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 ...

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