Media History

In The Media Snatcher, Carl Therrien offers an in-depth exploration of NEC's PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16, a little-studied video game platform released in the late 1980s. The PC Engine was designed to bring technological expandability to the world of game consoles; The Media Snatcher's subtitle evokes some of the expansions and the numerous rebranded versions of the system released by NEC, including the first CD-ROM add-on in video game history. The platform makers hoped that expandability would allow its console to remain at the cutting edge and even catch up with such perceptually rich media as cinema and anime. More than a simple shape-shifter, the PC Engine became a media snatcher.

Therrien examines the multidirectional interactions of video game technologies, commercial structures, and cultural dynamics. He considers, among other things, hyperbolic marketing and its impact on how we construct video game history; glitches, technological obsolescence, and the difficulty of conducting media archaeology of the recent past; the emergence of male-centered power fantasies through audiovisual rewards; the rise of original genres such as visual novels; and the sustained efforts to integrate PC Engine software in the sprawling media landscape of Japan (where the PC Engine found much of its success). Avoiding the usual techno-industrial glorification, Therrien recounts the bold technological aspirations of the platform makers and the struggles to make the actual technology realize its potential.

As part of its stated mission to Christianise Britain, from its earliest years the BBC broadcast religious programmes intended for a child audience. Directed at sites domestic and educational, these broadcasts constituted a means of the mediatisation of religion for children. This paper explores the work of the pioneer children’s religious broadcaster John G. Williams, the nature and character of childhood religion and its nurture espoused by him whilst at the BBC, and as an educationist in the years following the 1944 Education Act. Setting a close reading of Williams’ views on childhood religion and school worship alongside those of a later critique, from the religious educationist John Hull in his School Worship: An Obituary (1975), this article argues that the differences between these two religious educators illustrate fracture lines occurring between religious education in the home, school and broadcast spaces in the long 1960s. Additionally, the historical evidence presented here provides a nuanced understanding of mediatisation as a process, indicating that other social processes in any national context, for example de-Christianisation in the English one, disrupt media logic. Finally, further research is called for on the historical intersections of religious education, and schools and religious broadcasting, as well as the more recent effects of broadcast collective worship in mediatising religion for children.

The prominent public profile of women journalists in press, radio and television in recent decades is an extraordinary contrast to the 'suit and tie' male culture of even half a century ago. It's a revolution since the forerunners of women journalists appeared in print in the middle of the nineteenth century. Very few women wrote for the press and those who did usually hid their identities behind pseudonyms, often male or asexual names. The more fortunate women were engaged under arrangements with some continuity to do a series of articles but most were casual contributors with little security and paid by the line.
The public profile of notable women tends to disguise the fact that women journalists struggle to attain real influence in decision-making roles.

Worship in schools has been a permanent feature of BBC's religious educational output since the 1940s, providing successive generations of children with an experience of religion, by ritual, drama, the spoken word, and music. From its beginnings broadcast worship for schools was avowedly Christian, supplying children with a language and experience akin to that of adult religious broadcasting and the worship of the mainstream Christian churches. By the late 1970s, however, the diet of experience supplied in worship broadcasts seemed not to match what schools required. This led to the development of a new hymn book for schools to resource the changing needs. The new book 'Come and Praise', first published in 1978, proved enormously popular and represented a slippage between the traditional orthodoxies of religious discourse and a new and open language which affirmed moral commitments aside from the religious. That it also successfully elided the distinctions between the religions cemented its success beyond the scope of the radio service itself. In any event, it is observed here, particularly popular songs in the 'Come and Praise' repertoire have provided a language and common experience of the religious for generations of British children.

Family historians can spend a lot of time at their
computer looking into the depths of the resources of
the Trove database at the National Library of Australia.
The database is a rich resource of material that can
absorb hundreds of hours searching newspapers,
journals, articles, books, maps, websites, photographs,
and a host ofother resources.
One of the most useful archives within the Thove database
is the collection of digitised newspapers. There are
currently 1,377 newspaper titles on the database from
across Australia and Papua New Guinea, with 462 from
NSW: One of the most interesting parts of this archive
is the host of small country newspapers from towns and
villages across Australia. They were published from the
colonial period to the mid-twentieth century as a mixture
of weeklies, bi-weeklies, tri-weeklies and dailies.

This study examines the roots of environmental journalism, from 1970s to  present day, through the pages of a news magazine Mother Jones. Through its news value, inclusion of citizen voices, and definition of fairness and balance, Mother Jones has defined environmental news. The methods are analyses of content plus documentary interviews with staffers. Results show the magazine’s emphasis on civil rights, which played out in investigating corporations’ role in society regarding energy, food production, and workers’ rights and safety. Topics range from extreme hazards to food additives, to fitness. As Mother Jones is one of the first news magazines to cover environmental news, this early definition persists today.

Keywords: environment, journalism, Mother Jones, history, news magazine

Durante el Régimen de Franco las relaciones del poder con la prensa tuvieron una especial relevancia. El Estado franquista veía en los medios de comunicación un servicio del Estado y al Estado. La ley de prensa de 25 de abril de 1938 consagra una concepción totalitaria del ejercicio del periodismo en el que todos los medios están dirigidos por los órganos de gobierno estatal. El régimen de censura y consignas se puede decir que busca troquelar la prensa de la época, uniformándola y anulando casi totalmente la libertad de expresión. De ahí que para el estudio de los medios de información en esos años sea obligado un capítulo previo dedicado al conocimiento de la acción ejercida por el Estado sobre ellos.
Uno de los mejores testimonios históricos sobre este fenómeno lo
constituyen las consignas que la Dirección General de Prensa del Ministerio de Información y Turismo hacía llegar a las redacciones. Estudiamos aquí un caso particular

This article provides a pathway to engage with the enabling environment of public communication in India. It scrutinises debates around press policy in the first four decades after Independence (1950-90) to reveal the trajectory of contests between dominant strands of liberal and progressive standpoints. This will help unravel the constituted contexts of the public sphere of marketed print in pre-liberalisation India. The central interest in doing so is to illustrate how and argue why the value of media diversity, unlike those of media freedom and media autonomy, failed to become a core concern in debates on press policy. The ways in which this inheritance predetermined the perimeters of policy options during media deregulation of the 1990s may be worth exploring further.

This paper aims to discuss the contribution of Laura Beloff to the field of Media Arts Cultures through her artistic and theoretical practices. In the first instance, I will deliver a personal understanding of the field and in a second instance I will analyze to what extent does Beloff relate to Media Arts and question her research and works to raise their limitations.

Madalas nang naitatampok sa mga akademikong lathalain at maging sa popular na midya ang estado ng pagsasahimpapawid gamit ang radyo sa Metro Manila noong panahon ng pagkapresidente ni Ferdinand Marcos. Sa kabilang banda, mayroon namang kakulangan sa bilang ng literatura ukol sa impluwensya ng rehimeng Marcos sa ibang rehiyon, kabilang na ang Kordilyera. Upang punan ang siwang ito, tiningnan ng artikulong ito ang operasyon, programming, at naging pangkalahatang estado ng mga istasyon ng radyo at mga mamamahayag nito sa lunsod ng Baguio noong panahon ng rehimeng Marcos. Napag- alaman mula sa pangangalap ng mga dokumento sa mga arkibo at sa pamamagitan ng pakikipagpanayam sa mga beteranong kawani at mamamahayag sa radyo sa Baguio na hindi naging ligtas ang industriya ng radyo sa lunsod sa harap ng mahigpit na pamamahala at malupit na administrasyon noong panahong iyon. Natuklasan ding nagkaroon ng kontribusyon ang radyo sa Baguio sa Kapangyarihang Bayan o People Power sa lunsod noong 1986.

DV er einn þeirra fjölmiðla sem hafa orðið hvað verst úti í þeim sviptingum sem hafa einkennt íslenska fjölmiðlaútgáfu frá aldamótum. Saga DV hefur á þessum tíma einkennst af áföllum og árangurslausum tilraunum til að snúa við þróun sem hefur breytt blaðinu úr einum stærsta fjölmiðli landsins í einn af mörgum smáum sem berjast fyrir lífi sínu. Í þessari lokaritgerð í BA-námi í sagnfræði við Háskóla Íslands er sjónum beint að hnignun blaðsins frá því skömmu fyrir aldamót fram til ársins 2006 þegar það hafði bæði orðið gjaldþrota og verið breytt í vikublað eftir tilraun til endurreisnar þess. Lögð verður áhersla á að greina hvaða þættir réðu mestu um þessa þróun.

A tanulmány célja, hogy a Szabad Nép és a Népszava írásain keresztül mutassa be, hogyan és milyen formában jelent meg a katolikus egyház a munkáspártok politikai diskurzusában. Az itt elemzett írások legfontosabb metszete, hogy vagy egy, az adott időszak politikai közbeszédében megjelenő téma, vagy egy politikai, társadalmi, gazdasági vagy kulturális történés kapcsán említik az egyházat. Ez lehet akár néhány általános gondolat, de ahogy látni fogjuk, van, hogy a cikk fő gondolatmenete a katolikus egyházzal  fonódik össze.
A tanulmányban tárgyalandó írások szinte teljes egészében lefedik az egyház 1945 utáni történetének legfontosabb csomópontjait, ugyanakkor nem lehet figyelmen kívül hagyni, hogy a Szabad Népben és a Népszavában megjelenő írások csak egyfajta narratíváját adják a kérdéskörnek, illetve az egyház és az állam közötti kapcsolatnak is. Ugyanakkor a tanulmánynak nem célja, hogy az egyház oldaláról is bemutassa ezen csomópontok narratíváját. Írásomban a két munkáspárti központi napilap egyházzal foglalkozó cikkein keresztül mutatom be, hogy a politikatörténeti eseményekbe ágyazott, egyházzal kapcsolatos állásfoglalások hogyan jelentkeztek a munkáspárti sajtóban. Ebben a részben, ha szükséges, bővebben kifejtem az adott pillanat történeti kontextusát is.
A tanulmány az 1945. április 1. és 1948. június 18. közötti időszakot öleli fel. Mind a két időpont egyaránt fontos pillanata volt a politika- és az egyháztörténetnek. Április 1-jén a Magyar Kommunista Párt főtitkára, Rákosi Mátyás jegyzett vezércikket a földreform felgyorsításának szükségességéről, míg a záró dátum több szempontból is emblematikus: 1948. június 18-án a kommunisták fő ideológusának tartott Révai József értékelte a nem állami iskolák államosítását. Ekkor már két napja annak, hogy a Szabad Nép a Magyar Dolgozók Pártjának központi napilapjaként, a Népszava pedig a Szabad Szakszervezetek központi lapjaként jelent meg.

Brian Shott’s book about the black and Irish presses and their struggle
for citizenship in America in the late nineteenth and beginning of the
twentieth centuries explores how the identities of two minorities were
established, developed, and advanced and how they coped with challenges
to their interests. Shott sheds light on how African American and
Irish American editors advocated their causes, perceived group interests,
and interacted with each other on issues of race, religion, labor, slavery,
emancipation, the economy, and foreign affairs.

This paper discusses large-scale but gradual changes in the subject of holography that have only recently become readily observable. Presenting an analysis of publications in holography over the past half century, the paper illustrates and discusses the evolving shape of the subject. Over 40,000 international information sources have been recorded, including some 20,000 papers, 10,000 conference presentations, 7,000 patents, 1,000 books, nearly as many theses and at least 500 exhibitions. This statistical and sociological approach is combined with the identification of specific factors – notably the role of individuals, conferences, proof-of-concept demonstrations and exhibitions – to suggest that the development of holography has been unusually contingent on a variety of intellectual and social influences. The paper situates these observations about holography and holographers in the context of a wider discussion about the styles, purposes and difficulties of historical writing on technological subjects. It further suggests that this ongoing process of both recording and reconstructing technological history can be aided by identification of sources sometimes overlooked or undervalued by practitioners: unpublished archival materials such as private file collections; business records; accounts of unsuccessful activities; and, by no means least, anecdotal accounts inter-linked between participants.

This paper introduces Kyoto's 'radio towers', a largely forgotten element of Japan's early mass media history and a now scarce concrete reminder of the interpenetration of the private and state spheres characteristic of Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s. After a brief survey of the early development of radio broadcasting in Japan and the social, technological and political factors that fed into their conception, the paper presents a brief survey of the towers still known to be extant in Kyoto City. Attempts at preservation have been haphazard but there seems to be a growing realisation that these often overlooked and sometimes misconstrued pieces of public heritage are worthy of the attention of both academics seeking to understand the intersection of radio, state and audience in 1930s Japan and of those with an interest in preserving their local history.