
The Creation of the Media
Political Origins of Modern Communications
Paul Starr(Author)
Basic Books (Publisher)
Published on 6. April 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
496 pages
978-0-465-08194-3 (ISBN)
Description
America's leading role in today's information revolution may seem simply to reflect its position as the world's dominant economy and most powerful state. But by the early nineteenth century, when the United States was neither a world power nor a primary centre of scientific discovery, it was already a leader in communications-in postal service and newspaper publishing, then in development of the telegraph and telephone networks, later in the whole repertoire of mass communications.In this wide-ranging social history of American media, from the first printing press to the early days of radio, Paul Starr shows that the creation of modern communications was as much the result of political choices as of technological invention. With his original historical analysis, Starr examines how the decisions that led to a state-run post office and private monopolies on the telegraph and telephone systems affected a developing society. He illuminates contemporary controversies over freedom of information by exploring such crucial formative issues as freedom of the press, intellectual property, privacy, public access to information, and the shaping of specific technologies and institutions. America's critical choices in these areas, Starr argues, affect the long-run path of development in a society and have had wide social, economic, and even military ramifications. The Creation of the Media not only tells the history of the media in a new way it puts America and its global influence into a new perspective.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 36 mm
Weight
570 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-465-08194-3 (9780465081943)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Previous edition
Book
03/2004
Basic Books
€45.30
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
Paul Starr is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and its Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Social Transformation of American Medicine and The Creation of the Media. Starr is the co-founder and editor of The American Prospect. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.