Media, History, Society: A Cultural History of U.S. Media. Janet M. Cramer. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 296 pp. $89.95 hbk. $39.95 pbk.
The back cover of Janet Cramer’s Media, History, Society: A Cultural History of U.S. Media says that the book “offers a cultural history of media in the United States, shifting the lens of media history from media developments and evolution to a focus on changes in culture and society, and emphasizing how media shaped and were shaped by societal trends, policies, and cultural shifts.” For those of us who blend cultural studies with history in both research and teaching, this suggests an alternative to traditional approaches found in many media history texts.
Cramer’s book is organized conceptually, and is divided into four major sections: Media and Government, Media and Commerce, Media and Community, and a Conclusion, each subdivided into chapters that cover a broad span of time. For example, Media and Government begins with a discussion of the First Amendment and how it developed in response to earlier Western European ideas about monarchical control of information, then moves on to a chapter on censorship in wartime, and ends with more recent debates over free speech. Media and Commerce discusses the emergence of the market model and the Penny Press, as well as the rise of newspapers as an industry. How audiences changed in the wake of emerging broadcast technologies and entertainment media are also included here.
Next, Media and Community examines the press in light of social responsibility theory, with overviews of the muckrakers, early public relations, and the Hutchins Commission. A chapter on alternative media looks at the suffrage press and black press movements, moving forward in time to discuss social movements and the Internet. The last chapter is more theoretical, examining media representation and how media help form and maintain cultural identity in a world that now includes MySpace, Second Life, chat rooms, and personal Web pages. The Conclusion, finally, examines media literacy and touches on audience research and reader-negotiated meanings.
This book has many strengths, notably a clear and reader-friendly writing style. Cramer, an associate professor of communication at the University of New Mexico, covers a lot of ground in this book, introducing students to media concepts in an easy-to-understand way. Each chapter begins with a list of what students can expect to learn and ends with a brief review. While that may seem less than challenging for advanced students, there are references to the researchers cited at the back of each chapter, so students can find the sources if they want more reading.
Despite the book’s strengths, it should be noted that, like other texts that claim to be about media history, this one emphasizes journalism, so those hoping for material on, say, the profound effects of telegraphy or radio won’t find much here. Also like many texts, the focus is U.S. media, which is limiting in an age when many campuses are trying to emphasize global views.
As much as I like the idea of putting media history in a cultural context, this book is less successful at doing that than it is at putting media concepts in a historical context. For that reason, I would have qualms about organizing an upper-division media history course with this book as the main text. Can you really shift too far from “developments and evolution” and still claim that you’re teaching history in its own right? There is a timeline at the back, but Cramer does not refer to it, and it seems like an afterthought.
Remembering a student who thought television was invented in the 1970s, I found myself wondering if the lack of chronology and constant shifts back and forth in time would actually add to student confusion. Also missing here is the wonder of media history—the good stories about the seemingly miraculous “new media” of the past, such as Gutenberg’s time-saving fifteenth-century invention, the nineteenth-century transatlantic cable, the magic of radio in the early twentieth century, and, more recently, the Internet itself. Moreover, there are no stories about Elizabeth Cochrane’s brave exploits as “Nellie Bly,” nothing about Edward R. Murrow taking on McCarthyism, nothing about two young reporters who dared to keep asking questions about the break-in at the Watergate.
That said, I do think this book is valuable. Its accessibility and relative affordability would make it an ideal text for a freshman or sophomore-level course designed to introduce students to journalism concepts. It could also work well in an introduction to mass media course if an instructor wanted to organize the class around government, commerce, and mediated identity rather than around discrete media, as some popular texts do. If Cramer’s book were included as part of an introduction to the field, students could be better prepared to take upper-division courses with more challenging readings in law, political economy, or cultural approaches to media. Used in that way, the book would make a nice contribution to undergraduate education in media.
JANE MARCELLUS
Middle Tennessee State University