Open access
BACKGROUND CHECKING OF THE HISTORY – MEDIA TRANSFORMATIONS VERSUS CULTURAL CONTINUITIES
Ilona COPIK1
Transformations and Turbulence in Culture and in the Media
Publication language: Polish
Journal article
Transformations No. 1-2 (92-93) 2017, Publication date: 25 May 2017
Keywords: history of media, media transformations, cultural continuities, borderland
Abstract The aim of the article is an attempt to analyze the history of media in terms of media revolutions, which revive it; and to do a thorough research of the socio – cultural causes and consequencesof introducing the new media and technology, making it more general – the influence of technology on human beings and culture. The anthropological approach proposed in this paper makes the reader focused not only on the media itself – transmitters; information channels, but mainly on the cultural practices connected with it. The main thesis is a leading thought of this paper that in the course of so called media revolutions, which took place in the course of centuries, there are visible similarities, and issues that people found too sudden and also revolutionary changes often are the results of cultural continuity and are evidence of transformations of the old forms into new ones. The most interesting for the media anthropologist is focusing on the transitional periods in the course of which many different media systems compete and cooperate with each other, and the application of the category of ‘borderland’ as modus operandi of historical and media processes.
Zakład Komunikacji Kulturowej, Instytut Nauk o Kulturze i Studiów Interdyscyplinarnych, Wydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach
E-mail: ilonac@autograf.pl