MEDIA AND

INFORMATION
LITERACY
The Evolution of
Media
 “Young people do not
read newspapers
anymore; they visit online
sites.”
 Marshall McLuhan (1969)

a Canadian communication
theorist who provides a clear
story on how media evolved
through technological
determinism
 Technological Determinism

A theory that believes that

technology is a steering factor in
how a society develops its
structure and values.
 The Evolution of Media
According to Marshall McLuhan (1969), the evolution of
media has our different ages:
1. Tribal Age
2. Age of Literacy
3. Print Age
4. Electronic Age
TRIBAL AGE
 prehistoric people relied on face-to-face
interactions, through auditory senses

 the primary medium of communication was

speech

 characterized as an oral society dependent

on speech and word-of-mouth

 acoustic space vs. pictorial space

AGE OF LITERACY
 Human being learned to read and write,
which amplified the use of the sense of sight,
lessening the role of the other senses in the
human body.

 This allowed people to communicate and

share information privately through letters.

 writings are expressed through hieroglyphs

PRINT AGE
 highlighted by the invention of the
GUTENBERG PRESS or movable
type in the 15th Century.
PRINT AGE
Sharing ideas became faster and acquiring information
became easier.

 Mass-produced writing cultivated a sense of homogeneity,

where people spoke and wrote in the same language, which
made it easier for a person to associate himself/herself to a
group.

on this same age laid the groundwork for industrial age
ELECTRONIC AGE
period characterized by the
dominance of the electric media such
as telegraph, radio, film, telephone,
computer and television.

McLuhan described this age as the

force that turned the planet into a
global village, where people are all
globally connected.
EVOLUTION OF MEDIA
TRADITIONAL
MEDIA NEW MEDIA
TRIBAL AGE
AGE OF LITERACY INFORMATION AGE
PRINT AGE
ELECTRONIC AGE
INFORMATION AGE

The Cambridge dictionary defines

new media as the “products and
services that provide information or
entertainment using computers or the
internet.”
On a 1 whole sheet of paper:

What do you think would be the

next major mass medium that
will be developed in the next ten
years?