MEDIA AND

INFORMATIO
N LITERACY
The Evolution
of Media
 “Young people do
not read
newspapers
anymore; they visit
online sites.”
 Marshall McLuhan
(1969)
a Canadian
communication theorist
who provides a clear
story on how media
evolved through
technological
determinism
 Technological
Determinism
A theory that believes
that technology is a
steering factor in how a
society develops its
structure and values.
 The Evolution of
Media
According to Marshall McLuhan (1969), the
evolution of media has our different ages:
1. Tribal Age
2. Age of Literacy
3. Print Age
4. Electronic Age
TRIBAL AGE
 prehistoric people relied on face-to-face
interactions, through auditory senses

 the primary medium of communication was

speech

 characterized as an oral society dependent

on speech and word-of-mouth

 acoustic space vs. pictorial space

AGE OF LITERACY
 Human being learned to read and write,
which amplified the use of the sense of
sight, lessening the role of the other senses
in the human body.

 This allowed people to communicate and

share information privately through letters.

 writings are expressed through hieroglyphs

PRINT AGE
 highlighted by the
invention of the
GUTENBERG PRESS or
movable type in the 15th
Century.
PRINT AGE
Sharing ideas became faster and acquiring
information became easier.

 Mass-produced writing cultivated a sense of

homogeneity, where people spoke and wrote
in the same language, which made it easier
for a person to associate himself/herself to a
group.

on this same age laid the groundwork for

ELECTRONIC

AGE
period characterized by the
dominance of the electric
media such as telegraph,
radio, film, telephone,
computer and television.

McLuhan described this age

as the force that turned the
planet into a global village,
where people are all globally
EVOLUTION OF MEDIA
TRADITIONAL
MEDIA NEW MEDIA
TRIBAL AGE
AGE OF LITERACY INFORMATION AGE
PRINT AGE
ELECTRONIC AGE
INFORMATION AGE

The Cambridge dictionary

defines new media as the
“products and services that
provide information or
entertainment using
computers or the internet.”
On a 1 whole sheet of paper:

What do you think

would be the next major
mass medium that will
be developed in the next
ten years?