polarized pluralist, the democratic corporatist and the liberal model
   10. Secondary literacy, post McLuhan galaxy: mainstream online media
   11. The effects of digitalization and media convergence, from mass communication to mass self-communication
   12. Streaming platforms

Last update: Rétfalvi Györgyi, Ph.D. (13.01.2025)