ECREA16-Abstract

103

Thursday, November 10

0 9 : 0 0 – 1 0 : 3 0

PP 027

There Are No Old Media

S. Natale

Loughborough University, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough, United Kingdom

Throughout the last two decades, one of the most widely debated notion for the field of media studies has been“newmedia.”Scholars have interrogated its

meanings from a historical, sociological, anthropological, and ontological perspective, exploring the problematic implications of novelty in relationship to

media change. Much less attention, however, has been given to the related notion of“old media.”Although this concept is now ubiquitous in both scholarly

and popular publications, the question of what it means to talk about“old media,”and to what extent such a notion is acceptable, has been until now largely

disregarded. The goal of this paper is to start filling this gap by reviewing the existing literature of the topic and by measuring the notion of old media

against theoretical debates in communication studies and related fields. As I will show, such an endeavour leads to the conclusion that there is not, after all,

such a thing as“old media.”The attempt to define them is jeopardized by the extent to which media constantly change throughout time, resisting clear-cut

definitions related to age. Yet, somehow paradoxically, recognizing that there are no“old media”opens up the opportunity to understand why this term has

been so widely employed to characterize certain phenomena, institutions, technologies, and objects. I propose, in this regard, that the notion of old media

should be considered not as an ontological, but rather as a relational term, which relates to the way we perceive, experience, and integrate media in our

everyday life. Ultimately, the notion of old media may tell us more about our relationship with media, than about the media themselves. The paper will be

organized in three parts. In the first section, I interrogate to what extent it is possible and useful to talk about“old media”in terms of artefacts, social uses,

and technology. I show that approaching this question from these three different perspective does not help to define the term, but instead renders the ar‑

bitrary and problematic nature of such distinctions more and more evident. In the second section, I sketch a brief history of how the notion entered into

the scholarly and the everyday vocabulary, identifying a key moment of rhetorical invention in the publication of Carolyn Marvin’s When Old Technologies

Were New (1988). I point to the fact that Marvin’s original emphasis on the level of discourse was subsequently superseded by“hard”definitions of old me‑

dia as technologies and artefacts. Finally, in the third and last section, I propose to return to Marvin’s original spirit, examining the possibility that the old‑

ness of media might be searched not in the media themselves, but rather in our perception and imagination of technological change. I therefore point to

rhetoric, everyday experience, and emotions as key contexts where we can find new ground to comprehend, discuss, and redefine the concept of old media.

PP 028

Beginnigs of Czech Reflections on the Media: Between-War Period and Oskar Butter

J. Jirak

, B. Kopplova

Metropolitan University Prague, Department of Media Studies, Prague 9, Czech Republic

Inspired by German experience of "publizistikwissenschaft" and French political and philosophical approach to media studies, the systematic reflections

on media and its role in society can be traced down in the Czechoslovakia of 1920s and 1930s. The text will be focused on the personality of Oskar Butter,

one of the main founders of Czech tradition of studying media. Being a co-publisher of a Duch novin (The Spirit of Newspapers) journal, Butter shaped

the framework of Czech media studies. The text is based on recently found materials from Butter´s personal archive, incl. letters, photos, etc. It introduces

Butter as an active political figure (on an international level) with very practical but highly etical approach to media (especially journalism) and its role in

society and its political life. The attention will be paid to the (mainly French and German) inspirations Butter and his colleagues used in their struggle for

establishing media studies as a legitimate part of sociology, as well as to his interest on searching Czech tradition of reflections on the media (incl. J. A.

Comenius). Oskar Butter who died in the Nazi concentration camp during theWorldWar II belongs among "forgotten heroes" of the history of media studies

but his contribution to this academic filed in both national and international and is based on deep knowledge of the international context.

PP 029

From “Marvels of the World” to “Hell on Earth”: An Introduction to a History of Postcards as an Informative Medium

J.M. Furió Sancho

Mid Sweden University, Media and Communication, Sundsvall, Sweden

From 1900 until 1930 -the so-called “Golden Age”- photopostcards were an alternative to the Press due to their speed at covering and marketing all kind

of events, whereas newspapers depended on regular dates and a limited number of pages. Through serialization, established to attract collectors and

facilitating the understanding of the sequence of facts, and through succinct captions, postcards are the precedent of the photo-reportage. Due to their

popularity and the reliability of postal services--even poor countries delivered post four-six times a day-- postcards were extraordinarily effective in con‑

veying political and social messages and, in doing so, were the cheapest propaganda weapon in wartime. The first aim of this study is to demonstrate how

photopostcards were the first“window to the world”for common people. Their success portrays the rising of a mass society in the context of revolutionary

change due to the demands of industrialization. Postcards promoted new and wider uses of photographic technique and language with a fast and contin‑

uous feedback between producers and buyers, contributing to making the postcards the dominant form of personal communication. The second aim is to

demonstrate that postcards were the most popular mean of visual information of this time. This study presents social uses of postcards by examining exam‑

ples of themes that may be identified as“photonews”, analyses their visual treatment and follows the development of three historical events—The Dreyfuss

Affair, Barcelona's Tragic Week (1909) and the Floods of Paris (1910)— in order to trace the evolution of photo-postcards as an informative medium.

When possible, newspapers or magazine presentation of those events are compared to postcards, in order to demonstrate the superior scope and depth

of postcards. Next, the study examines the use of postcards in wartime ˗a use promoted by the State among both soldiers and civilians- analyzing contents

and typologies to outline how simple snapshots could be interpreted as propaganda. The theoretical frame is the focus put by the History of Mentalities on

intellectual history and“the attitudes of ordinary people towards daily life”(Button,1981) which allows for the insertion of such a modest and undervalued

medium as postcards at the level of other information media. Even if postcards have gained acceptance as historical documents, most of the scholarship