Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept

This essay explores the origins and the development of a ‘communicationsrevolution’, which would give rise to a new concept withinhistoriography. It proposes that the Communications Revolutioncan be explained as a macrohistorical process, comparable tothe Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, whichhave both had permanent and irreversible consequences in themodern era. The communications revolution, like the other two,began in the early modern era, and is still ongoing. The conceptof a Communications Revolution encompasses smaller ‘mediarevolutions’, more easily ascribed to a specific historicalperiod, and to a large extent mutually interrelated and dependent.The development of postal services gave rise to a new understandingof space and time, and it is this development that the essayidentifies as the mainspring of change in the communicationsrevolution. Postal services enabled faster movements of people,goods, and information. The new medium of the printed book,newspaper or sheet magnified the effects of this faster disseminationof information and news. So the Communications Revolution canbe argued to have been the motor that enabled the constructionof the infrastructure of the modern world, newspapers, cartography,and the ‘public sphere’ of politics, of warfareand diplomacy. Indeed, there is scope for discussion as to whetherit was in fact the Communications Revolution which may haveopened the way for both the Scientific Revolution and the IndustrialRevolution.     

Assessing Presidential Communications in Civil Rights Policymaking

This chapter compares the public communications of modern presidents across target groups and issue areas of civil rights. We find that attention, support, and symbolism on civil rights vary considerably across individual presidents and political party. Not surprisingly, in their public messages Democratic presidents are more attentive and supportive of civil rights than are Republican presidents. Some results were expected, while others were surprising. Lyndon B. Johnson was attentive and supportive; but, unexpectedly, George H. W. Bush was highly attentive to and quite nonsupportive of civil rights. Also surprisingly, on most indicators, Bush's policy statements were less symbolic and less equivocal than were Ronald W. Reagan's. Most attention is given to blacks as a target group (although this is declining) and to the employment issue area. Overall, the findings reveal the considerable flexibility and discretion in presidents' public communications in the civil rights realm.