A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet

Citation

Briggs, A., Burke, P., & Ytreberg, E. (2020). A Social History of the Media (4th ed.). Polity.

Chapter Summary

The fourth edition runs to about 360 pages and has eight chapters, a chronology, a further reading section and an index, preceded by a list of illustrations and a preface. The publisher describes the book as a classic overview of communication media and of the social and cultural contexts in which they emerged and changed over time. Its stated approach avoids technological determinism and rejects the assumption of a straightforward evolutionary progress, bringing out instead the rich and varied histories of the media. This edition is revised throughout, has an expanded introduction, and adds a new eighth chapter on the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1: Introduction

The introduction frames the study of media history. In this edition it has been expanded to explore the wide range of secondary literature and theory that informs the study of media history today, which makes it the place to meet the vocabulary and debates that the later chapters assume.

Chapter 2: Printing in its Contexts

The first historical chapter deals with printing and places it in its contexts, which fits the book's refusal to treat a technology as a free-standing cause. It is the book's starting point in the age of Gutenberg.

Chapter 3: The Media and the Public Sphere in Early Modern Europe

This chapter treats the media of early modern Europe in relation to the public sphere, the arena of public discussion and opinion, before the industrial period that follows.

Chapters 4–7: Technologies and Revolutions; New Processes and Patterns; Information, Education, Entertainment; Media Convergences

The middle of the book moves from technologies and the revolutions connected with them to new processes and patterns of communication. It then organises material under the three broad functions of information, education and entertainment, and closes this stretch with the convergence of media that were once separate.

Chapter 8: The Return of the Social

The new chapter surveys the revolutionary media developments of the twenty-first century, in particular the rise of social and participatory media and the penetration of these technologies into every sphere of social and private life.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Framework and early print

• Social history of media: the study of communication media within the social and cultural contexts in which they emerged and changed.
• Printing in its contexts: print understood through its settings, not as a single cause of change.
• Public sphere: the arena of public discussion that early modern media helped create.

Chapters 4–8: Later media history

• Technological determinism: the view the book sets out to avoid, that technology alone drives social change.
• Media convergence: the merging of previously separate media.
• Social and participatory media: the twenty-first century focus of the new Chapter 8.
• Information, education, entertainment: the three functions used to organise Chapter 6.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A long time span in one book. The chapters run from the era of Gutenberg to the twenty-first century, so a reader can follow media change in a single volume of moderate length.
• A stated analytical position. The publisher says the book avoids technological determinism and rejects simple evolutionary progress, which gives it a coherent argument beyond a chronology of inventions.
• Revised for the present. The fourth edition updates the earlier text throughout, expands the introduction to cover current scholarship, and adds a new chapter on social and participatory media.
• Established standing. The publisher calls the book a classic that has run through four editions.
• Reference apparatus. A chronology and a further reading section help with orientation and follow-up.

Limitations

• Only a short book for a vast subject. At about 360 pages and eight chapters, each stage of the story gets a brief treatment, and the reader will need further reading to go deeper.
• European framing in the early chapters. The title of Chapter 3 limits its subject to early modern Europe, so readers interested in other regions will need other books.
• The newest material dates fastest. The new eighth chapter deals with social and participatory media, which change faster than the historical chapters before it.
• Edition confusion. The book has appeared in several editions with different authors, a changing final chapter and varying subtitles, so readers should check which edition their library or syllabus uses.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the economic and social history course, this is the book about communication and the media. It can be read as a companion to the economic and industrial histories on the list. Persson, Sharp and Lampe's An Economic History of Europe and Stearns's The Industrial Revolution in World History supply economic and industrial background for the middle chapters, and Allen's Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction is a short global overview. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is a classic study of social class formation in England, and Pomeranz's The Great Divergence is a comparative study of Europe and China. The Briggs, Burke and Ytreberg book is the gentler one and the only one in the group centred on communication, so it is a good first or complementary book for readers who want to see how information moved alongside goods and labour.

How to Use This Book

The publisher presents the book as a first choice for students and scholars of media history, and it needs no specialist background in media studies. It can be read straight through as a narrative.

A practical order is the introduction, then Chapters 2 and 3 for printing and the early modern public sphere, Chapters 4 to 7 for the later history, and Chapter 8 for the twenty-first century. Readers mainly interested in the present can read the introduction and Chapters 7 and 8 first and return to the earlier chapters for background. The chronology is useful for dating events, and the further reading section directs readers to deeper studies of each period.

Check which edition you have. The 2020 fourth edition ends with a chapter on social and participatory media, while the third edition (2009) ends with a chapter titled "In and Out of Cyberspace".