History of Media

Objectives

1. To think over media communication as a reality integrated in several models of societies and in different times.

2. To know and understand the birth of each media communication and information medium within western society.

3. Get to know the history mass media, not in their technical characteristics but as answers to specific needs of specific communities within the exact social and chronological environments that have evolved and been modified throughout times.

4. To acquire knowledge on the collective ways of living that have structured public communication from the 15th to the 20th centuries.

5. Develop the practice of reading and the abilities to study, understand, compare and think in a critical way based on the medium and long duration contexts that took place in the past.

6. Develop skills in the fields of grounded knowledge, critical reflection, and opened mind towards cultural values, behavioural models and achievements different from the present ones.

Program

1. Language oral skills and writing and their social roles; non-written and non-books communication media.

2. Typography and Modernity; the persistence of manuscripts; typographical products; printers, publishers, booksellers, distributors; periodical press.

3. The pleasure of communicating and censorship; privileges and political power as a regulating societal entity; ecclesiastical power and public communication; mechanisms of censorship and of clandestine diffusion.

4. Ruptures of post-industrial society; the adjusting of technical features to the resolution of specific situations concerning long-distance communication; challenges and problematics of 19th and 20th centuries.

Teaching Methodologies

In the introduction to each lesson, the teacher invites the students to expose what they already know or suppose to know on the matter at hand for that day; afterwards the teacher explains how that theme is integrated into the syllabus and in the previous lessons, and the questions that will be considered. The teacher then develops the theme, always stimulating dialogue and the expression of doubts, reflections and debate, often resorting to texts and images concerning the past or the present. The teacher will continuously stimulate the students to read and to engage in class discussions, consult the recommended bibliography as well as any other material researched by the students and the texts provided by the professor.

Bibliography

a) Obras gerais

ALVES, José Augusto dos Santos, O poder da comunicação: a história dos media dos primórdios da imprensa aos dias da Internet. Cruz Quebrada: Casa das Letras, 2005.

BALLE, Francis, Medias et Sociétés de Gutemberg a l’Internet: presse, édition, cinéma, radio, télévision, télécommunication, cd-roms, internet, réseaux multimedia. Paris: Mont-chrestien, 1997 (título na tradução portuguesa existente na U.Açores: Os Media).

b) Algumas obras específicas (das dezenas da lista bibliográfica):

ABREU, Márcia (org.), Leitura, história e história da leitura. São Paulo: Mercado de Letras, 2002.

BERGAMINI, Oliviero, La democrazia della stampa. Storia del giornalismo. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2006.

FOGEL, Jean-François, PATIÑO, Bruno, La Prensa sin Gutenberg. El periodismo en la era digital. Madrid: Punto de Lectura, 2007.

FRANCO, Graça, A Censura à Imprensa (1820-1974). Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1993.