Kelly Nagle
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

The four eras symbolize the evolution of civilization through how we communicate with one another. Meyrowitz uses Medium Theory to focus on the distinct characteristics of each wave of media- and how they motivate or constrain forms of interaction and social organization. This theory does not refer to the context of the communication, just the media ecosystem and its influence on society. Specifically looking at how human dialogue has transformed over time, Meyrowitz broke each phase up. The first two, and the main focus for this writing are the Oral Society and Scribal/Civilizing phase. The following are the Modern era and the Post Modern era. The transition of each of the phases are blurred and not all clear of when each phase fully happened.

“I argue that electronic media tend to re-shape everyday behaviors associated with group identity, socialization, and hierarchy by undermining print-era patterns of what different types of people know about, and relative to, each other” (Meyrowitz, 55).

Even though you can’t pinpoint the exact time of the phase transitions, they have great effect on communities, lifestyles, and communication for all civilizations. These phases don’t necessarily have to do with technology, but the progression of dialogue in general.


The Oral Society- the first era discussed- consists of a time where the primary social unit was within small communities. This era is considered the closest to reality. People learned by experimenting and doing- without questioning or analyzing why they were doing it that way. Within this time people relied on their memories for everything, and young people looked up to the old because they were living records. Hierarchy was very minimal during this time, there was basically only tribal leaders or competition between tribes. In today’s world, hierarchy is extremely prominent and due to this it has separated communities based on power. In the article written by Michael Soha, he discusses social narratives and norms and how dependent they were to specific places/regions. Dialogue had no way of traveling fast or widespread so if you were not part of one’s immediate group you would seem very strange or alien. The ideals of morality and ethics were not discussed and were extremely varied amongst different groups. These were not analyzed concepts; it was just based upon the lifestyles of your specific group.

The next era is the Scribal/Civilizing Phase, where reading and writing was emerging in communities. Many people still could not read or write, which was the beginning of hierarchies and power to those who could. Knowledge was power. The community structure began to shift and was broken down based upon these hierarchies. There became a small minority of people at the top (nobles, landowners, the church, and monarchy) while the rest of the people were at the bottom (laborers, agricultural workers, serfs, etc.). Today, we have a dominant middle class which did not exist in this era except for a small number of merchants and tradesmen. Within the film Matter of Fact, he discusses the specific needs for documentation. These writings allowed for the Catholic Church to create writings that dealt with their beliefs, ethics, and morality. These books were viewed by the people as sacred, you did not criticize or question the writings of Monks. If there were mistakes, people would end up copying them. The film suggests that documentation became in really high demand after the black death because of people’s inheritances and the court systems. Scribes became very under pressure after the black death, with the rise of trades, and it became a way for people to learn. Writing down complex ideas offered a way to preserve abstract thoughts that had the ability to progress- this was not possible for oral people to develop, memorize, or pass on to others. The individual was still the same as the oral society; however, notions of individuality did arise with writing.

When the printing press was first introduced, it created a major shift within civilizations. It allowed for a mass amount of information to be spread rapidly and reach a large amount of groups. The church was against the printing press at the beginning because they were threatened about how the religious information being written was so different from printed. However, the church ended up taking over the printing press and spreading ideologies that reached a wide variety of people. This created a large-scale cultural change with the spread of master narratives of stories, mythologies, and values that an entire society or country adhere to. In our society this would be the American dream ideal and what people strive for.

“Mass communication technologies enabled societies to have shared experiences on a massive scale, and enabled the rise of nations, nationalism, and a strongnational identity. It also enabled the rise of a complex industrial society built upon large institutions that depended on mass communication to function” (Soha, 10).

The printing press created more social passages that made social groups become segmented- there is a place for everybody and everything. It created us vs them ideals, gender roles, and individual perspectives. The individual role in civilizations changed. Institutions were created to put people into categories and create order out of chaos. This created more hierarchies because dominant institutions controlled news and information, and propaganda. With the innovation of social media and the printing press, it prevented people from being able to see reality and what was actually happening during political times where people were capitalists, socialists, communists- it effected economic structures as a whole. How people are being portrayed on these platforms creates meanings behind how the individual should act and what should be important to who.

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