The Effect the Telephone Had on Literacy and Society

By Danielle Chrisman

Context

Although there is debate about who actually invented the telephone, it is often credited to Alexander Graham Bell, as he was the first one to patent the telephone in 1876 (Wikipedia, 2013).  I believe that few would argue the importance of this invention, and how much it has shaped communication and literacy within society since then.

With the invention of the telephone, society has moved to a state of ‘secondary orality’ (Ong, 1982).  Much like primary orality, it creates a sense of community and bringing people into the moment (Ong, 1982). Speech by design is used to share ideas and thoughts with others, so this secondary orality is designed to bring us closer, and create a more communal feel.  More than that, it has also helped to shape the language we use and how we communicate with each other.

Communal Experience

The word telephone is derived from Greek and means “far off voice” (Free Dictionary, 2013).  By its very etymology, the telephone is a device to connect us with someone who is at a great distance to us.  The very design of the device and the word is to bring groups of people together.

When the telephone was first invented, there were operators who ran the switchboard.  This means that if you wanted to talk to another individual, you also had to talk to the operator first.  Previously you would send a letter to someone, and talk to no one.  Now, you had the ability to talk to someone on the other side of the country, and rather than just talk to one person, you would talk to two.  This ability, and this forced conversation, would create an increased sense of community, as you could now discuss everyday occurrences on the very day, rather than write a letter and wait for a week for the letter to arrive, and wait for a response.

Another example of how the telephone increased a sense of community is the party line.  When the telephone was first invented, it was very expensive to set up phone lines to every single residence.  To save money, they would have a party line, where several houses would share the same phone line between them, and operators would need to distinguish between whom the phone call was for by using distinct rings for all houses on the line.  There were privacy issues with this setup.  If someone was on the phone, and another house picked up, you could listen to the conversation.  This could be a significant issue if having a conversation about a sensitive topic.

It could also create a communal feel since anything one person said could be overheard by another.   This would cause individuals to be careful about what they said, or it would be possible to have group conversations.   It would also involve people working together as a community, since if one person was on the phone for an extended period of time, it would tie up the line so other people could not use it.

Literacy Effects of the Telephone

Written works tend to create a more self-reflective piece over oral conversations (Ong, 1982).  Writing would often strengthen intrapersonal skills rather than interpersonal skills.  The telephone is beginning to swing the pendulum back towards a more oral society, and less focus on the written word.

With the invention of the telephone comes a flip back to what we had seen previously; a stronger communal feel to society.  Writing allowed us a place to store our thoughts and ideas which we could share with others if we chose to.  Verbal communication only works if someone is talking, and another person is listening.  Orality is by its very nature a way of sharing your thoughts with others, whereas writing allows the option between sharing your ideas and storing them for your own personal use.  Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility (Postman, 1992).

I believe that second orality has greatly changed literacy in individuals.  Originally people started as an oral society, and as technology increased, people moved towards a more literary society.  As the switch comes back to second orality, I think people are becoming more casual in their communications and language choices.

When an individual would communicate with another by writing them a letter, there is a record of everything that is being said.  When a person is creating a permanent record, there is more thought put into what is being written, since at any point someone can reflect on the words.  When oral communication is occurring, there is less caution when discussing events, as once those words have reached the ears of the listener, there is no more record other than memories.

When there is a conversation between two individuals, the language and word choices tend to be more casual than a formal written exchange.  The linguistic choices that we make are reflective of the situation.  The way we would talk to a friend or family member is different than the way we would talk to a boss or work colleague.  As orality has taken greater hold of society, the word choices that we use tend to be more causal, and in turn, also affects the formality of the written words we choose.  As our conversations become more casual, so do our written words.

Educational Changes

The educational world changed greatly with the written world.  Schools are based on recorded knowledge and learning what has been written in textbooks.  With the creation of second orality, the way students learn and relate to each other changes.  Rather than simply reading and writing being the focus in education, there is a change in pedagogy for more discussion, and sharing of ideas.

No longer did an individual need to be able to read and write in order to get information.  If someone needed to know a piece of information, they could now pick up a phone to get that information.  If someone wanted to know what the weather was, there was a phone number they could call to find out.  Educational systems needed to adapt how they taught to meet the new technology.

The written word did not die out in the school system.  There was still significant emphasis put on reading and writing, but teachers recognized that society was becoming more oral, and I believe used school as a way to keep some formality in language.  There were still textbooks used in school, and still written reports that needed to be handed in.  These were the more formal methods of evaluation over a presentation.  This is why often the written word is still more formal than a casual conversation, even if written works are still more casual than previously.

Changes in Society

In the past when ideas were shared between individuals, if there was a distance between them, it would take a significant amount of time to correspond.  Now there was a more efficient way to share ideas and collaborate.  Working with another individual became far easier, and allowed for newer ideas and inventions to be created.

With second orality, the thought process of the individual also has become more self-reflective (Ong, 1982).  Because people spent so much time where the written word was so important, people will often think more before they speak.  We are reflective in the words that we say, and in the reasons we do things.  If I were to pick up the phone to call someone to surprise them, it would be more a reflection of the fact that I know surprising people is a good thing, and I should do it, rather than I just picked up the phone to surprise someone (Ong, 1982).

With this self-reflection, one would think that our speech patterns would still reflect the formality of the written word, rather than become more casual.  Rather, the self-reflective nature holds us to societal norms.  As previously mentioned, the second orality has brought us together as a community, and the self-reflective nature prevents us from saying things that would hurt another member.  Technology, and in this case the telephone, “changes social and individual relationships” (Franklin, 1999, pg 2).  That is, the telephone has changed the language that we use, and created stronger relationships with each other.  The fact that we are more conscious of the words we choose, and are able to keep in communication with more ease, has changed how people interact with each other.

The invention of the telephone also meant that people could share events at a quicker rate.  Rather than waiting for news to be shared by a newspaper, or a written letter, news could be shared almost instantaneously.  This would depend on people picking up the phone and sharing information, but I believe has led to the fast paced world that we live in today.  Slowly as society got used to this new speed to which they can obtain information, they became more used to being able to get information at the touch of a few buttons, and expected the rest of their lives to start to reflect this, leading to new and improved inventions to make their lives easier and quicker.

The continual choice for people to use the telephone also says something about the change in how society communicates.  As Kress discusses, when there are multiple choices in how you can share information, the choices that you make in how you share the information say something about the person making the decision, the person receiving the information, and the information itself (Kress, 2004).  The fact that the telephone started growing so rapidly in popularity tells me that society was valuing the written word less, and ready to move towards a more communal feel and rapid information attainment.

This pattern does not always hold true.  As time progresses on, we continue to become more casual in our language usage with each other, and I feel we also become less self-reflective.  That progression leads us to the time that computers were invented and I feel we started to move back towards a written society, albeit a more casual written society than last time.  I believe that the informality that we start to see with the telephone, led up to the invention of a written device that does allow for more informal dialogue to occur.

Conclusion

I believe that the invention of the telephone and the move to second orality has been an important part of literacy in society.  The telephone has greatly changed not only how individuals communicate with each other, but the words and the language we use.  It has created a more informal way of conversing, but also created opportunity for more conversation to occur.  With the new ease of communication, it encourages us to talk more to each other, bringing us together as a global community.

The invention of the telephone has also changed how society looks at themselves, each other, and the world.  Although much of our conversation is more informal, it is more self-reflective and considerate than our primary orality.  It has also made us view each other in a more positive light as we brought together with the ability to communicate quickly and over vast distances with each other.  And globally, it has changed our expectations of receiving information at a quicker pace.  This need for instant gratification is what led to further inventions such as radios, television, and computers.

References

Franklin, U. (1999). The Real World of Technology. Toronto: House Anansi Press.

Kress, G. (2004).  Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation and New Media. Information Design Journal, Volume 12, Number 2.  pp. 110-119 (10).

Ong, Walter (1982). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen

Postman, Neil (1992). Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage Books.

Telephone (n.d.)  In The Free Dictionary online.  Retrieved from: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/telephone

Wikipedia (n.d.).  Retrieved October 20, 2013 from the History of Telephone Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telephone

Wikipedia (n.d.).  Retrieved October 20, 2013 from the Party Line Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_%28telephony%29

The Evolution of the Telephone

The impact on language and communication in the pre-digital age

by: E. Monks & M. Waters

The following timeline and linked documents provide a summary of the evolution of the telephone before the age of the computer. With each new innovation, the technological advancements of the telephone had an impact on society and the transmission of information. As you read through the life of the telephone, reflect on Ong and his comments about oral and literate cultures. How has the telephone altered or blurred these definitions? Plato spoke of the dangers of writing and his feared negative impact on oral communication. How would Plato view the telephone and its use in society?

This summary is in no way comprehensive but gives you an overview of the evolution of the telephone and its role as a communicative tool. Although it barely resembles its former self as a result of numerous modifications and enhancements, it continues to connect people through the sharing of knowledge and information.

Thank you.

Keith Greenhalf

University of British Columbia

Master of Education Technology

ETEC 540 – Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing

Section 64B

Instructor: Jeff Miller

Bart Simpson ©1999 20TH CENTURY FOX FILM CORP.

Abstract

The classroom chalkboard is something that everyone is familiar with in education. When one pictures the image of a chalkboard, it often immediately relates to the image and experience of a school classroom. This article examines the development and implementation of this technology. The research observes the technological advance of chalkboards historically and culturally. The development of this seemingly simply technology has had profound implications for literacy and education.

Introduction
If we examine traditional education over the past 200 years, there has always been one tool no classroom has gone without: The simple blackboard. The blackboard found its way to North American classrooms in 1801 (Swinnerton, 2005) and it has been an icon and symbol of teaching ever since. These old-style blackboards are a technology that was and is still used regularly in traditional schools. The blackboard is a tool that can be used every day to make instruction efficient for the teacher, and provide a learning experience for the student. With a classroom blackboard, a diagram can be created from scratch, have the student interact or change it, and be erased when something new needs to be shown. All of the students in the classroom can see the process and replicate it as necessary.

Chalkboards are simple devices; ones can even be replicated reasonably successfully in nature by writing in the sand with your finger. The chalkboard is synonymous with the way that writing has been taught for centuries. However, just because chalkboards have been around for a long time does not mean that the technology wasn’t revolutionary in shaping the way education is instructed. Prior to the introduction of classroom chalkboards, school teachers had no way to present a lesson or a problem to the class as a whole; instead they had to go to each individual student and write a problem or assignment. There are many reasons why chalkboards continue to be used essentially the same way they did over 200 years ago. They are also easy to operate, cheap, low-maintenance, and long-lasting. They are simple to use, flexible in application and extremely reliable as long as there is chalk available. Because of these clear advantages, one can easily understand why it is difficult for us to imagine a classroom without the presence of a chalkboard.

The Technology

The technology of a classroom chalkboard at its core, is as simplistic as the earliest cave paintings found over 40,000 years ago. (Than, 2012) Cave painters would use minerals like red ochre, charcoal, or even chalk to transfer lines and drawings on a stone wall.

Red Hand & Mammoth – The Cave Art Paintings of the Chauvet Cave. Retrieved from http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet/hand_mammoth.php 2013 October 25.

Like a stone wall, chalkboards were initially either made of actual slate, or pieces of wood coated with paint and grit. Slate is a fine-grained rock with frequent mica and quartz inclusions. The slate material splits or cleaves readily into thin slabs. Slate occurs in various colors, primarily blue, green, grey and black, with the darker slates caused mainly by carbon-based presences. Most boards now are made of metal coated with a special, porcelain-based, paint since slate is a very heavy and a somewhat expensive product. The chalk (a mineral) is rubbed against a surface that is rough enough to transfer the pigment of the mineral. Chalk is one of the best known of rocks, recognizable for its white coloration. Chalk as a manufactured good is familiar to most in everyday products such as blackboard chalk and gymnast chalk. Chalk has been exploited by man for thousands of years for both its physical and chemical properties. In its simplest definition, chalk is just a soft rock that rubs off easily on other rocks like slate. If we were to examine chalk with an electron microscope, we would make an interesting discovery. Chalk is composed of millions of tiny, soft calcite fragments (calcium carbonate) all crushed together under pressure. These fragments are tiny plates shed by a type of plankton millions of years ago. In parts of ocean rich with this plankton, trillions upon trillions of little shed plates would accumulate like snow on the bottom of the ocean and then, under the enormous pressure of the water, would become fused together. Movement of the earth’s tectonic plates slowly pushed these deposits of chalk onto land where, eons after their creation, humans happily mine them. (Shepherd, 2002)

Origins

The development of the blackboard has had a profound impact on pedagogy and presenting written and visual ideas. Even in today’s age of handheld devices and high-tech teaching aids, the modest blackboard, or its evolutionary successor, the whiteboard, still remains a staple necessity in classrooms and boardrooms around the world. It is simple, effective and easy to use but still able to facilitate a complex learning environment.

Blackboard classroom history begins in a rudimentary way in very ancient times. Students in ancient Babylonia and Sumeria are known to have inscribed their lessons on clay tablets with a stylus or stick in cuneiform writing. These could be used wet and then erased to be used again or baked to create a permanent document. In India in the 11th century, documents show that school teachers were using something similar to personal slate tablets for lessons and studies. (Journal of News and Resources for Teachers)

One of the first schools to use the large, presentation style, blackboard was West Point Military Academy in New York.  Mr. George Baron, an instructor at West Point, incorporated chalkboards into his lesson plans, enabling him to teach a large number of pupils. (Wojenski, 2003) For many years prior, students would use handheld slates and teachers would have to feverishly move around the room and tediously write instructions on each of the slates.  Because of the cost and supply of these slates and the difficulty for teachers to work with each student and their slate, classroom sizes were often small and limited.

Soon after the first large chalkboards were invented classrooms all over began to catch on. Some chalkboards were as simple as wooden boards painted with a black grit; others were made of porcelain and imported from Europe. The early 1800’s proved to be an ideal time for the rise of the chalkboard since it coincided with the popularity of a major railroad industry. It wasn’t long before chalkboards made of large slabs of slate were being shipped across America’s railroads and delivered by powerful locomotives.

Impact on Education

From inception, the chalkboard has been a technology that was universally accepted, immediately adopted, and widely praised. Josiah F. Bumstead wrote of blackboards in his 1841 book The Blackboard in the Primary Schools that “the inventor or introducer of the system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not among the greatest benefactors of mankind” and another writer of the time Is quoted referring to the blackboard as “the MIRROR reflecting the workings, character and quality of the individual mind”. (Krause, 2000)

Teachers were quickly able to apply the use of chalkboards due to their low cost, little maintenance, reliability, durability, and ease of use. Complex ideas, formulas, and long passages of writing could be shown as a large sample with ease and be erased and changed at a moment’s notice. Having a chalkboard mounted to a wall took a way a world of frustration when it came to presenting ideas and examples. If you have ever tried to convey a message to a group of students without the availability of something like a chalkboard you can quickly recognize the vast benefits. This piece of simple writing technology served as a valuable time saver and record keeper of complex ideas when delivering a lecture.

We have discussed what chalkboard technology provided, but it is equally important to describe what chalkboards did not do. The chalkboard enhanced and greatly improved the efficiency of what teachers were already doing. Teachers can easily utilize a technology to enhance their current teaching practice and topic of learning. However, a teacher will struggle to transform their teaching and change topics of learning. Historically, technology has usually been incorporated into teaching only as a means of enhancing accepted pedagogical approaches. Chalkboards didn’t challenge teachers to radically change what they were already set out to do. Today the advancement of technology has put a demand on our education system to create radical transformations in pedagogy.

Adaptations and Evolving Technologies

The classroom blackboard’s design remained essentially unchanged for 160 years with school teachers using slate blackboards just as their predecessors had done. Sometime in the 1960’s, the “greenboard” was introduced, (Journal of News and Resources for Teachers) which is the popular steel plates coated with a porcelain-based enamel that we observe in schools today. This change in design has shown to be an improvement over black slate; chalk powder doesn’t show as well when erased and staring at a green board is considered to be more pleasing and less strenuous to the human eye. These boards are also lighter and more durable than fragile slate, making them more cost-effective and easier to ship.

In the early 1980’s businesses began to widely use whiteboards (aka marker boards) in boardrooms and presentations.  A small number of whiteboards started to appear in classrooms in the early 90’s.  By the late 1990’s, nearly 21% of all American schools converted from chalkboards to whiteboards. (Wojenski, 2003)  The dust from chalk can aggravate allergies and damage electrical circuits. Whiteboards eliminate the dust and mess of chalk and offer more color choices and clearer, more vibrant visual aids to students.  Although the chalkboard still remains a part of most classrooms, school designers no longer use chalkboards in any of their contemporary classroom designs.

Today we are starting to see the beginning of an evolution. Schools all over the world are looking to maximize the potential of digital learning, and take advantage of the available technologies that keep growing ever more powerful. The act of seeking to maximize the potential of technology led to the creation of an incredibly useful tool; the interactive whiteboard (IWB). IWBs are actually the first electronic instructional technology designed primarily for use by teachers. All the other electronic technologies, be they film, radio, television or personal computers, were first designed for the general customer or office markets and then made their way down the line education. Schools have usually been a secondary market for technology. However, the first SMART Board was sold to teachers at a university in 1991. (Betcher & Lee, 2009) Since IWB technology was tailor-made with education in mind, the retailers are putting most of their research and design into the market of schools and education.

Conclusion

Over 200 years ago the idea to present a lesson and write on a large wall mounted piece of slate, set into motion a new way of interacting with students. Classrooms became larger, more efficient and note taking became far less strenuous on the student. The traditional blackboard is rapidly becoming an educational icon from the past. However, the impact it has had on education will continue to be seen for generations to come. One could almost conclusively say that without the blackboard or slate and chalk writing technology, evolving writing technologies as complex as interactive whiteboards and touch screen tablets may have never transpired.

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References

Betcher, C., & Lee, M. (2009). The interactive whiteboard revolution: teaching with IWBs. Camberwell, Vic.: ACER Press.

Bīrūnī, M. i., & Sachau, E. (1910). Alberuni’s India an account of the religion, philosophy, literature, geography, chronology, astronomy, customs, laws and astrology of India about A.D. 1030. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner.

Davies, P. (2005). Writing Slates and Schooling. Australasian Historical Archaeology, 23, 63-69.

Journal of News and Resources For Teachers. (n.d.). The History of the Classroom Blackboard. Concordia University’s Online Education Degrees. Retrieved October 23, 2013, from http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/reference-material/the-history-of-the-classroom-blackboard/

Kidwell, P. A., Hastings, A., & Roberts, D. L. (2008). Tools of American mathematics teaching, 1800-2000. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press ;.

Krause, S. D. (2000). “Among the Greatest Benefactors of Mankind”: What the Success of Chalkboards Tells Us about the Future of Computers in the Classroom. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 33(2), 6-16.

Shepherd, R. (2002). What is Chalk?  DISCOVERING FOSSILS. Retrieved October 23, 2013, from http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk/chalk_formation_fossils.htm

Swinnerton, J. (2005). The history of Britain companion (p. 128). London: Robson.

Than, K. (2012, June 14). World’s Oldest Cave Art Found-Made by Neanderthals?. National Geographic. Retrieved October 24, 2013, from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120614-neanderthal-cave-paintings-spain-science-pike/

Wesch, M (2007, October 12) A Vision of Students Today, Retrieved October 23, 2013 from www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Wojenski, J. (2003, September 1). Erasing the Past. Erasing the Past. Retrieved October 23, 2013, from http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~chip/projects/timeline/1801wojenski.htm

The newsreel was introduced in the early part of the twentieth century as a medium for
presenting news and current affairs. The typical newsreel was ten minutes in length and they were shown mostly before the main feature at movie theatres. With the increasing popularity of cinema which led to the prominence of the newsreel as the primary source of news information, the production of newsreels was increasingly targeted for imparting certain information. As the allied countries entered into the World War II conflict, the use of newsreels blurred the line between news information and propagandist editorial. This paper will explore the rise of the newsreel as a primary source of news information into its role in spreading war propaganda to the masses during the World War II period through the analysis of two primary source newsreels.

There is no doubt that the newsreel was modeled after the popular press that preceded
it. The producers of newsreels saw themselves as performing the same job function as the editors of newspapers did. With the advent of cinema in the early 1900s, producers saw an opportunity to deliver the news in a way that had never been done before, to make the images on a page come alive with a combination of video and sound. As Campbell (2010) wrote, by the mid-1920s, the newsreel became extremely popular with an estimated 90% of all theaters in the United States showing newsreels to a weekly audience numbering in excess of 40 million people By the 1930s, most newsreel companies were releasing two newsreel editions weekly (Campbell, 2010).

As the similarities with newspapers existed, there were important differences as well. As a visual media, Newsreel producers emphasized speed of execution and the changeover of sound as the images on the screen could easily be manipulated to convey whatever message the producers wanted. In the end, it mattered little what was actually being filmed because the audience was being told what happened and what they were seeing on the screen. The images were essentially only there to be a back-up to the voiceover. As was often the case, if the appropriate footage or image could not be used or located, newsreel producers often substituted footage and images from other sources to give the illusion of the same full news coverage that regular newspapers provided.

Indeed, the beauty of this newfound media was in the rich treasure trove libraries where music, stock images, sound bites, and various other items could be used to supplement and enhance a story. This flexibility provided newsreel producers a new vocabulary with which they used to great effect. No more important was the background music that was used in newsreels to enhance the dramatization effect. As German film critic Siegfried Kracauer pointed out in 1943: “Nazi newsreel music makes the motor nerves vibrate; it works directly upon the bodily feelings. Like a fifth column these themes penetrate the spectator’s subconscious and soften it up for an eventual invasion by pictorial suggestions” (Hoffman, 2004, p. 134).

Because the nature of the newsreel was passive with the audience watching and listening intently to what was being shown, the narration was manipulated to whatever the producers wanted to say. As was often the case, newsreels were regularly edited to use footage shot sometime in the past or at different locations. In this way, newsreel producers could generate content at a much more rapid pace than newspapers could by pre-arranging the images to be used and then inserting fresh footage when needed in order to meet their weekly deadlines. Given the technology at that time, it was often difficult if not impossible for the average viewer to discern the difference and so what was presented on the screen was often taken in as the accurate news.

One area where the newsreel excelled at in providing news coverage was in covering
scheduled events and spectacles such as football matches, presidential speeches, and the
famous ship launchings. These events which were scheduled well in advance provided
newsreel producers the opportunity to setup their cameras in advance and to shoot real
authentic video and original sound to go with the images that lasted a minimum of five full
minutes. It is in these newsreels where a certain part of a political speech which may not have been captured in the transcription could be preserved. And the nature of the short clip was the precursor to the soundbite, where just a section of the speech could be captured and replayed over and over again. Newsreel producers quickly saw how a live event could be manipulated to portray whatever they wanted to show to passive audiences.

When World War II began in 1939, all media sources from both sides, the Axis and the Allies, played vital roles in informing citizens of news on the war front, and to help boost morale for the war effort. From the beginning, the newsreel production industry became an obvious target by governments due to the popularity of cinema and high adoption rate throughout theatres around the world. Newsreel footage from the war was shot by official cameramen on the front lines. From there, the footage almost always passed through various government censors who then issued the edited material to all the major newsreel producers. From the same censored footage, each newsreel producer then prepared their own narration which sometimes led to newsreels that were drastically different.

At the time, the production quality of newsreels was highly regarded and many producers won awards for their work. However, whether they won their awards for cinematic and technical achievement or rather for their highly effective propagandist qualities and contributions to the war effort is debatable. For example, the Kokoda Front Line produced by Cinesound Review 568 won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1943. The inscription on the 1943 Oscar is written as, “To Kokoda Front Line, for effectiveness in portraying simply yet forcefully the scene of war in New Guinea, and for its moving presentation of the bravery and fortitude of our Australian Comrades in Arms” (National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, n.d.). Similarily, the United States Army Special Services produced newsreel “Prelude to War” which also won the Academy Award for Best Short Film Documentary that same year in 1943 had the following inscribed on its Oscar, “A special award to ‘Prelude to War’ for its trenchant conception and authentic and stirring dramatization of the events which forced our nation into the war and of the ideals for which we fight” (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, n.d.).

Propaganda was a primary issue for the Nazi regime and the newsreel played a central role. Together with the more popular pro-Nazi regime films, newsreels were regarded by the Nazi regime as the most appropriate tool to spread their propaganda. For example, German film historian David Welch wrote: “Newsreels increasingly became a formalistic, carefully planned artistic transformation of reality in an attempt to achieve the propaganda intentions of the Nazi regime” (Hoffmann, 2010, p. 136). The newsreel became a central part of the Nazi media system, which included radio and newspapers, and eventually developed into a unique Nazi symbolism. The Nazi media system produced newsreels that determined the image of the Third Reich and by and large that image remains to this day. As a historical artifact, they helped form the foundation of what we know about the Nazi regime.

The first video clip chosen is a collection of German newsreels filmed during World War II called the “Deutsche Wochenschau” series (ZenosWarbirds, 2013). In this specific German newsreel, the propagandist language described earlier in this paper is clearly present through its use of manipulative techniques such as censored images, dramatized background music, and editorialized narration. Firstly, the images of the Nazi leaders in the parades are manipulated to portray them as victors even during German retreats. In the clip of the German Folgore fighters opposing the Allied air attacks in Italy, the German fighter pilot Pips Priller is shown smiling and giving a thumbs up, this despite the fact that the Germans were in a full retreat. Secondly, the background music chosen is very nationalistic as the trumpets are set to match the explosions on the screen. Even the tone of the narrator’s voice rises to match the images as can be seen when the big German guns are firing, and the narrator’s pitch rises to a climax. Finally, in the clip where Rommel visits the 21st Panzer Division in France, there are images of big explosions interlaced with the footage making it impossible to discern whether the explosions come from the same battlefield as the original footage.

This second newsreel broadcast recaps the events of December 7, 1942 when Japan fighter airplanes attacked Pearl Harbor thus drawing the United States into the war (Doc45Publications, 2012). Although not as obvious as the German newsreel, many of the same manipulative language are used in an attempt to proselytize their nationalistic agenda. The pitch and tone of the background music is set to match the explosions on the screen. In comparison to the newspaper editions, the narration in the newsreel is highly editorialized. For example, with reference to the Japanese, the narrator uses such descriptive words as “cunning deceit” and “murderous rampage”. By contrast the narrator uses “the bravery of the sailors” and “actual footage from a courageous soldier” to describe the American side.

By the late 1960s, the newsreel phenomenon had finally subsided. The demise of the newsreel was due to a number of factors, with the rise of television news being the most impactful. Newsreel producers simply could not compete with the quickened news cycle that television news was capable of delivering. And with audiences quickly becoming used to watching the six o’clock news every night, the thought of watching it all again in review at the cinema became less and less appealing. With declining audience interest and diminishing quality with respect to what the television could deliver, the dwindling amount of revenue produced by newsreels over the final decade spelled the end of an era for the newsreel. However, many of the same techniques used by newsreel producers are present in the many 24-hour news channels that exist. The newsreel producers that preceded them first perfected this language of propaganda that exists in television news today. This paper will be further developed into a major project comparing and contrasting the techniques used in newsreels to the 24-hour news channels that exist today.

 References

Campbell, B. (2010). A Bijou Flashback. The History of Movie Newsreels. Retrieved from http://www.moviefanfare.com/the-history-of-movie-newsreels/

Doc45Publications (2012, August 5). Bombing of Pearl Harbor [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUYlZZbiPNc

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