1

MARIANO GALVEZ UNIVERSITY OF GUATEMALA

FREE INTENSIVE ENGLISH COURSE
LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE III
LIC. HILDA LOPEZ

HISTORY OF COMMUNICATION AND GENERAL HISTORY

GROUP MEMBERS No. 3:

DEBORA PEREZ
ALEJANDRO LEMUS
CHRISTIAN LOPEZ
DANIEL GUTIERREZ
EDGAR GODOY
JOSE GOMEZ
LOUIS HERRERA
SAMUEL DIAZ
FABIOLA GRIJALVA
MIGUEL MARTINEZ
NESTOR ESTRADA
SAMUEL CARRILLO
HEIDI REON
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INTRODUCTIÓN

Human communication needs arise from interactions with the environment and with
others. Human beings pass their heritage from generation to generation and all that goes with it,
such as different theoretical frameworks spanning multiple topics, different abilities and skills,
abilities and skills, discoveries and needs, good and bad, among others. All this is based on each
one, Culture, each nation or country. From making our concerns or needs known, to developing
different styles of communication. Having said all this, a brief tour will be made of the different
moments of this development that were considered most important for humanity up to the
present.
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Índice

INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................2

History of Communication and General History..........................................................4

The historical method and communication...................................................................7

The sources........................................................................................................................8

Traditional sources...........................................................................................................9

Electronic Sources..........................................................................................................10

Periodization...................................................................................................................11

History Communication and Culture...........................................................................13

Historiographic Trends and History of Communication...........................................14

Quantitative History and History of Communication................................................15

Comparative History and Communication..................................................................17

History of Present Time and Communication.............................................................17

Microhistory and Communication...............................................................................18

The Field of Communication History...........................................................................19

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The History of Communication and Cultural Industries...........................................20

The Specificity of the History of Communication.......................................................21

Narration in the History of Communication...............................................................21

The Interpretations........................................................................................................22

Features of Media History.............................................................................................23

The photograph..............................................................................................................24

The poster........................................................................................................................25

Advertising......................................................................................................................26

The advertising...............................................................................................................28

Cinema.............................................................................................................................29

Radio................................................................................................................................31

Televisión.........................................................................................................................32

The video.........................................................................................................................33

The Internet....................................................................................................................34

CONCLUSIONS:...........................................................................................................36

BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................................................37

History of Communication and General History

Communication as Science
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"Usually, reflections on the history of communication begin with a broad reference to

what could be considered, moreover rigorously, another history. That is, the narration of a
process, in which the leading role corresponds to a science -history- that in its internal
development is opening up to different fields. One of them would be social communication. The
biggest drawback of this approach is that it places the history of communication as a mere
appendix of the general history", he rightly writes Mercedes Román, who then proposes a
methodology for the history of communication that takes the scientific status of communication
as its starting point, will then come, she adds, "the task of placing the importance of processes on
that general plane, that is, the perspective of diachrony and the concretion of chronology. It is
clear that this intellectual commitment to the historical is not a superfluous addition, as no social
science is".
Although the scientific nature of communication is obvious to me, I do have to point
out at the outset that, with excessive frequency, the history of communication, when it has been
done rigorously - I discard, therefore, many works that do not meet the scientific character - , has
used a methodological tool linked too much to the currents or trends -sometimes, let's say, simply
fashions- of historiography, without a correlation with the specific needs of communication
sciences. And that can also be affected today by the multiplicity of currents detectable in
historical analysis today - if you like, the disorientation of many historians.

"The degree of consensus reached on the birth date of history as a science is very high.
The interwar period introduced a profound renewal in the concept and methods of history of such
intensity that it laid the foundations that allowed granting the disciplines its status as a social
science Pierre Chaunu has graphically pointed out this moment: 'history, the unifying human
science of our time, was born between 1929 and the beginning of the thirties: it was born from
the anguish and misery of the times, in the painful atmosphere of a crisis of enormous dimensions
and infinite repercussions", is how Professor Martínez Shaw begins his essay Total History and
its Enemies in Current Education. If the birth of history as a social science as we conceive it
today must be brought to such a recent date, the scientific origin of the history of communication
must be considered much younger, in fact, barely a few decades old and, in many respects, of
audiovisual communication, still curdling.
There is a first reality, easily verifiable, the history of communication begins when
historical science is consolidating what we know today as New
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History, that -as described by Galasso- "social, technical, economic, quantitative history
opposed to the classical and humanistic tradition of the histoire-bataille, of the history of the
kings or the victors". That has not been, by the way, absent in many of the first stories of
communication, especially those referring to the press, because they have focused exclusively or
too much on the political ups and downs, almost epic, of the media.

Román Portas opportunely emphasizes that "the birth of the history of communication
is linked to the development of history itself, especially that of contemporary history. To the
extent that the various aspects of communication played an increasingly clear role, the historians
of politics, literature or ideas, began research in this field. In some way that origin was a good
start. It ensured the connection with general problems without falling into meaningless
specializations"
The Neapolitan historian comes to establish, therefore, two levels in the history of
communication, the written, already consolidated, and the audiovisual, still in the consolidation
phase. The work from which we extract the quote appears in 2000 in Italy, it is, therefore, a
recent work, and of course a criterion widely shared by historians not especially linked to the
history of communication.
"Communication history writing is sadly underdeveloped," opines Michael
Schudson10, right? "Partly because the media are largely, as their name suggests, transmitters,
not the creators of the causes and effects that historians usually deal with"/.../ "Generally
speaking, the media develops in the background, not in the foreground occupied by the event" .
Affirmation that can be shared, but that should be qualified: gradually, but constantly, the media
become something more than mere transmitters of events; if they are not their triggers, they affect
many of them and also decide the vision that most people have of them.

In the field of communication history, Schudson considers three types of work, macro
history, history proper, and the history of institutions. The former, in his opinion, is the one that
considers the relationship between the media and human evolution and has had, he says, a very
important influence in legitimizing the field of communication as an area of study, and includes
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among its key figures to Marshall McLuhan. The proper history of communication, less
developed in his opinion, is oriented to the relationship of the media with cultural, political,
economic and social history.

The historical method and communication

The history of cinema establishes four paths for the historical investigation of cinema:
aesthetic history, technological history, economic history and social history. These approaches
are, in our opinion, quite extensible to the rest of the audiovisual media, it would even be possible
to add a fifth path or model, the reviled, but essential, political history.

It is true that not all audiovisual media have the same characteristics, a political history
of television or even radio and cinema, media in which the role of the State has been so decisive,
is much more feasible than a political history of the photography, in any case, neither utopian nor
disposable: a history of photographic manipulation would have much of a political history of the
medium.

Galasso marks some other differences by emphasizing that "photography and cinema
have their own dimension as a work of art", a dimension that we would extend to posters and,
more recently, to video and even, in some aspects, to virtual reality. The aesthetic consideration
may be much less pronounced on radio and television, but we do not believe that it is far from
absent, many documentaries undoubtedly have it, but it can also be perceived in successful
historical reconstructions and in other genres.

Ultimately, we believe that certain types of history cannot be excluded when

approaching the history of communication. To that undoubted aesthetic dimension that the
audiovisual media and even the press have in so many circumstances that in these times when
design is so pampered, we must add its no less visible social dimension, the media impose
fashions and models, from language to Ideas attract and mobilize mass audiences, but no less
obvious is the economic dimension of these media, and the technological dimension cannot be
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ignored in that, for example, they tend to represent today in many aspects precisely the avant-
garde in this field. That it has been proposed to call the present Western society the Information
Society, and that it has been accepted so quickly, is representative enough, even though it later
evolved into a Knowledge Society.

Hence we believe that the history of communication must be essentially a total history.
The history of communication, like all kinds of history today, faces a new challenge: "the
unlimited expansion of its field of analysis imposes a relationship with the other social sciences
in order to use their methods, while preserving its irreducible specificity"
It is convenient not to lose sight of another fundamental fact when constructing the
history of audiovisual communication and that is the growing use of the image as a historical
source.

The sources

The media:

The Communication historian has, in principle, an outstanding advantage over other

historians, the availability of what is his main source and normally also the object of his study,
the media themselves. Except for the historian of the present time, who -in addition to having
these means- can access personal testimonies of the protagonists of history, the rest of the
historians do not have this theoretical facility. They have to make do with inheritances, with
legacies, normally scarce and incomplete and not always of verifiable reliability. However, this
theoretical or a priori advantage is quite limited in practice. First, the historian of communication
does not have all the means or often even a majority or relevant part. Any historian of Spanish
journalism of the 19th century knows the precarious hemerographic representation of entire
stages that sometimes forces a medium to be described or valued only by the allusions of its
contemporaries, often rivals or competitors and not very objective.
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An almost obvious observation is that the media are not neutral, that they can be
objective on some issues and extremist on others, and just like any other historian, the one
dedicated to communication must filter, contrast and value this important source. for him. You
must know the dependencies -political, economic, religious, cultural- of the media you use as a
source. Many will be able to detect them with careful analysis of these media, others will not be
easy.

The media offer another growing problem, and that is their gradual complexity. If the
average newspaper of the XIX century has barely four pages, and until well into the XX century
it does not exceed 10-12 pages, except for small newspapers, nowadays any tabloid newspaper
easily reaches 60/80 pages, supplements aside, and without relevant differences between the state
newspaper and the regional or local one. Radio or television programming, a few hours at the
beginning, is today 24 hours a day on any channel or station. And although the number of
newspapers is currently generally lower than in other historical situations, as in the twenties and
thirties of the 20th century, the number of specialized or alternative print media continues to
multiply, as does the number of television channels or radio stations, not to mention the web sites
of networks. It is not enough, therefore, to have sources, it is essential to select and delimit.

Traditional sources

The Communication historian has -or can have- other sources for his work, common to
other historians: archives, books, correspondence, business documentation, personal testimonies,
memoirs and all the possibilities of oral history, which, without prejudice of the intensive use of
the media, must also be conveniently used and filtered. Without disregarding the importance of
the media as a source, of its basic status for the historian of communication, it should not prevent
an attentive approach to the entire complex environment of communication, such as documents
of censorship in any of its actions, the functioning internal communication companies, their
technological constraints or their economic aspects documentation that is now generally abundant
and easier to access than in the past. And without ever forgetting that the media are made by
people, with their weaknesses and dependencies, but also with their independence and honesty. If
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in the past the only decisive figures in a medium could be the director or the owner, and the
internal control was relatively simple, today the panorama is very complex, with autonomous
areas, complex relationships with other media and powers, and multiple unforeseeable factors.

Electronic Sources

In our days, traditional sources, printed or oral, are joined by electronic sources, the
possibility of immediate access to multiple types of documents, from articles in specialized
magazines and complete books, to proceedings of congresses, debates and forums, old texts
digitized, bibliographic and hemerographic repertoires, catalogs and an overwhelming amount of
current media with edition or some type of presence on the Internet. For the historian of
communication, an invaluable source, because if there are many valuable materials in the
network of networks, let's say about Egyptian culture or the discovery of America, what there is
above all is an impressive availability of data on the centuries XX and XXI, its people and their
works.

But it is also advisable not to be dazzled. As with any other source, the Internet data
must go through a severe and essential "quality control" of the historian, much more demanding
here due to the frequent anonymity in the real authorship of many texts, the difficulties in so
many cases to establish the origin and the lack of research on veracity within the powerful
medium. In the writing of a newspaper or a television news there is, in principle, a direction,
some chief editors, section chiefs and proofreaders that suppose those guarantees that do not
usually exist on the Internet.

The communication historian is therefore obliged, much more than in other media and
other types of sources, to contrast the data in the face of the very clear risk of error or bias.
The environment offers another parallel risk, its expiration and the absence of
conservation institutions or instruments. If it is difficult to preserve newspapers or photographs,
how much more so is it to preserve materials from the Internet, which are multiple and can very
easily disappear from the network, so that we can locate or use an article, a work that seems
suggestive to us, to which few weeks later it is impossible to access. It is true that as the young
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medium, or medium of media, which is the Internet, grows, they perfect its conservation
possibilities, insofar as many of the contents, sites and portals, are becoming more stable, but
faced with the chimera of being able to save everything that we can consider of interest for the
future, the concern is evident and logical.

Periodization

The periodization of the history of communication is, in our opinion, a valuable

auxiliary element that contributes to systematizing its evolution and, in this case, in addition to
the teaching of history, it is a help to both the teacher and the student.

To the question "is the division of history into chronological stages obsolete?" the
French Robert Bonnaud, answers: "no, the division of history into chronological stages,
periodization, were and will be at the center of the interrogations of historians, or in any case of
the theorists of history. Why? Because the problem of continuity and discontinuity is a
philosophical problem of the first order and historical reflection cannot avoid questioning itself
about it, because history is the science of time, the science of data, and chronological stages
constitute its own terrain. in detecting changes and the periods they delimit, the entire content of
history is at stake"

Mercedes Román contemplates two basic criteria when it comes to periodizing the
history of social communication, one that considers it with its own autonomy and consequently
draws divisions through the key informative historical milestones, uses, for example, the
aforementioned Braudel criteria. The other would be to make it coincide with the great and small
ages of historical evolution29, it is still the most frequent option in the best-known manuals on
the history of the press, and not so much in audiovisual communication, which is younger and
much more elusive. classical ages or periodizations. In our opinion, a synthesis of both positions
can be a good path. The history of communication undoubtedly has considerable autonomy, but it
is also influenced decisively by general history. The appearance and evolution of the propaganda
poster or the short wave radio cannot be studied.
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Much more recently, TV has provoked fewer attempts at periodization, but they are
already emerging. Thus, Jaime Barroso García, professor at the Complutense University, in a
doctoral seminar on the history of television in Spain, offers some periodization criteria that lead
to the following scheme:

1.- Archeology of television, 1938-1958.

2.- Pioneers, from direct to video recorder, 1958-1964.
3.- Maturity and expansion of the medium, 1964-1982.
4.- The renewal of the eighties, 1982-1989.
5.- The breakdown of the public model in the nineties.
Configuration of a periodization of the radio in the following terms, in line with what
Professor Gubern pointed out for the cinema, the difficulty of applying it universally.
1.- 1895-1920, wireless telegraphy.
2.- 1920-1939, the radio show.
3.- 1939-1960, political radio.
4.- 1960-1975, the transistor era.
5.- 1975-1982, FM and free radio.
6.- 1982-1999, decentralization and radio formula.
7.- 2000..., the digital age.

The history of the poster has also already merited the first periodization essays, and of
course photography. It is clear, however, that, in the history of the media, the periods considered
are without exception much shorter than in other historical areas, also as a consequence of its
accelerated evolution, its intensive development, even its link with the technological vanguard;
but also that the different audiovisual media do not always go through the same stage, some
media begin the stage of invention when others are already consolidated, although all are in a
process of continuous change.

This makes it complex to trace a global periodization of the history of communication,

which in our opinion should, however, be attempted, and which we believe would contemplate,
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for the whole of audiovisual communication -another would be the case of the press and
advertising- , the following stages:

1.- 1839-1895. The domain of the still image: photography and poster.
2.- 1895-1933. The beginnings of the moving image and audio media: cinema, disc and
radio.
3.- 1933-1945. The audiovisual media, at the service of politics.
4.- 1945-1960. Irruption of television, transforming the audiovisual landscape.
5.- 1960-1975. Audiovisual communication, protagonist of popular culture.
6.- 1975-1990. The denationalization of the audiovisual media.
7.- 1990... The digital revolution. Internet.

History Communication and Culture

The audiovisual media, together with the press and advertising, have such a deep
imprint on the world of culture and ideas that no approach to contemporary history can be
approached by the researcher without keeping them in mind. The history of communication is not
only the history of culture, since multiple other elements influence it, often in a much more
relevant way, but cultural bonding is undoubtedly one of the most decisive elements in
communication.

Communication therefore has, in our opinion, a triple relationship with culture. Often it
is culture in itself, especially in the way - much more open than in other stages - in which we
conceive cultural phenomena today; At the same time, it is a decisive element in the general
configuration of the culture of our time, an avant-garde in many cases, a critical element, an
influential vector and, finally, it does not cease to be a reflection, an obligatory mirror of all
culture outside of it, since a culture today, aside from communication, seems like a contradiction.

The history of culture is practically contemporary with the history of communication,

but it is ahead of it as a science. Peter Burke, in his essay What is cultural history?, contemplates
four phases for this: a first classic, which would cover the beginnings, the 19th century and the
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first decades of the 20th, a second, that of the social history of art, dominant between 1930 and
1960, from this last date a new one with the discovery of popular culture and, later, from the end
of the eighties, the new cultural history.

Historiographic Trends and History of Communication

Politics, Economy and Communication

Nothing more closely related to politics than communication. Historically, governments

have granted or denied life to publications, broadcasters, television channels or photo agencies;
they have expanded their freedom or have conditioned or restricted it. They have invented
censorship, concessions, they have legislated on the media. States, political parties, political
pressure groups and multiple power structures have been –and continue to be- owners of the
media, there is no history of communication without this political component, without an analysis
of their connection or, more rarely, their confrontation with power . The media are a real power,
as seems to be recognized with more or less enthusiasm, but some approval; the communication
historian cannot remain oblivious to this factor.

Victims to a large extent of that reality, but also of a historiographical tradition or

custom that predominantly dealt with political aspects, many histories of communication and of
certain media have been essentially or even exclusively a political history of the medium, a
history let's say external, of the vicissitudes with the constituted powers, of attitudes towards
problems or concrete situations, of ideologies or ideological fluctuations.

Today we recognize that the political history of communication is a part of history,

relevant, without a doubt, but that it does not explain everything.

Along with political history bursts economic history. The other powers, those not
directly political. The interests that are defended or whipped. And the internal structure of the
media and the system. It is true that it is not always easy to distinguish the economic from the
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political. But that is the task, which can be exciting, for the historian of communication: to
approach the evolution of the medium in its entirety.

Quantitative History and History of Communication

Quantitative history, perhaps less valid today than it was a quarter of a century ago, is,
however, a powerful aid when we are interested in constructing the history of communication38.
Without being fascinated by numbers or statistical series, and bearing in mind that they normally
require an adequate interpretation and evaluation, these quantitative sources should be used, in
our opinion, with more incidence than until now.

This quantitative history or cliometrics is not limited to purely economic aspects, even
though these, as we have seen, are so relevant. Analyzing the ups and downs of the prices of
certain products can be interesting for the historian of the economy, but the evolution of the price
of a newspaper is usually one more piece of information, and perhaps not relevant, for the
historian of communication.

These quantitative sources are not the same or have the same relevance at all times, and
the historian of communication must know how to use the most suitable and representative, or
sometimes simply the only ones available at each juncture; You can even search and create your
quantitative sources that may have gone unnoticed or have not been sufficiently valued and that
may be alien to the interest of the general historian or the specialist in other fields.

But what quantitative aspects should or can a study on the history of communication
include? We understand that a study on the media must offer as much as possible, if it is to be a
complete study, aspects of quantitative history such as:

-Dissemination or audience and its features: geographical distribution, changes over time or in
special circumstances, types of audience, ways of acquiring the newspaper or hours of listening
or viewing...
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-The structure of the templates, both for the newsroom and for the other areas of the
newspaper, station or television channel: evolution, salaries, tasks, syndication.

-Advertising content: income, its origin, its incidence in certain situations, such as electoral or
pre-electoral periods, the rates and their validity. Major advertisers.

-Incidence of state aid or subsidies, either from the state itself, or from regional governments,
town councils or councils or other official bodies or institutions.

-Number of pages, hours of broadcast. Structure and evolution of the sections, supplements,
duration and characteristics of the programmes...

-Economic situation of the communication company. Evolution of ownership, profits or

losses. Expenditure characteristics. Distribution systems, in the case of print media. Non-
advertising revenue. Bonds, sanctions.
-Census of publications, stations...

In recent years, advances in documentation, as well as computerization processes, are

facilitating the systematization of some very useful databases on the press -not so much on other
media- and with it the location of titles. The number of minor specialized publications, for
example, is really very high nowadays and, moreover, their circulation outside of kiosks and
classic distribution channels makes it difficult for the researcher to locate them.

In general, yearbooks and other statistical sources offer many useful data for the
historian of communication, rarely used. Those related to consumption, for example. On the other
hand, it is clear that today there is much greater transparency about the evolution of the
journalistic enterprise, a multitude of usable data, therefore, and in general somewhat less
suspicion within the media groups regarding the entry of historians into their archives.
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Comparative History and Communication

The information that any medium provides about itself is always relevant, but if it lacks
contrast it is very possible that it is not the best resource for the historian, it is important how he
sees himself and defines a medium, how he highlights his achievements or explains and reduces
your mistakes, but it is equally useful to know how others see you. Media controversy is as old as
its very existence, it is often verbose, tendentious and ultimately sterile for the historian, but it is
also often useful if the polemicists are correctly located and the data or statements slipped into
the information can be contrasted. controversy.

But it is not so much about taking advantage of this data as it is about working on the
media extracting elements that are not always perceptible without that comparison between them,
what one media highlights is not what others underline, what it minimizes or ignores is not what
happens to others unnoticed, ideologies or tendencies, likes and dislikes, pressures and
submissions, contradictions or oscillations, the shared and the own, the repeated and the peculiar
emerge abundantly from the comparison.

The comparative work of the historian on direct sources allows to a great extent to
establish evolutions or reach conclusions that can be very different from those traditionally
maintained in a sector, that of the history of Communication, in which with great frequency any
data has been considered valid. or assessment provided by previous historians.

History of Present Time and Communication

An overwhelming majority of the history of Communication is located in what we

conventionally call contemporary history, before it, let's say between the invention of the printing
press and the Enlightenment, we have the beginnings of the press and the book and some
advertising and propaganda manifestations; Even within that contemporary history, although
some media were born in the 19th century, such as photography or posters, others did so on the
straddling of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as cinema or radio, and there are also those that,
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such as television, video or internet, are clearly located in the second half of the 20th century,
coinciding with what has been called the present time.
Many communication historians, like many viewers today, have lived through the
beginnings of television and its development since the 1960s. The history of the present time has
gained a charter of nature, respectability, in recent years “History has a lot to say about societies
in flux, about present societies, and has a lot to contribute to the multifocal social analysis of our
time . The historical is an inescapable dimension of what exists and not only of what has existed.

It is significant that there is no lack of specialists who draw a certain parallel between
journalism and the history of the present time, probably applicable to other media: "the history of
the present is a type of journalism, more educated and that carries out more detailed and profound
analyses, but which has the same object as ordinary journalism. And, like journalism, it must
offer society explanations that account for the processes of the past that still continue to gravitate
in the present and contribute with its materials to the construction of a memory. highlights the
Argentine historian M. Mariño, who adds: "journalism recounts facts and seeks antecedents, the
history of the present, more refined, regroups the facts and transforms them into points of
processes that reach our days"

For the historian of the present, the media have become an essential source, but also the
very history of communication, the game of interests around the media, for example, is still a
relevant contribution to multiple more general investigations. The historian of communication
must also use the materials provided by the history of the present and assume many of the same
problems or concerns – the accessibility of the sources, the ignorance, frequently, of the end, the
risk of use or political bias. However, the historian of communication cannot ignore that he works
in a field of high mobility.

Microhistory and Communication

In recent years we have witnessed a true multiplication of local history studies in the
world of communication, first in the field of the press, then in the audiovisual media. So that in
the 1970s and especially in the 1980s, but less so in the 1990s, provincial or regional press stories
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have been published in almost the entire Spanish territory. Much more recent is the emergence of
local film stories, today no less mighty trend. In other words, there is a scientific legitimation of
microhistory and there is an intense cultivation of local history. But perhaps a terminological
precision is necessary first of all. With the word microhistory very different approaches can be
qualified.

The Field of Communication History

Social Communication, Interpersonal Communication

What do we consider should remain within the scope of communication history
research? In principle, we have social communication and interpersonal communication and it
would be the one that interests us. But the distinction is not always easy. We have in our days a
very clear case in the telephone. Traditionally it has been excluded from the field of the History
of Audiovisual Communication, or more simply from the History of Social Communication,
because it essentially meant communication between people, point to point. However, in our days
the intensive use of the telephone and the utilities that the mobile revolution has made possible -
Internet or photography via telephone.

Undoubtedly there are media that by their nature are essentially and from their very
origins means of social communication, be they the press, posters, cinema or television, and
somewhat later the radio; in others, a double utility coexists, they are means of interpersonal
communication, but at the same time means of social communication, photography or video
would be in that sector, and must be considered by the historian of communication. But this is an
essentially dynamic story, with more and more media coming to join it. The new technologies,
and especially the Internet and virtual reality, have a short history, but their social impact is so
pronounced that it already demands the immediate attention of the historian of communication.
What can we say, for example, about video games, which today generate so much interest from
sociologists, psychologists and educators, and which move considerable amounts of money?

It is evident that the historian of communication has before him a large and growing
number of media whose evolution and influence he must analyze, extraordinarily rich and diverse
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media - hundreds of films every year for more than a century, thousands of radio stations
broadcasting simultaneously , thousands of newspapers every morning -more than a thousand in
Spanish alone- and with their online editions, thousands of photographs circulating every day in
newspapers, in books or in exhibitions...-, there is an inescapable task of selection.

The history of communication is not, cannot be, the simple sum of the history of the
press, advertising, cinema, photography, radio and television, its mere application. Not only
because these media do not act in a vacuum, and continually influence each other, but
fundamentally because the historian of communication is interested both in the media itself, and
in their social imprint, their effects

The History of Communication and Cultural Industries

Communication, once largely an initiative of printers looking to work for their

establishments, optimistic teachers and writers, religious nuclei, varied associations, pressure
groups, or caciques of all kinds, therefore rich in titles as well-intentioned as they are fragile, it
evolved from the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century towards systems
clearly dominated by the large media groups, towards the concentration of ownership.

In recent years, in fact, it can be considered that studies on cultural industries have been
imposed among communication researchers. It is not a fad, but the logical and necessary response
from the world of research to the very evolution of communication, with the configuration of
those powerful media groups with as much power as the states themselves, the continuous
irruption of new media and technological developments with a wide influence on communication
and the simple verification of the power and influence on society exerted today by media such as
television. Studies on cultural industries, although focused on the present and rarely with a
historical vocation, inevitably become a suggestive contribution for the historian of
communication, since there is practically no cultural industry today that is not communication or
does not have a decisive relationship with her. We have already alluded, when speaking of the
history of the present time, to the risks that this historical approach presents.
 21

The Specificity of the History of Communication

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, communication has reached such a level of
development, it is of such complexity and territorial variety and exerts such social influence that
its detailed study is fully justified.

The evolution of each medium is not in any case an isolated reality, on the contrary, its
study requires an insertion in the global process of evolution of social communication – thus,
audiovisual communication appears in a period of maturation of written communication and are
multiple mutual influences-, and it is not alien to the milestones of general history, moreover, we
can affirm that precisely because of its social and cultural character at the same time, it is hardly
alien to any aspect of specialized history. . Neither economic history, nor that of culture or
mentalities, nor social, nor political, nor technology or language, nor even that of religions is
outside the history of communication in the 20th century.

Narration in the History of Communication

A large percentage of studies referring to the evolution of communication today offer

very heterogeneous content and of different value, but coincide in dispensing with narration. In
the history of the press and in that of photography there is still too much of a tendency towards
the catalogue, the repertoire, the annotated list of titles; many of the so-called books on the
history of television are actually a parade of series or game shows that were more or less popular
at the time, and something similar happens with comics and their characters. It even affects the
history of cinema.
The narration, which supposes the capacity for synthesis, the ability to relate data, the
exercise of the always risky evaluation, even the no less hateful comparison, is usually a much
more complex and thankless task than the enumeration or compilation of titles or programs. A
non-narrative structure can be explained in dictionaries, anthologies and other formulas initially
 22

conceived more for consultation than for reading, but it is less admissible in essays that claim to
be historical and rigorous. The narration is claimed by Peter Burke for cultural history.

The well-structured and dosed historical narration does not have to be only, let us say
in the press, a mere parade of directors, large firms or businessmen, although it is always easier to
highlight their ups and downs than those of an entire newsroom. The intra-story of a crucial
editorial, the comings and goings of an investigative report, the pressures of the advertising
world, some unpublished news or the selection of letters to the editor, can be in that narration,
which must be an intelligent and calibrated kaleidoscope of the medium, but which requires
intense work for the historian.

It should be recognized that many aspects of the history of communication lend

themselves to a non-narrative structure, favored even by the market, which likes a synthesis of
the “one hundred best films of...” type; studies on great photographers or poster designers, film
directors or actors.

The Interpretations

The vast majority of historical events have undergone profound and often contradictory
reinterpretations in the last 25 years, since the beginning of the 1980s. Today we count, as a
logical consequence, an increasingly powerful current that historiography those changes in
orientation, those oscillations, to which the science of history is so conducive today. The history
of communication is young, as a science it still has a short history and the game of interpretations
and revisions plays little role in it. Still, they are not lacking. The different histories of Spanish
journalism published since the sixties of the last century, 1965 and 2005, offer very different
evaluations of media and stages.
Nor are fashions alien to the study of the history of communication. Sympathies or
currents favor or promote certain studies, and themes, or elevate protagonists who later pass into
oblivion. The opposite also happens, forgotten characters -it happens a lot in the history of
 23

cinema- reappear with force and are revalued. In the history of communication there are still
many obscure aspects, little studied, perhaps unwelcome, and among the numerous studies that
have appeared, interpretations, depth, sometimes simply analysis of phenomena that we have
before our eyes and seem to happen are often lacking. unnoticed.

The history of communication, with few exceptions, needs to offer more interpretations,
more criticism. It has gained in rigor, in diversity, in quality and quantity of data, but it still lacks
appreciation. With the exception of the cinema. The historian of communication tends,
frequently, to analyze -and overvalue- the media that are ideologically close to him, not those
opposed or far from his ideology, not necessarily the most influential.

Features of Media History

The press

The history of the press enjoys a tradition, and to a certain extent recognition, that the
history of other media lacks, with no other exception than that of the cinema. Partly because of
the age of the medium itself, which reaches four centuries, partly because of the conceived
prestige of what is printed in the face of skepticism about image and sound, but also because of
its intense cultivation since the mid-nineteenth century. For this reason, in the evolution of the
construction of the history of the press we have in mind a good part of the evils, errors and
insufficiencies, but also the contributions, of the entire history of communication.

The evolution of that story is very significant. In the 19th century, when it appears, very
early in the case of France and the United Kingdom, we are essentially dealing with catalogues,
very rarely with stories. It is not seen in the press, much less in journalists, the subject of a
narrative.

The twenties and thirties of the twentieth century marked a rise in interest in the history
of newspapers. International press exhibitions are held -such as the one in Cologne in 1926- and
international congresses -such as the one in Geneva in 1926100-, from which analyzes of the
 24

evolution of the printed media emerge, and the first repertoires appear on comparative legislation
of the press and the evolution of that legislation.

The appearance in France of the remarkable work of Georges Weill -professor at the
University of Caen- Le Journal, in 1935, represents a leap forward in the evolution of the study of
the history of the press, since it is a global history - and inevitably succinct -, of world
journalism, which even seeks a supra-Western vision, by including a chapter on the press in
India, the Far East and the Muslim world, as well as an extensive international bibliography,
commented, especially useful at the time.

The 1950s and especially the 1960s marked the definitive ascent of the great history of
the press, national histories. Here we have a fluid, documented and suggestive narration, nothing
from a catalogue; In the prologue, the author highlights the need for a correlation between the
history of journalism and the political, economic and social trends of each moment, a correlation,
he underlines, in which the press is increasingly ascendant.

The photograph

On January 9, 1839, the French Academy of Sciences announced the daguerreotype

process. A few months later, on August 19, 1839, the French government purchased the patent
and announced the invention as a "free gift to the world."
In this situation, the history of photography not only grows in culture, but also
inevitably diversifies in trends. Today the current of researchers oriented to the history of
photojournalism is relevant, quantitatively it is undoubtedly the first. It begins already in the
thirties of the twentieth century, coinciding with the heyday of graphic magazines.
Photojournalism is thus today not only better known but also more valued, on the other hand, the
growing cultivation of the history of photography by art historians.
 25

In well-known historians of photography, such as the Gernsheims, Philip C. Geraci, or

Frank P. Hoy, the vision of an evolution of the medium that is aesthetic and technological at the
same time dominates, which allows photography to be a mirror of reality, although recently
concerned, as evidenced by the works of Kenneth Kobre, by the possibilities of manipulation
offered by digital photography.

Precisely the possibility or even the ease of photographic manipulation leads other
historians and essayists on the evolution of photography to deny that mirror quality of reality. In
any case, the location, the role of photography in the era of new technologies is beginning to be a
relevant concern for historians such as Hanno Hardt.

In short, it is the last years, the 1980s and 1990s, on an international scale, that allow
the history of photography to unfold, thus finding its relevant role in the history of photography
as a whole. social communication.

The poster

the poster, "a socio-communicative reality born from the meeting of iconic art and
typographic art", has not attracted historians until relatively recently. Undoubtedly, this fate of
the poster, being a fleeting advertisement, has reduced interest in the eyes of the historian, who
has disdained this peculiar means of communication starring the image, but also with written
texts, offered in public spaces and that, unlike cinema or television, does not arrive by public
demand, but is offered to it free of charge and with interest.

The poster itself has a short history, since in its current conception -colorful and
massive call for announcements, notices or proposals, usually on paper- it begins a few decades
after photography and shortly before the beginning of cinema, approximately in the 1970s. , when
the consolidation of lithography, and especially chromolithography, allows printing with vivid
colors and artists such as Jules Cheret succeed in the technical and cultural synthesis that will
allow the rapid consolidation of the new medium.
 26

With Cheret, a hitherto unprecedented form of industrial art was born, increasingly
diversified in its uses. While this advertising use intensifies and diversifies, from the world of
entertainment to the purely commercial and soon the political or in our days the tourist attraction,
the evolution of the poster runs parallel to that of painting during practically the first half century
of the history of the first, until the twenties or even thirties of the twentieth century, and probably
that also influences the scant attention paid to the classical historian.

However, the approach of advertising to the world of psychology, so evident on the eve
of the Second World War, inevitably influences the poster, in many cases substituting plastic
creativity for the engineering of motivations. The post-war period and the intense economic
development of Europe and the USA in the 1940s and 1950s multiplied the demand for posters
while outdoor advertising flourished. At the same time, exhibitions on posters abound but works
on the historical evolution of the medium are scarce, and above all historical works made
rigorously and that insert the poster within the evolution of communication and art. Only from
those sixties and seventies will a true historiography on the poster, analytical, begin to germinate,
both in Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic, which places it at the heart of the history of
culture.

In the last two decades the poster has known, parallel to what was happening in other
media, as we have seen, a clear historiographical expansion.

Advertising

In principle, for many historians who can lukewarmly accept a history of the press,
cinema or photography, a history of advertising could be a frivolous task, that is, barely
historiographical. It is understandable, because without a doubt, as a history of advertising, many
works have been presented that are far from having a minimal scientific character, and the very
task of advertising is still for many a mere set of techniques to sell, but it must be remembered
that the advertising is not only a relevant part of communication today, but has visibly reached a
maturity in its evolution, which in addition to making it influential and even decisive in our
society provides sources, resources, sufficient documentation so that the historian attracted by it
 27

has its availability the essential materials to approach that history with rigor and depth, that the
very importance that it has acquired in contemporary societies obliges the historical approach
with the maximum possible rigor, and that the advertising activity is today at the base of the
economy and the culture of our time.

In the last third of the 19th century, studies on the evolution of advertising appeared in
Great Britain and the United States, led by their authors above all out of curiosity for the
advertisement, rather than by real desires as a historian, but nonetheless estimable, which
explains why some have been reissued.

In the last years of that century and in the first years of the 20th, there were many
pamphlets, almanacs and various works that bring to light old advertisements, carried by their
authors, without claiming to be historians, from that curiosity and nostalgia for the immediate
past.
It will be, however, the post-war period, a time of widespread expansion of advertising,
the stage that already shines in multiple countries, and with increasing rigor in treatments and
variety in content, its history, slowly between 1945 and 1960, and in a much more pronounced
way, and at some point almost torrentially, since the sixties. Fortunately, the eighties changed the
panorama, once again the result of the confluence of the Communication faculties and the
recovered democracy. In that decade the works of Jaime J. Puig La Publicidad were published.
History and Techniques, in 1986 and, above all, Brief History of Advertising, 1989, by José
Ramón Sánchez Guzmán, both are global approaches to the evolution of advertising, although the
second is much more rigorous, very slanted, in any case. , towards the economic perspective of
the advertising phenomenon.

The advertising

Propaganda has a long history, from Rome to the present day. But its reflection in
studies is much more recent, essentially a work of the 20th century, although then many
historians have approached previous stages, from the French Revolution to North American
independence. It will be especially after the First World War, where advertising already –press,
 28

cinema, poster- reaches remarkable development, when studies on it begin to grow and, little by
little, more properly historical approaches. Immediately, the Russian revolution and in general the
rise of totalitarian movements with their intense cultivation of propaganda media, multiplied that
interest. The Second World War represents a situation of apogee of propaganda and immediately
becomes a very complex stage that arouses the interest of communication historians, which is
extended with the long and complex cold war, since 1945.
The end of the cold war with the fall of the Berlin wall and the disappearance of the
USSR could have seemed to lead to a moment of crisis or stagnation of propaganda. It was not
like that, on the contrary, the two wars in Iraq, the one in Afghanistan, and all the conflict due to
the eternal conflict between Israel and the Arab world, the appearance of Islamic fundamentalism
and its confrontation with the US and, in the Europe itself, the successive and bloody wars of the
former Yugoslavia, notoriously raised and sophisticated the use of propaganda and have been an
evident source for historians, which opens a stage of intense, unprecedented cultivation. The
history of propaganda is undoubtedly experiencing its period of boom and parallel recognition.

In the last fifteen years, studies on the history of propaganda have grown remarkably,
almost exclusively in the academic field, but they are still, quantitatively, far below advertising
and, above all, the press and the cinema.

Propaganda is a form of information transmission that aims to influence the attitude of a

community towards some cause or position, presenting only one side or aspect of an argument.
This is usually repeated and broadcast in a wide variety of media in order to obtain the desired
result in the attitude of the audience.

Cinema

The hegemony that the history of cinema has been maintaining within the history of
audiovisual communication is clear. Apparently it is hardly explainable, television registers a
much higher audience and impact on society, photography and posters are prior to cinema, radio
is contemporary, but that hegemony is so real that, if in the history of the social communication
 29

this has been identified for a long time with the history of the press, that of audiovisual
communication in particular has been dominated since the sixties of the 20th century by the
history of cinema. But at the same time it can well be said that until cinema -and with it its
history- achieves academic recognition, there is not really a history of audiovisual
communication.

Julio Montero and José Carlos Rueda explain it very clearly: "the academic
respectability of film history studies began around the 1960s. Until then, publications of this style
were not considered rigorous or scientific. Not so much because they did not were really but
because cinema itself did not seem like a subject susceptible to academic treatment due to lack of
cultural entity. That does not mean that there was no research on cinema. They existed and from
very early dates "

The two authors specify the moment and the reasons for the transformation: "the change
in the academic consideration of cinema is linked to two parallel processes. The first refers to the
world of communication. The appearance of television and the criticism received by the The new
medium made the cinema automatically become a high-level cultural manifestation by
comparison.The second was the change that occurred in the classical conceptions of what the
concept of culture was.

Until very recently, the history of cinema has been conceived as belonging more to
cultural, political or economic history than to the history of social communication, the first
endowments of cinema history professors were produced in faculties of History, section of
History of Art, and not in Information Sciences.

With the great diffusion of television, the disappearance of informative cinema and the
exclusivity of fiction cinema on the screens took place. As newsreels were the part of the
production that could most easily be placed in the world of information and communication,
therefore, their rapid disappearance prevented research on them from being addressed when the
cinema began to offer interest to academics. .
 30

It is undoubtedly the Republican period that marks the beginning of a more rigorous
approach to the history of cinema and Spanish cinema in particular. In these 1940s and 1950s,
there were many general histories of cinema, including more or less rigorous chapters referring to
Spanish cinema.

We must not forget that at the same time that the historiography of cinema is growing,
that of many of its components is also growing. A very significant example is that of film music,
the object of deep attention today, although practically since the beginning of sound films, this
component has interested and motivated an estimable current of analysis.

In the 1990s, in short, the history of cinema has gained more importance and cultivation
than at any other time in the 20th century, with a heterogeneous historiography, but well inserted
into international currents.

If something is clear in that evolution and in that present, it is that the history of cinema
has become rich in typologies and approaches, perhaps like no other sector in the history of social
communication, since in our opinion it clearly surpasses the study, older , of the history of the
press, and that its influence, its trajectory, are also projected, as we will see, to other audiovisual
media.

Radio

The medium of radio has already fulfilled a century since its invention and 80 years
since the beginning of commercial radio. However, the history of the radio registers an intense
cultivation only for scarce two decades. The Spanish case is especially significant. Although the
first commercial stations date back to 1924, in the following half century there are hardly any
works on the history of radio worthy of such consideration.

In media studies in higher education, radio occupies a tiny place in the history of those
media, while the practical aspect of radio is basically concentrated on radio journalism,
reproducing, in most cases, the techniques and gender assumptions. This academic absence of
 31

radio contributes to its vulnerability, although the main reason is the relative position of radio
compared to television in economic terms.

The first writings on radio broadcasting were, to a large extent, the testimony of people,
professionals or not, involved at various levels and in different conditions in this activity. If
historians have ignored radio for a long time, as well as cinema or television, it was undoubtedly
because they were tied to the written medium and even more particularly to the written
document, and undoubtedly also because the relations between academics and the media have
been long time conflicting. After those first two decades, the twenties and thirties of the 20th
century, studies on the history of radio will experience a new impulse during and after the Second
World War, given the undoubted protagonism of the medium during the conflict, although it is
However, the following two decades, the 1950s and 1960s, even the first half of the next, the
years of implementation of the television medium, will be marked by a gradual and clear loss of
interest in radio for communication historians. and for sociologists and essayists. Although there
is no shortage of books on radio, more so in the fifties than in the sixties, they are much more
directed towards educational radio experiences. In any case, in these years new approaches to the
origins of radio emerge, the role of radio in World War II continues to fascinate, and political
propaganda in the medium.

The final years of the 1970s and the last two decades of the 20th century saw a very
different situation. The radio is once again of interest: the irruption of the modulated frequency,
the effect of free radios, the emergence of formula radio, the battle of the audiences, the
deprivation of the state of the medium, the new local radio, the appearance of radio on the
Internet with its rapid development, the horizon of digital radio and multiple other factors that
together make up a medium in profound change and that influence this reactivation of
publications. From now on, studies on the history of the medium will multiply.

The last three decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the next represent a
peak of radio studies in all aspects and practically in all countries. To the point that between 1986
and 2005 many more works on radio have been published than in the rest of the century.
 32

The radio attracts and its history is interesting. There are even monographic magazines
oriented not to technical dissemination, or to the anecdote, as in the past, but to its history while
the presence of radio topics increases in the increasingly numerous communication magazines.

Televisión

Television, as an object of study for the historian, is only a few years old. Those
classical historians who recommend a perspective of at least fifty years to carry out a rigorous
and balanced historical work, today could hardly but study the invention and the beginnings,
since, if the invention already offers almost three quarters of a century, as true mass phenomenon
is half a century old in the case of Europe and very specifically in Spain. Television also breaks
many rules and requirements of historical work, any historian of cinema or the press today has
countless previous studies, monographs and articles, relatively affordable, in film libraries and
newspaper libraries. Until recently, the historian of television has had to deal with a limited
number of companies, the large state monopolies, and above all with scarce archives that are
generally difficult to access.

The rapid popularization of the television medium also explains that long before
historians approach it, they do so from sociologists to pedagogues, because one of the problems
that immediately worries is its impact on childhood. These and other reasons partly justify the
weakness of studies on television in its early years. Strictly speaking, it was only in the 1980s and
especially in the 1990s that abundant and more rigorous studies germinated, which were not
limited as before to a gallery of anecdotes and curiosities, nor did they involve a furious general
diatribe.

The denationalization of the medium, the rapid changes in its organization, the new
forms of vision arouse a new interest in television, which will also include interest in its origins
and its evolution in half a century. The story, which has until then been the poor relation among
television studios, begins to grow. At the same time, the interest of all kinds of historians in the
documents made possible by television grows, becoming more and more a source for the
 33

historian, whether they are abundant or scarce and manipulated on television, which nowadays
becomes an essential resource for a large part of historians.

Although the history of television stories is still short, it seems clear that in this half
century the inevitable reevaluations and demystifications have already taken place. A
fundamental part of this history of television is that of the pioneers, that of the invention itself. A
history, let's call it television technique, is an essential part of television history, given the
permanent process of technological change within the medium.

The video

If all audiovisual media in strict historical perspective are young, video is much more
so, because until 1956, when the video tape recorder was presented by the Ampex house, as a
support to achieve the desired preservation of television programs, it did not break into the
audiovisual scene, and strictly speaking until the mid-1960s, with the birth of video art, it did not
begin to have its own entity. Yes, young is the medium, with half a century, its history is much
older, although already in the early seventies, and especially in the United States, works appear
that represent an approach to the phenomenon of video art and its cultural context. With this, the
video shows an early interest for critics. Many of these works are anthologies of video artists, but
in some cases a first historical perspective emerges.

It is evident that throughout the eighties the uses of video multiplied. On August 1,
1981, a music channel via cable television, MTV, began to broadcast from Manhattan, which
would decisively contribute to the popularization of the video clip, but these were also the years
in which home video became popular and video games grew. However, it is video art that is of
most interest, the one that generates the most bibliography and the one that makes possible the
first historical approaches.

The video begins to be inserted within the audiovisual media in its communicative
dimension. the clear dominance of the analysis of the evolution of video as a new art, but in the
1990s essays appear more clearly that pose its dimension as a means of communication.
 34

Although the beginning of the 21st century dominates the analysis of video art, the appearance
and strength of video games, the generalization of home video -and successors- and the
generalization of the video clip, contribute to a gradual diversification of the historiography of
video. Very young industries, which were consolidated in the eighties of the last century, since
the beginning of the nineties the bibliography on videogames has grown abundantly, and
although they dominate, among other aspects, those linked to the analysis of violence, there will
be some analyzes historical or that in some way reflect and analyze the evolution of the new
medium.

In short, the history of video, still incipient, continues to be located at the beginning of
the 21st century, preferably in the field of art, and although a more global perception is gaining
ground, in accordance with the many faces of the young medium, good stories of video on a
Spanish and international scale that critically contemplate its intense evolution in all its facets,
those that make it the most heterogeneous among current audiovisual media.

The Internet

The Internet began its international popularization at the beginning of the 1990s, thus it
has barely two decades of real history, although the study of its genesis allows it to double that
age, in any case, a young medium. But its own dynamism and importance has made it easier for
it, from the beginning, to attract the history of the powerful new medium, which appears
immediately, with one peculiarity: that history is, to a large extent, in the Internet itself, a
medium that, due to its origins, and features offers a clear dominance of the US, which is also
reflected in that first historiography. Short story, but already with well outlined stages, the initial
one, Arpanet, that of privatization, since the beginning of the 1990s.
The medium of media, which allows, through it, access to newspapers or magazines as
well as radio stations and television channels or to capture music, photographs, cinema and video,
soon becomes a very useful medium, for the immense amount of its contents, for all kinds of
historians, but especially for the historian of communication, who has in it an archive
unimaginable half a century ago.
 35

CONCLUSIONS:

Through the years, the way in which humans express their thoughts, ideas and feelings
has changed throughout history. At first it was painted. Then it evolved and came the beginning
of the first book. Over time, we learned to communicate in such a way that everyone who reads it
can feel what the author wrote. With the advancement of technology, written communication
between people through letters has changed. Now it's email and text messages. As generations
have grown and learned, humanity has been revolutionized, as has writing.
 36

Therefore and in conclusion we can say that communication has been, is and will be the
most important way of sending and receiving information, wherever it comes from. And that it is
unthinkable and impressive that more can evolve.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

https://idus.us.es/bitstream/handle/11441/38644/Historia%20de%20la

%20Comunicaci%C3%B3n.%20De%20la%20cr%C3%B3nica%20a%20la

%20disciplina%20cient%C3%ADfica.pdf?sequence=1
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