James W. Carey

Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph

In one of the most famous paragraphs of our most famous autobiography, Henry Adams located the precise moment when “eighteenth century troglodytic Boston” joined industrial America: “the opening of the Boston and Albany Railroad; the appearance of the first Cunard Steamers in the bay; and the telegraphic messages which carried from Baltimore to Washington the news that Henry Clay and James K. Polk were nominated for the presidency. This was May, 1844.”

The Internet and the End of the National Communication System: Uncertain Predictions of an Uncertain Future

The Internet should be understood as the first instance of a global communication system. That system, in turn, is displacing a national system of communications which came into existence at the end of the nineteenth century as a result of the railroad and telegraph, and was “perfected” in subsequent innovations through television in the network era. Such transformations involve not only technical change but the complex alteration of physical, symbolic, and media ecologies which together will determine the impact of the medium.

Historical pragmatism and the internet

This article argues that the literature describing the internet revolution in the 1990s was characterized by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. This rhetoric suffered from three fatal flaws: (1) it was not sufficiently grounded in the historical development of technology; (2) it viewed the internet in isolation, failing to consider the wider technological context; and (3) it failed to examine the internet in view of the social, economic, religious and political circumstances of its users. Several examples from history are cited, demonstrating that changes in various systems for the production, dissemination and preservation of cultural information both border and deborder the world. The article suggests that if internet researchers take a pragmatic, historically grounded approach, they will discover that the introduction of internet technology can be seen to have similar consequences. While the technology overcomes many boundaries (of space and time, politics and economics), other social borders may be created at the same time. It is easier to see old boundaries coming down than to see new ones being erected. Rather than being swept by utopian or dystopian enthusiasms, the article insists that the really interesting discoveries are to be made in locating the subtle social shifts taking place, relatively unnoticed, as a consequence of technological change.

Journalism and Criticism: The Case of an Undeveloped Profession

It is a truism, albeit a contentious one, that in the United States there is no tradition of sustained, systematic, and intellectually sound criticism of the press. The press is certainly one of our most important institutions but in serious attention it ranks slightly ahead of soccer and slightly behind baseball. The press is attacked and often vilified, but it is not subject to sustained critical analysis—not in public, and rarely within universities or the press itself.

Review Essay: Communication and Culture

Paradoxes abound these days and among them is the simultaneous increase in international travel and communication and, I think, a decline in mutual understanding. There is a growing cadre, for example, of traveling scholars from all countries who meet at international meetings, exchange papers and gossip, and feel quite comfortable with one another. Yet there seems to be relatively little understanding of the underlying currents of European scholarship among American scholars. Partly this situation derives from the declining competence in European languages such that translations must be relied on almost exclusively and partly from the ethnocentrism of American scholarship: an implicit belief that the only things European worth learning are the modifications Europeans make on essentially American ideas and research. There is a particular tragedy here for American isolation from

Graduate education in mass communication

The evolution of graduate education in mass communication was decisively shaped by two factors: the location of its development, namely, in departments of speech and journalism, and the period of its development—the years immediately following World War II. These factors created the characteristic divisions of the field between history of communications and theory of communications, between rhetorical theory and communications theory. They also defined the central theoretical problem of the field—a concentration on communication effects—and the essentially scientistic and postivist apparatus with which the problem has been handled.

The Politics of Popular Culture: A Case Study

The real issue is the distortion of life by the means of communication, the abstraction of culture from time and place. Television everywhere consists largely of messages from nowhere, aimed at no one, and presenting nothing. And yet we gull ourselves into believing we are being entertained and informed.

Communications and Economics

The heroic efforts, underway for at least four decades now, to create a rapprochement between communications and economics, to create an economics of communications (or, for the more committed, a political economy of communications), to find one frame of reference within which to contain these two social practices and disciplines, has yielded substantial results but not as yet general satisfaction. That is the paradox I want to explore in this brief essay.

A Review of “Culture Jam: Hijacking Commercial Culture”

At the same time, the film reminds us of an enduring dynamic in political communication. The film’s popularity suggests its potential as what Susan Herbst has called a “parallel political sphere.” Marginalized groups, Herbst argued in her 1994 book Politics at the Margin, must create alternative communication channels to build their group identity and political agenda. Much like the 18th-century Parisian salons that “helped to establish a world of political conversation apart from the court, a place where criticism of the state was lauded,” Fahrenheit 9/11—along with Moore’s many public appearances before the election; the film’s Web site, which continues to urge political activism against the war; and the use of the film by groups like MoveOn.org in an effort to mobilize the anti-Bush vote—created a virtual meeting place for like-minded Americans. Indeed, in the special features accompanying the DVD, one mother of a soldier killed in Iraq observes that the film “gives this country permission to talk about things that this administration does not want us to talk about.” For that reason alone, the film deserves our attention.

Book Review Policy Statement

This review section will include extended critical reviews of major works in communications rather than attempting to note and review all publications of interest. Two types of reviews will be solicited: First, review symposia in which a number of writers review a book from different disciplinary perspectives. Such reviews should be approximately ten manuscript pages in length. Second, review essays which consider a number of books in a particular domain of communications research. Such essays should be twenty to thirty manuscript pages in length and may cover a substantive