Media, Electronic

The word medium denotes an intermediary agency that enables communication, by which is meant the production and transmission to other parties of messages, information, knowledge, discourses, and culture in the broad sense. Historically, the first electronic media—the telegraph and the telephone—arose at the height of the Industrial Revolution, together with the electrification that gradually came to replace steam power. These media had the capacity to restructure people's perceptions of time and space. Electronic media today, in the fullest sense, are radio, television, and the so-called new media (in this entry designated as “online” media). These media have various features in common:

• 1.
  they transmit knowledge to a heterogeneous and potentially limitless audience,
• 2.
  they are typical products of late modernity,
• 3.
  they are important agents of socialization, and
• 4.
  they perform an essential role in democratic processes.

Only with the development of electronic media has it been possible to speak properly of the “rise of mass communication.” Communication media in early modernity disseminated knowledge, culture, and ideas—such as books, newspapers, the theatre, architecture, painting, and sculpture—but widespread illiteracy and generalized poverty prevented access to them for the bulk of the population. Although printing had been invented in the 15th century, books and newspapers could only find a “mass market” after political, social, and economic conditions had radically changed. Moreover, in the 20th century, cinema, radio, and then television also became more easily available and were associated with the leisure and entertainment that Europeans had attained through social struggles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These characteristics ensured that mass media indeed became ubiquitous.

This entry first outlines the history of the electronic media, paying particular attention to the early development of radio, television, and the [Page 1531]Internet. This is followed by a survey of some of the main theories espoused in research on mass communication—in particular, the mass communication research derived from studies on political communication conducted in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s and media studies in Great Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. Next, the role of the electronic media in the political dynamics of contemporary democracies is analyzed. This topic will be addressed from two points of view: The first concerns the influence and impact of electronic media on political attitudes and behavior—an issue explored by the first analyses in communication research and even today one of its main fields of inquiry. The second aspect deals with the effects of the electronic media on the political system, which are commonly identified with the “mediatization of politics.”