The thesis hereby submitted, ‘How Does Technological Development And Adoption Occur In The Media? A Cultural Determinist Model’ was originally published in Media Technology and Society A History: from the telegraph to the Internet (London: Routledge 1998) and Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television (London: British Film Institute 1996). The argument outlined in those two books is further supported and updated by six other texts published between 1995 and 2005 on the same topic. Media Technology and Society A History: from the telegraph to the Internet deals with the development of electrical and electronic mass media proposing a model for the nature of such developments. It is a final iteration of an approach to this history which has its origins in work first begun in the 1970s. Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television applies the same model to photographic and cinematographic technologies. The thesis argues that all these media developments can only be understood in a social context; that they are to be understood as examples of what has become known as ‘socially shaped technology’ (or, in terms of the thesis, ‘cultural determinism’). This is contrary to the received dominant view that technology itself is the driver determining social formation – termed the ‘technological determinist’, ‘technicist’ or ‘diffusion theory’ approach. In rejecting technicism, ‘How Does Technological Development And Adoption Occur In The Media? A Cultural Determinist Model’ proposes instead an original, pioneering contribution to a revisionist cultural determinist/SST historiography as well as outlining a model to explicate at a theoretical level how such innovations and adoptions occur.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:600782 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Winston, Brian Norman |
| Publisher | University of Lincoln |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/12623/ |
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