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History Lessons: Then and Now

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Media and the Government of Populations

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media ((PSHM))

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Abstract

This chapter presents a range of heuristic lessons from the histories of print, telegraphy, and broadcast, focusing on how these technologies have been and remain implicated in exercises of power bearing on specific populations, and how they have been apprehended as harbingers of change. Discussing some “past” communication technologies, it moves backward and forward between centuries and between “older” and “newer” media: for example, between older and newer ways of “doing the books” and the kinds of individuals these practices have helped form. In so doing the chapter explicates how communication technologies are part of governing populations, the formative dimensions of this approach, and the inseparable link between communication technology and the political technology of individuals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Philip Dearman

  2. RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Cathy Greenfield

  3. RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Peter Williams

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  1. Philip Dearman
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  2. Cathy Greenfield
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  3. Peter Williams
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Correspondence to Philip Dearman .

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Dearman, P., Greenfield, C., Williams, P. (2018). History Lessons: Then and Now. In: Media and the Government of Populations. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-34773-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-34773-2_2

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