Reaction Paper 1: The Historical Context of International Communication
The use of communication as a tool has been often observed in history. The evolution of communication is strongly correlated to economic, political or military historical situations. Throughout my reading of the textbook’s first chapter, I have been particularly interested in the concept of propaganda, and in how it was adapted to different technological advances and new medium; in order to serve political or military purposes. I wished to focus here on the way Radio in particular has revolutionized propaganda, and made it a phenomenon of masses. From centuries before the invention and then popularization of radio, communication was already used as a way to spread ideologies to the masses. Writing is an example of that, as the popularization of it to non-formal languages, thanks to the printing revolution, had “undermin[ed] the authority of priests, scribes and political and cultural elites”(p.13), which means that these actors were using their domination on printing as way for id...