How has the study of media and communications developed over the last Essay - 1

How has the study of media and communications developed over the last century - Essay Example To some theorists, however, it is a field that encompasses various media, not just mass media. According to McLuhan’s aphorism, for example, media is anything that mediates interaction (Genosko, 2005). Whether it is human artifacts or technologies, so long as they can provide that channel for interaction, they are media. This paper looks at the history of the study of media and communications over the last century, and the theoretical approaches that have been employed to explain this development. Most people have an implicit understanding of how humans have always interacted with each other and the world. Nevertheless, very few people recognize the fact that the development of communication has been a process. It is something that has taken place within periods, and effected by different events. For instance, before the development of the printing press, media studies and communications were quite slow. With the invention, however, there was a robust into the formal studies of these disciplines. Over the last century, media has played a major role in the political sphere. For example, over the Kosovo atrocities, the media played a significant focus for the revolution. In Eastern Europe, the media has been the major weapon in the transition to liberal politics. In the postmodern world, the social media networking has completely broken down the conventional forms of communications. These developments have however taken place in stages and subjected to different theoretical app roaches. Marxism is a theory hypothesized by Karl Marx to describe mainly the interaction between the superstructure and the economic base. Marx maintained that the dominant class controlled the means of production (Strinati, 2004). For this reason, he believed that the media served no other purpose other than the ideological interests of the capitalists. Because they are the dominant class, it only follows