Harold Innis Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

"ABSTRACT: This paper examines the theoretical and historical principles that shaped the development of Canadian communication studies. The analysis focuses on the University of Toronto as a historical site for the conception and... more

- by
- •
- Sociology, Demography, Communication, Media Studies

Overview: The aim of this course is to provide a general introduction to a range of theories that seek to explain why we communicate as we do. The first part of the course establishes a general overview of communication theory, from both theoretical and historical points of view. We will examine the relationship between communication, ideology, power, and social consciousness; the development of alphabetic writing; and theories of orality and literacy. We will also review the concept of the self in the context of communication studies. The second part of the course will focus on specific fields within the area of communication, including: the study of popular culture; media analysis; film studies; advertising; and the political economy of communication. We will also examine the rise of technology studies in communication, and consider the way in which the electronic media (in particular computers and the Internet), have refashioned both human consciousness and culture. In this context, we will discuss issues of privacy and democracy in the emerging digital culture; and conclude the course with a brief discussion of global communication.

- by Anis Rahman
- •
- Semiotics, Communication, Media Studies, New Media

Conocer es lo que los filósofos denominan "un verbo de éxito": lo que conocemos, por oposición a lo que creemos, es verdadero por definición. Peter Burke Sobre los monopolios del conocimiento La noción monopolio del conocimiento fue acuñada por In-nis en un momento en que nadie hablaba sobre la economía del conocimiento y su relación con la comunicación. Resulta pertinente analizar el concepto en el marco de la obra del economista e historiador canadiense con el fin de ponerlo a prueba en el estudio del fenómeno de la economía política de la información en la sociedad contemporánea. Se analizará la ope-ratividad de la noción "monopolios del conocimiento" al ponerla en la intersección entre los medios de comunicación, el medio (socio-político y económico) y la historia. Harold A. Innis desarrolló una consistente teoría que daba a la comunicación el papel articulador de la economía política de las civilizaciones. Su idea de monopolios del conocimiento ayuda a explicar la lógica del poder desde una perspectiva de los usos de la información y su relación con las instituciones poder. Sobresale en su teoría el lugar que Innis otorga a la noción de tiempo y espacio en sus estudios sobre los medios de comunicación. La concepción del tiempo y del espacio como vectores esenciales de los medios de transporte y la comunicación constituye un rasgo distintivo, el cual ha aportado mucho en el campo de estudio "Cap. 1. Monopolios del conocimiento" pp. 27-62 en: Elizondo, J. O. (2019). Monopolios del Conocimiento, Big Data y Conocimiento Abierto. México: UAM

Introduction to the full-length book Communicating with Memes: Consequences in Post-truth Civilization

- by Grant Kien
- •
- Media Studies, Internet Studies, Political communication, Social Media
- by Joshua Meyrowitz
- •
- History, Cultural History, Social Theory, Print Culture
- by Joshua Meyrowitz
- •
- Media Ecology, Media Theory, Printing History, Marshall McLuhan
- by Chris Russill
- •
- Communication, Pragmatism, Media Studies, New Media

McLuhan's references to Eastern Christianity in The Medium and the Light reveal an ambivalence that raises challenging questions about both of them. If the Reformation was the product of the technology of print that undermined manuscript-based medieval culture, such a communal culture persisted in the Eastern Orthodox Church, while the Catholic Counter-Reformation's print-based centralized bureaucracy seems like dead weight in the neo-tribal electric environment. McLuhan often lumped together Orthodoxy and the Orient in their appeal to post-literate Western man under those conditions. To be sure, rare is now the Catholic or mainline Protestant church that does not display at least one Eastern icon as a self-evident touchstone of authentic Christianity. But is that new prestige of Eastern Christian forms to be viewed as the Trojan horse of an Oriental peril to Western civilization as it dissolves into a global electronic environment? The Eastern Church is, if anything, the more direct heir of Greco-Roman tradition, and yet did not treat it as the "hard shell" of visual-literate immutability it became in the West. Has her Eastern way of handling that heritage preserved Christian possibilities that are neither married to Western modernity, nor to be subsumed under post-modern electronic Orientalism? McLuhan's understanding of faith, theology, Incarnation, the Logos, etc., often has an Orthodox ring to it: "the medium is the message" could sum up the theology of the icon. With its acute sense of their inseparability, can Orthodoxy contribute to a critical understanding of electric conditions that also challenge it as their counter-environment? How would it stand up to McLuhan-inspired scrutiny as the Christian interface between East and West, audile-tactile and visual culture, participation and personality?

- by Menahem Blondheim
- •
- Communication, Jewish Studies, Harold Innis, Book of Esther

The years since 2007 have seen the worldwide uptake of a new type of mobile computing device with a touch screen interface. While this context presents accessible and low cost opportunities to extend the reach of higher education, there is little understanding of how learning occurs when people interact with these devices in their everyday lives. Medium theory concerns the study of one type of media and its unique effects on people and culture (Meyrowitz, 2001, p. 10). My original contribution to knowledge is to use medium theory to examine the effects of the mobile touch screen device (MTSD) on the learning experiences and practices of adults. My research question is: What are the qualities of the MTSD medium that facilitate learning by practice? The aim of this thesis is to produce new knowledge towards enhancing higher education learning design involving MTSDs. The project involved a class of post-graduates studying communications theory who were asked to complete a written major...

- by Victor Renolds
- •
- Human Computer Interaction, Design, Mobile Learning, Learning and Teaching

Este libro ofrece un panorama sobre el fenómeno de los monopolios del conocimiento en el contexto de la socie- dad contemporánea ante los retos del Big Data. ¿Qué es
y quiénes conforman un monopolio del conocimiento? ¿Cómo opera? ¿Cómo se gestionan los datos, la información y el conoci- miento? ¿Quiénes resultan beneficiados y quiénes afectados en el cambio tecnológico? ¿Cómo podemos hacer frente a los mono- polios del conocimiento?
Harold. A. Innis (1894–1952) es un pensador economista polí- tico e historiador de la economía, quien estudió desde una pers- pectiva amplia las razones que explican el desarrollo y declive de naciones y civilizaciones en el mundo occidental. El punto de partida de su método es que la historia de una cultura, nación, imperio o civilización puede ser comprendida mediante el estudio y observación del desarrollo de sus redes de comercio, transporte y comunicación. Para Innis la estabilidad relativa de las culturas depende del balance y la proporción de sus medios. Para comen- zar una investigación en este tema sugiere que nos hagamos tres preguntas básicas: 1. ¿Cómo funciona una tecnología de la comu- nicación específica? 2. ¿Qué insumos toma de la sociedad y de qué manera contribuye con ella? Y, finalmente 3. ¿Qué formas de poder incitan?

- by Hart Cohen
- •
- Indigenous Media, Harold Innis, Warlpiri
- by Robert Bobnič and +1
- •
- Communication, Technology, Media Studies, Media History

L’uso dei nostri sensi, i rapporti tra di essi, il modo cioè in cui sentiamo, percepiamo e facciamo esperienza del mondo è connaturato all’esistenza stessa dei media. Ogni medium nasce, infatti, per mediare il nostro rapporto col mondo, e così facendo finisce per modificare il mondo in sé e noi stessi con esso. È vocazione dei media, inoltre, assumere la forma di un sistema. I media cioè si accumulano e si ibridano così da for-mare un insieme complesso di relazioni e processi in continuo divenire, in cui noi stessi siamo coinvolti.
Partendo da tali premesse, questo articolo si propone di illustrare una visione sistemica dei media, all’interno della quale è possibile definire i media come ambienti, in ossequio all’ambito di studi, perlopiù nordamericano e ancora poco conosciuto in Italia, che va sotto il nome di media ecology, laddove il termi-ne “ecologia”, utilizzato in senso etimologico, rimanda appunto allo studio sistematico dell’ambiente dei media.
Infine, si tenta di dimostrare la validità e l’efficacia di tale approccio “ecologico” nel comprendere il com-plesso intreccio di relazioni e processi attraverso cui le tecnologie influenzano il modo cui sentiamo, per-cepiamo e facciamo esperienza del mondo, ovvero l’ambito proprio dell’Estetica dei media.

- by Paolo Granata
- •
- Aesthetics, New Media, Media Ecology, Vilem Flusser

Il saggio illustra il rapporto tra geografia e comunicazione, ponendo le basi per un nuovo campo di ricerca, quello della "geografia della comunicazione", in Italia ancora non approfondito, dove è necessaria tanto una “svolta spaziale” («spatial turn») negli studi di comunicazione, quanto una “svolta comunicazionale” («communicational turn») negli studi geografici e di geografia culturale. Si cerca, inoltre, di delineare una possibile ricaduta pratica di questo approccio sul piano della governance delle authorities di garanzia delle comunicazioni.

- by Felice Blasi
- •
- Henri Lefebvre, Harold Innis, Puglia, Geografia

The author argues that discipline – operating through the distribution of individuals by means of enclosure and surveillance – is crucial to understanding Daniil Kharms’s prose of the 1930s. The author focuses on three of his mini-stories, first looking at mechanisms of surveillance in “Dream,” examining their effects upon the psyche that have material impacts on the body of the individual. Then he turns to a trajectory of enclosure that operates from the urban commons (“Trial by Lynching”) to the home (“An Unexpected Drinking Party”). The centripetal trajectory of enclosure ends in all cases at the body as the endpoint of discipline and, ultimately, the site of Kharms’s “grotesque resistance,” challenging the enclosure of the body from the point of its confinement. He also looks to how paper – as theme in and medium of Kharms’s work – operates within these spatial dynamics. He draws upon Harold Innis, who associated the rise of print in the United States with the “space bias” of communication. Reading Foucault and Innis together, Kharms’s short prose works can be understood as a contestation of the space bias of print media in the Stalinist era, prompting Kharms’s retreat to the contours of the body as a site of struggle.

- by Alec Brookes
- •
- Russian Literature, The Grotesque Body, Michel Foucault, Harold Innis

Conocer es lo que los filósofos denomi-nan "un verbo de éxito": lo que conoce-mos, por oposición a lo que creemos, es verdadero por definición. Peter Burke Sobre los monopolios del conocimiento L a noción monopolio del conocimiento fue acuñada por In-nis en un momento en que nadie hablaba sobre la econo-mía del conocimiento y su relación con la comunicación. Resulta pertinente analizar el concepto en el marco de la obra del economista e historiador canadiense con el fin de ponerlo a prueba en el estudio del fenómeno de la economía política de la información en la sociedad contemporánea. Se analizará la ope-ratividad de la noción "monopolios del conocimiento" al ponerla en la intersección entre los medios de comunicación, el medio (socio-político y económico) y la historia. Harold A. Innis desarrolló una consistente teoría que daba a la comunicación el papel articulador de la economía política de las civilizaciones. Su idea de monopolios del conocimiento ayu-da a explicar la lógica del poder desde una perspectiva de los usos de la información y su relación con las instituciones poder. Sobresale en su teoría el lugar que Innis otorga a la noción de tiem-po y espacio en sus estudios sobre los medios de comunicación. La concepción del tiempo y del espacio como vectores esenciales de los medios de transporte y la comunicación constituye un ras-go distintivo, el cual ha aportado mucho en el campo de estudio "Cap. 1. Monopolios del conocimiento" pp. 27-62 en: Elizondo, J. O. (2019). Monopolios del Conocimiento, Big Data y Conocimiento Abierto. Ciudad de México: UAM.

ABStRACt This article compares why McLuhan's work in communications has been the source of much acclaim whereas that of Innis has attracted attention only recently. It argues that the disparate responses to the contributions of these two theorists are rooted not only in the extent to which their writings were available, but also in their differing communication practices. The latter account for why Innis' studies of media were initially ignored and why McLuhan was able to develop a considerable following, in part by drawing on Innis as a precursor ; this resulted in a distorted view of Innis' ideas that has persisted to this day. As a cor-rective, the article challenges McLuhan's claims that Innis viewed media as a form of staple and that he sought to understand how various knowledge specialities could be unified. Finally, it makes the case that the Innis/McLuhan tandem should be decoupled, to make better sense of a " de-McLuhanised " Innis on the one hand, and the McLuhanist-centred Toronto School on the other. RESUMÉ Cet article compare les devenirs respectifs des travaux de McLuhan et d'Innis et explique pourquoi, alors que les premiers ont été très vite reconnus, les seconds n'ont attiré l'attention que récemment. Il soutient que les réponses disparates à leurs contributions proviennent non seulement de la relative disponibilité de leurs écrits, mais aussi des pratiques de communication différentes de leurs auteurs. Ceci explique pourquoi les travaux d'Innis sur les media ont d'abord été ignorés, alors que ceux de McLuhan jouissaient d'une forte popularité, partiellement due à sa façon de mettre à profit les travaux précurseurs d'Innis ; ceci a résulté en une perspective distordue des idées de ce dernier, qui a persisté jusqu'à nos jours. Afin de corriger cette distorsion, cet article conteste les propositions de McLuhan selon lesquelles Innis aurait considéré les media comme une forme de produits de première nécessité, et qu'il aurait tenté de comprendre comment divers savoirs spécialisés pouvaient être unifiés. Enfin, le présent article défend la thèse selon laquelle le tandem Innis/McLuhan (supposément au coeur de « l'École de Toronto en Communication ») devrait être découplé. Ceci permettrait, d'une part, de mieux rendre compte de travaux d'Innis, sans la médiation de McLuhan, et, d'autre part de l'École de Toronto, alors exclusivement centrée sur McLuhan.

- by William J Buxton
- •
- Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis

Hausarbeit im Fachbereich Medienwissenschaft an der HU Berlin. Paul Virilio und Harold Innis schauen beide auf die Wirkung von Medien auf Herrschafts- und Gesellschaftssysteme und ihre jeweiligen Schwachstellen. Ihre Analysen eröffnen die... more

- by Geraldine Hepp
- •
- Paul Virilio, Harold Innis, Medienwissenschaft, Kommunikation

This paper argues that questions concerning the circulation of capital are central to the study of contemporary and future media under capitalism. Moreover, it argues that such questions have been central to Marx’s analysis of the reproduction of capital vis-à-vis the realization of value and the reduction of circulation time. Marx’s concepts of both the circuit and circulation of capital implies a theory of communication. Thus the purpose of our paper is to outline the logistical mechanisms that underlie a Marxist theory of media and communication and thereby foregrounding the role new media plays in reducing circulation time. We argue that the necessity of theorizing communication from a circuit and circulation-centric point of view stems from the emergence of a number of new technological phenomena that intensify, but sometimes undermine, the capitalist logic of acceleration. For the purposes of understanding the evolution of digital technologies, ostensibly employed to accelerate the circulation of capital—or put differently, to reduce circulation time—we need to pay attention to volume 2 of Capital, and key sections in the Grundrisse.

- by Atle Mikkola Kjøsen and +1
- •
- Economics, Political Economy, Communication, Media Studies

Transformative technological, environmental, and political events in recent years have converged to emphasize a turn to spatialization within the study of media and communication, in particular within studies of the political economy of media. The Arctic, as a global region denoted by economic growth, ecological transformation, and increasingly dynamic international politics, presents a natural focal point for the impact of spatial media. This study examines both History Channel's reality television program Ice Road Truckers and its Discovery Channel counterpart Deadliest Catch, including the programs' histories and their implicit or direct roles in influencing discourse about the Arctic and sub-Arctic's economy and ecology. How do these programs articulate a discourse about the North American Arctic for a mass audience, and how does this discourse relate to real-world ecological and economic conditions of the region?

- by Derek Moscato
- •
- Popular Culture, Environmental Communication, Harold Innis, Arctic

The spectacular history of the computer’s power for calculation and command over distance has tended to divert attention from its very mixed record in mediating time. Gradual refinements in digital storage technologies have not overcome the tendency for digital artefacts to degrade, corrupt and disappear. The most distinctive feature of computer media though, is the diversification of spatiotemporal configurations that they have come to mediate. This article returns to the seminal work of mid-20th century communications theorist Harold Innis, for an ethical framework that deals with this space/time imbalance. Just before computers were developed, he devised a method for analysing civilisations according to how well balanced the dominant media of an era were in relating to time and space. Space-binding media (such as papyrus or electronic communication), facilitate command and control over territory and support empire building. Time-binding media (such as stone and spoken communicati...

- by Chris Chesher
- •
- Sociology, Digital Humanities, Digital Media, Digital Archaeology
- by Oumar Kane
- •
- Media History, Harold Innis, Media Research, Jack Goody

Harold Innis' writings on media and communication technology are well known and remain a point of departure for scholars seeking to understand the cultural and cognitive implications of the instruments we use to communicate. Less well known is Innis' preoccupation with the concept of information. Like his contemporaries Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon, Innis was keenly aware that information had a significance that extended its semantics. It also had a quantitative significance. It flowed through cultural systems, and was governed by specific dynamics that regulated the behaviour of the systems of which it was a part. Sometimes, when the quantity of circulating information became too high, it caused the systems it governed to become dysfunctional, and eventually collapse. Innis introduced his ideas on information in the neglected anthology _Political Economy in the Modern State_. In fact, in the cultural essays he offered an interpretation of western history built on the premise that circulating information was a help and hindrance to cultural evolution and adaptation. Innis believed that the emergence of the steam printing press in many ways had proven to be a disaster for the West.
In my talk, I will explore why he thought that was so, and what he believed scholars should do in response. His solutions, in retrospect, are very interesting because they anticipate a trend emerging in multiple domains of research and practice today: the use of topographic form to support expression, instruction and thought.

- by John Bonnett
- •
- Harold Innis, Harold A. Innis

Marshall McLuhan claimed his work was a footnote to Harold A. Innis. His claims have been used to argue that McLuhan and Innis offer a coherent system of thought, with a systematic methodology and common set of basic assumptions and presuppositions. This article questions that species of argument and looks to deepen our understanding of the McLuhan-Innis relationship.

- by Andrew Chrystall
- •
- Epistemology, Media Studies, Media Ecology, Marshall McLuhan

One of the most significant attributes of digital computation is that it has disrupted extant work practices in multiple disciplines, including history. In this contribution, I argue that far from being a trend that should be resisted, it in fact should be encouraged. Computation is presenting historians with novel opportunities to express, analyze, and teach the past, but that potential will only be realized if scholars assume a new research mandate, that of design. For many historians, such a research agenda is likely to seem strange, if not beyond the pale. There are tasks that fall properly within the domain of the Historian’s Craft and the design of workflows for digital platforms and expressive forms for digital narratives are not among them. In Section One, via the writings of Harold Innis, I make the case that a preoccupation with design is in fact very much part of Canada’s historiographic tradition. In Section Two, I present an environmental scan of emerging technologies, and suggest that
now is an opportune time to revive Innis’ preoccupation with design. In the following two sections, I present the StructureMorph Project, a case study showing how historians can leverage the properties of digital form to realize their expressive, narrative, and attestive needs in the digital,
virtual worlds that will become increasingly important platforms for representing, disseminating, and interpreting the past.

- by Alexandre Girardeau
- •
- Technology, Media Studies, Gregory Bateson, Marshall McLuhan
- by William J Buxton
- •
- History of Ideas, Mass Communication, Harold Innis

RESUMO Este artigo analisa a contribuição de Harold Innis em O Viés da Comunicação (INNIS, 2011) como precursor da compreensão do componente espacial nos estudos de comunicação. Aborda também a necessidade de uma maior compreensão da dimensão socioespacial nos estudos comunicação social como um todo, e em específico os trabalhos de Política de Comunicação. São apresentados os conceitos de meio técnico científico-informacional e território usado (SANTOS 2008) bem como de políticas públicas espaciais (STEINBERGER 2013). Estes três são tratados como chaves de análises importantes para ampliar a compreensão das imbricações e mediações entre política, técnica e território no âmbito dos estudos sobre políticas de comunicação. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: políticas de comunicação; território usado; meio-técnico-científico; território Marco Polo descreve uma ponte, pedra por pedra. "Mas qual é a pedra que sustenta a ponte?", pergunta Kublai Khan. "A ponte não é sustentada por esta ou aquela pedra", responde Marco, "mas pela curva do arco que estas formam. Kublai Khan permanece em silêncio, refletindo. Depois acrescenta: "Por que falar em pedras? Só o arco me interessa".Polo responde: "Sem pedras, o arco não existe". (CALVINO 2003, p35) Os estudos de comunicação em geral partem de uma matriz teórica ampla e diversificada por sua natureza interdisciplinar. As abordagens, vindas das mais diferentes escolas teóricas, conceitos e tendências causam uma multiplicidade de análises que influenciam a amplitude dos estudos da comunicação e suas áreas correlatas ou especialidades. Tal problema teórico, conceitual e epistemológico é 1 Trabalho apresentado no GP Geografias da Comunicação, XIX Encontro dos Grupos de Pesquisas em Comunicação, evento componente do 42º Congresso Brasileiro de Ciências da Comunicação.

- by Lucio PEREIRA MELLO
- •
- Geopolitics, Harold Innis, Political Communications

This article proposes a way to analyze discourses about regularization
and the resistance to regularization with the aim of de-functionalizing the
coherence of the discourse about the regularization of confessionalism
proliferating around the Syrian conflict. A differentiation is identified in
the coherence of the discourse about the recruitment and mobilization
of Hezbollah into Twelver Shi‘a militancy, which is correlated to the
process of transforming the non-Arab identity of the Metwali into a
Shi‘a Arab identity, and the massive mobilization that took place to
abolish confessionalism during the August 23rd, 2015 riots in Lebanon.
The analysis employs an ethnographic research design that empirically
bridges between Michel Foucault’s framework of analysis, articulated
in The Archeology of Knowledge (1972) and The Subject and Power
(1982) and applied in Society Must Be Defended (1997), and Harold
Innis’ geopolitical analysis of the power relations between the center
and the periphery in Empire and Communication (2007), and The Bias
of Communication (1951).

- by Abir A Chaaban
- •
- Lebanon, Michel Foucault, Identity, Harold Innis

In this paper I provide a brief overview of the main ideas of the Toronto school and why the dominant paradigm of thinking about them - as unverifiable theories of “media effects” may miss the mark. The Toronto School is, rather, characterized by 1) propositions about formal causes rather than efficient causes and 2) dialectic reasoning that I argue positions the school closer to Plato than to Aristotle. The aphorism “the medium is the message” cannot be grasped as a medium having an effect the content of messages, any more than saying the “appleness” of an apple has an effect on the shape, colour or taste of the apple. In just the same way, Innis’ idea of “space-binding” and “time-binding” media should not be seen as a description of effects (writing on papyrus causes or makes possible the Roman Empire) but of Forms (papyrus is the form of communication in an empire like the Roman Empire).

- by Fred Matern
- •
- Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Eric A. Havelock, Toronto School of Communications
- by Vincent Manzerolle
- •
- Political Economy, Database Systems, Consumption Studies, Surveillance Studies