SUM21 Timeline Project VIDEO VERSION

Mass media reaches a large amount of people in a

short amount of time.

The following events are what I believe to be the

six most important events in media communication starting in 1440.

With the creation of the printing press.

The printing press was established in 1440 by a German

Goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg printing allows for documents to be

copied and distributed whether they are newspapers, books, letters and

other forms of printed reading material.

The creation of the printing press is so important because

of the large impact that it held over society before

print, information was passed by word of mouth, words would

get scrambled and not resulting in the same message for

everybody. Print allowed for multiple copies of the exact same

words to be distributed.

This also allowed for much faster travel of news.

Additionally, people can now see for themselves what was being

said when newspapers became plentiful enough for many people to

have them.

These people needed to read it and therefore literacy rates

increased. There was also a higher demand for religious texts

as the bible quickly became one of the first printed

texts without print, people would have continued on for years

by the word of mouth, and arguably some major events

in world history would not have happened, such as the

stamp act or the protestant reformation.

The next important event occurred in 1517.

With Martin Luther's 95 theses, Martin Luther was a professor

as well as an ordained priest, who began to see

an issue with the way that the Catholic Church was

operating as he thought, some of their acts, such as

having people pay for their sins, went against the Bible.

He then made a list of complaints against the church

called the 95 theses.

People argue that the 95 theses is what led to

the Protestant Reformation.

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 and to challenge the

Catholic Church, which resulted in a divide and the creation

of a new branch of Christianity called Protestantism, Martin Luther's

95 Theses sparked this because copies were made of his

complaints and distributed for people to read, and eventually word

spread across Europe.

People chose to believe him because print was fairly new,

and not just anything could be printed, so they knew

this must be good information.

They also wanted to absorb any more religious text that

they could, because his 95 theses were physically printed.

The information spread too quickly for the church to find

him and stop him from sharing his opinions.

Without print, this rebellion probably would have never been so

successful as to turn into a whole reformation.

The next important event jumps to 1912, with the Radio

Act of 1912.

The Radio Act of 1912 was created in response to

the sinking of the Titanic.

The Titanic did send out emergency signals before it went

down, but the message was never received because there was

too much radio noise caused by amateur broadcasters and a

nearby shipped and knock at the message because the only

operator was off duty Due to the Radio Act of

1912 being imposed after the sinking of the Titanic limits

were put onto who can broadcast and where radio operators

must be licensed and people who were broadcasting for fun

were absolutely not allowed to broadcast over commercial or military

wavelengths. Also, emergency signals could be sent and received at

any point in time and we're able to interrupt any

station at any time, Especially due to the Titanic.

There was now a 24 hour radio service for ships

at sea.

This Radio Act is so important to media communication because

that established the basis of radio rules Now, it was

much safer because of the emergency wavelengths that could reach

anybody rather than there being too much traffic to spread

emergency signals without it, situations such as the titanic might

have occurred again.

The next important event was sparked in 1917 and lasted

until the 1950s, which was the Red Scare.

After the bolshevik revolution in Russia, communism was on the

rise. The red scare signifies that the american people were

afraid that communism would make its way into the United

States and eventually take over the government.

The red scare is an extremely important event when it

comes to media communication because it altered people's trust in

the government and those around it.

People were extremely anxious about communism taking over and could

not trust even elected officials and fear that they might

be soviet spies.

A big cause of this was propaganda, which spread misleading

information and biased information to promote a cause or politics.

In this case, a lot of the propaganda warned the

american public to watch out for any sort of suspicions

around communism and report any sign of it.

The fact that people now had to worry about this

and it got blown out of proportion made the country

uneasy. If the red scare hadn't happened, the country wouldn't

have been so fearful of communism and many people would

have not been deported back to the countries that they

originally came from.

The next most important event in media communication happened in

1960 with the presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon 1960.

The presidential debate between John F., Kennedy and Richard Nixon

was live on television.

However, some people watched while others listened on the radio.

Those who washed on television thought that Kennedy one.

Whereas those who listen to the radio believe that Nixon

won. The Kennedy Nixon debate shows just how the influence

of media can affect society.

Although Nixon spoke much more clearly quickly and properly than

Kennedy, Kennedy looked nicer at this point in time, millions

of homes now have television and more people watch than

listen. Ultimately Kennedy ended up winning the debate in the

presidential election.

Regardless of Nixon's intelligence, appearance seemed to be the tie

breaker for the audience.

This shows just how powerful television can be.

When you have the words and images right in front

of you, it can be much easier to make a

decision compared to picturing the scenario for yourself when you're

listening to it.

The last important event in media communication occurred around the

1970s, in the middle of the Cold War because the

internet was just being created and people were concerned about

Russia's capabilities.

As far as putting a stop to our advancements In

the 1990s, we decided to go with a distributed network

after concerns of security breaches and careful consideration, the internet

became a distributed network, meaning that there was no central

control. A distributed network meant that it would be very

difficult to lose information if someone or something tries to

take down the internet.

Although a distributed network is much more secure, it does

not allow for filtration or censorship for what can go

onto the internet.

The fact that we use a distributed network for the

Internet is very important because it paves the way for

what we can have, readily accessible to us, luckily, a

distributed network provides a sense of security and information will

never really be gone out of our reach if something

were to happen to internet pathways, the downside is that

there is no filter as to what can be put

on the internet.

While it does allow for information to be way more

accessible, there is potentially harmful information that one can find

on the internet to harm oneself or others.

It cannot be stopped from posting and even if hidden,

there was always a way without this though, the internet

would face more security problems and there would be the

potential for information to get lost.

The other side of it is that without it, there

might be censorship as to what can be put on

the internet.

In conclusion, I believe that the creation of the printing

press, martin, Luther's 95 theses, the Radio Act of 1912,

the red scare, the Kennedy Nixon debate and the use

of a distributed network are extremely important and diverse events

that paved the way for media communication and here are

my work cited

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