Setting the Scene: Media in Context

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the contexts — cultural and social — in which the media operate. Without a grasp of the influences which have shaped media, study of it at the micro-level — newspapers, films, TV programmes, advertising — is to risk falling into a trap, which the media often do themselves, of portraying realities as though they exist only in the present, disconnected from the past. To see the wood as a whole we must step back from the trees a little. The media as we know them are only the latest in a long line of message systems, beginning with marks on cave walls, the evolution of non-verbal and spoken language and eventually becoming the core activity of communities, societies and nations. Here the role of language as a definer of reality is examined.