Unit information: The Development of the Modern Mass Media: Disciplining Democracy (Level H Lecture Response Unit) in 2019/20

Unit name	The Development of the Modern Mass Media: Disciplining Democracy (Level H Lecture Response Unit)
Unit code	HIST30012
Credit points	20
Level of study	H/6
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Professor. Potter
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit explores the development of the modern mass media from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, focusing on Britain, but also glancing at the wider English-speaking world. During this period, the modern mass media took on many of the features so familiar to us today: production on an industrial scale; close links with the worlds of advertising on the one hand, and politics on the other; the targeting of particular markets, including women as a discrete group of consumers; a fascination with sex, violence and scandal; and a tendency to claim to serve the best interests of democracy.

The unit aims to subject these developments to critical scrutiny, and also to examine the concepts that historians have worked with when thinking about the role of the mass media in society, such as ‘hegemony’ and the idea of a ‘public sphere’. The unit will allow students to work with on-line digital newspaper archives to pursue their own research. We will look at the history of newspapers and broadcasting, examining how media enterprises and authorities such as The Times and the BBC have established themselves as ‘national’ institutions, and how other, perhaps more liberating, influences have struggled to find a voice.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Successful students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate a broad understanding of the history of the mass media.
2. Evaluate a particular perspective provided by the tutor, and build their own individual views and interpretations
3. Form historically nuanced and independent views about about the role of the mass media in modern society, culture and politics.
4. Critically assess and interpret primary sources and select pertinent evidence in order to illustrate specific and more general historical points
5. Present their research and judgements in written forms and styles appropriate to the discipline and to level H/6

Teaching Information

Weekly:

1 x 2-hour Lecture, 1 x 1-hour seminar

Assessment Information

One 3000 word essay (50%) [ILOs 1-5]

One 2-hour exam (50%) [ILOs 1-5]

Reading and References

Kevin Williams, Get me a Murder a Day! A History of Media and Communication in Britain (London and New York, 2010, 2nd edn)

James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power without Responsibility: press, broadcasting, and the internet in Britain (7th ed. London, 2009)

Mark Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950 (Urbana and Chicago, 2004)

Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-war Britain (Oxford, 2004)

Alice Goldfarb Marquis, ‘Written on the Wind: The Impact of Radio during the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 19:3 (Jul., 1984), 385-415

Michele Hilmes, Network Nations: A Transnational History of American and British Broadcasting (New York, 2011)