History of Media Technology

A chilling use of shadow in Le Manoir du Diable (1896) is often credited as the first instance of a vampire and horror film. Then shadows grew teeth, claws, and distorted reality in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). They returned as a revolution in Eisenstein's intellectual montage in Battleship Potemkin (1925). All the while, Hitchcock lurked in the shadows, combining these film language techniques into a masterpiece of terror. He didn't need fangs or an army, just a boy, a toilet, and a knife behind a curtain. What makes the shower scene so terrifying is that we don't see anything in 52 anthological cuts and 78 camera setups, but during these 45 seconds, we feel and perceive everything.

In a free and democratic society, citizens influence the political process not just by passively voting every two or four years. They also organize to continuously shape policy and legal outcomes, and to express their opinions to public officials so that the officials Commercial and professional organizations 11 See Horwitz (1997) for a review of the case.

This introduction presents the genesis of The Contamination of Practices: How Practice Theories Matter in Multiple Domains Symposium. The Symposium is the outcome of a research network established to explore new ways to adopt, criticize and expand the approaches that fall under the definition of practice theory, in relation to different topics, and to answer multiple research questions. The shared foundation underlying the contributions is developed around the metaphor of "contamination": while up to the present the efforts of scholars of major practice theory have been to sharpened to specify a common theoretical framework, we argue that practice theory is at the verge of entering a new stage of diffusion and contamination. Contamination is intended here in a double sense: on the one hand, practice theory is contaminating several fields and domains of social research; on the other hand, its conceptual framework is also being contaminated by other intellectual and theoretical traditions, as it is being innovatively adopted and adapted based on the different topics and questions it addresses. Each of the nine articles comprising the Symposium addresses this contamination in a specific way.

One of the features of films compared to other cultural products is the possibility of their use for advertising and information activities and influence on the formation of needs and audience preferences, as well as different patterns of consumer behavior. The urgency of this scientific problem is that the sale of cinema products today is impossible without a marketing system. The applications of different marketing strategies depending on the specific tasks allows a differentiated approach to each project and achieve the goals both from the standpoint of contribution to the development of culture, and in terms of obtaining economic effects from the film industry. The main purpose of the study is to substantiate and determine the features of the use of marketing tools in the film industry. The study of marketing services for film production was carried out in accordance with the logical structure of the concept of "7P" (product, promotion, location, price, staff, physical...

The article aims at investigating the persistence and comeback of old media technologies (phenomena we define, in short, ‘retromedia’) by developing a distinctive theoretical approach named retromedia-in-practice and based on practice theory. Far from being abandoned and forgotten, many old media devices and artefacts (such as vinyl records, cassette tapes, analogue photographic cameras, early videogames and brick mobile phones, to mention just a few notable examples) are nowadays readopted by young generations and niche media subcultures. However, most of the existing literature focusing on these cases has limits and shortfalls, resulting in a partial and misleading understanding of these phenomena: scholars and theorists often put at the centre the cultural fascination for vintage objects and the nostalgia effect; other studies rely on a taken-for-granted distinction between old and new media; the relational and processual nature of media change is rarely addressed; and in general...

Historia nowych mediów zaczyna się w Polsce w latach 80. XX wieku, czyli w państwie
borykającym się z kryzysami: politycznym, społecznym, a z perspektywy techniki — najważniejszym — ekonomicznym. Autorzy recenzowanej książki omawiają i komentują początki trzech technologii: magnetowidów, mikrokomputerów i telewizji satelitarnej oraz czynniki wpływające na ich użytkowanie i rozwój w systemie socjalistycznym

The article aims at investigating the persistence and comeback of old media technologies (phenomena we define, in short, ‘retromedia’) by developing a distinctive theoretical approach named retromedia-in-practice and based on practice theory. Far from being abandoned and forgotten, many old media devices and artefacts (such as vinyl records, cassette tapes, analogue photographic cameras, early videogames and brick mobile phones, to mention just a few notable examples) are nowadays readopted by young generations and niche media subcultures. However, most of the existing literature focusing on these cases has limits and shortfalls, resulting in a partial and misleading understanding of these phenomena: scholars and theorists often put at the centre the cultural fascination for vintage objects and the nostalgia effect; other studies rely on a taken-for-granted distinction between old and new media; the relational and processual nature of media change is rarely addressed; and in general...

Articolo sul "Cembalo scrivano" di Giuseppe Ravizza, per la rivista della Biblioteca Nazionale Svizzera, numero monografico dedicato alla macchina per scrivere.
"Le macchine per scrivere hanno di fatto sostituito la manualità dello scrivere e, per la loro rilevanza sociale, sono state capaci di andare oltre all’essere un semplice strumento di comunicazione. Un’ entrata in società che viene da lontano, con una genealogia complessa"

Advances in technology now make it possible for both cable firms and telecommunications companies to provide voice, data and video services to most homes and businesses. This constitutes a dramatic change from the days of cable dominance in the video market, and that of the "Baby Bells" 1 in telephone service. What hasn't changed, however, is the franchise regime that has long limited access to the local market and thus inhibited competition. In this paper, we examine the effects of this obsolete regulation on consumers and the economy, as well as the myriad benefits of reform.

This paper argues that there are cases of selfless sacrifice, which I call spontaneous heroism, during which the hero is primarily motivated by moral significations that are perceptually provided to them on a pre-judicative level through the event they are experiencing. Spontaneous heroism is not a result of psychological conditioning or rational deliberation but the hero's pre-judicative and bodily relation to perceptual motives and significations that engender the course of action that leads them to save others in danger. My argument both draws and contributes to scholarship and interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's texts on heroism and freedom in relation to perception. Most scholars have interpreted his references to heroism in relation to his political thought, but in ways that neglect his interest in the primacy of perception, which informs and leads him to discuss heroic experiences. I push back against this neglect in the literature in order to investigate sacrifice and heroism on the level of perception. I explain that moral significations can arise pre-judicatively if we understand the perception as being affective, linked to Merleau-Ponty's concept of the body-schema as intersubjective, and involved with his own understanding of pre-judicative experience which he calls the pre-personal. The way in which I expose these phenomenological concepts to describe modern cases of spontaneous heroism leads back to freedom as a central issue for heroism in Merleau-Ponty's work. Overall, my work further supports other current research on the phenomenon of moral orientation.

One of the features of films compared to other cultural products is the possibility of their use for advertising and information activities and influence on the formation of needs and audience preferences, as well as different patterns of consumer behavior. The urgency of this scientific problem is that the sale of cinema products today is impossible without a marketing system. The applications of different marketing strategies depending on the specific tasks allows a differentiated approach to each project and achieve the goals both from the standpoint of contribution to the development of culture, and in terms of obtaining economic effects from the film industry. The main purpose of the study is to substantiate and determine the features of the use of marketing tools in the film industry. The study of marketing services for film production was carried out in accordance with the logical structure of the concept of "7P" (product, promotion, location, price, staff, physical...

Chapter 26. Will Chapter 27. Hypnotism Chapter 28. Necessary Truths And The Effects Of Experience 7 Essay c. H. U., bk. ii. ch. xxiii. § 29; ch. xxv. § 9. 8 Classics editor's note: James' insertion. 9 Op. cit. Bk. Ii ch. ii § 2. well knowing either what we are or is this modality of our being which makes us unhappy.. .. Impose silence on your senses, your imagination, and your passions, and you will hear the pure voice of inner truth, the clear and evident replies of our common master. Never confound the evidence which results from the comparison of ideas with the liveliness of the sensations which touch and thrill you. The livelier our sensations and feelings (sentiments) are, the more darkness do they shed. The more terrible or agreeable are our phantoms, and they body and reality they appear to have, the more dangerous are they an to lead us astray." (Entretiens sur la Métaphysique, 3me Entretien ad init.) Malebranche's Theodore prudently does not try to explain God's 'infinite felicity' is compatible with his not feeling joy. 12 Green: Prolegomena, § § 20, 28. 13 Introd. to Hume, § § 146, 188. It is hard to tell just what this apostolic human being but strenuously feeble writer means by relation. Sometimes it seems to stand for system of related fact. The ubiquity of the 'psychologist's fallacy' (see p. 196) in his pages, his incessant leaning on the confusion between the thing known, the thought that knows it, and the farther things known about that thing and about that thought by later and additional thoughts, make it impossible to clear up his meaning. Compare, however, utterances in the text such others as these: " The waking of Self-consciousness from the sleep of sense is an absolute new beginning, and nothing can come within the 'crystal sphere' of intelligence except as it is determined by intelligence. What sense is to sense is nothing for thought. What sense is to thought, it is as determined by thought. There can, therefore, be no 'reality' in sensation to which the world of thought can be referred." (Edward Caird's Philosophy of Kant, 1st ed. pp. 393-4.) "When," says Green again, "feeling a pain or pleasure of heat to be connected with the action of approaching the fire, am I not receiving a relation of which one constituent, at any rate, is a simple sensation? The true answer is No." "Perception, in its simplest form. . .-perception as the first sight or touch of an object in which is seen or touched is recognized-neither is nor contains sensation. (Contemp. Rev., xxxi. pp. 746, 750.) "Mere sensation is in truth a phrase that represents no reality." "Mere feeling, then, as a matter unformed by thought, has no place in the world of facts, in the cosmos of possible experience." (Proglegomena to Ethics, § § 46, 50.)-I have expressed myself a little more fully on this subject in mind, x. 27 ff. 10 Purkinje, Mach, and Breuer are the authors to whom we mainly owe the explanation of the feeling of vertigo. I have found (American Journal of Ontology, Oct. 1882) that in deaf-mutes (whose semi-circular canals are auditory nerves must often be disorganized) there very frequently exists no susceptibility to giddiness or whirling

Computer science is the scientific approach to the automatic processing of data and information using digital computing machines. Computer science has developed itself at the interface between two scientific disciplines: on the one hand it emerges from the formal logical method of mathematics; on the other hand, it takes genuine problems of engineering sciences and tries to develop machine-based designs for application-oriented questions.

Book review of Benjamin Buhler und Stefan Riege 's Vom Wuchern der Pflanzen. Ein Florilegium des Wissens, Bunte Steine. Ein Lapidarium des Wissens, Ein Machinarium des Wissens . Resumen Resena de Vom Wuchern der Pflanzen. Ein Florilegium des Wissens, Bunte Steine. Ein Lapidarium des Wissens, Ein Machinarium des Wissens de Benjamin Buhler und Stefan Riege.

Introduction: The Phenomenology of Perception and the Philosophy of Consciousness If the legacy of Descartes is his idea of consciousness as a realm of interiority and transparency, the contributions of many twentieth-century philosophers consist precisely in their efforts to criticize this Cartesian notion of self. Among these efforts, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception occupies an ambiguous position. While its analysis of being-in-the-world as bodily insertion, of expression as incarnation of sense, and of the opaqueness of our inner life challenges the idea of consciousness as a realm of transparency and self-presence, its notion of a tacit cogito seems to remain a notion of self-presence, especially when compared to the critique of the metaphysics of presence put forth by Derrida, with whom Merleau-Ponty has much in common. As to Merleau-Ponty himself, it is well known that he later concludes that the “problems posed” in the Phenomenology are “insoluble because I start ...

68 This article investigates digital game play (gaming) as a specific media field (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 72), in which especially gaming capital (Consalvo, 2007) functions as a theoretical lens. We aim to analyse the specific practices that constitute and are constituted in and around gaming. This multitude of practices is theoretically qualified by the second generation of practice theorists, including (Bruchler & Postill, 2010; Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2008; Warde, 2005). The empirical data are drawn from qualitative studies of gamers and gaming practices (focus groups as well as participant observations), and function as exemplary cases that illustrate our theoretical arguments. Our purpose is to analytically operationalize field theory, by means of practice theory, to enhance our understanding of digital games as new media and the specific contexts and media practices herein.

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) is of prime importance for the horror genre since Hitchcock places horror in settings of everyday life. It is also important for its narrative structure along with the editing of the shower scene, God's eye view shots of staircase scenes that limit the view of the audience, the use of voice over for making meaning, altering the identification of the viewer, the psychological aspect and score. The movie has had an unignorable effect on cinema with its sequels, prequel, a documentary about the movie, an avant-garde movie which is a replica, an appropriation of Psycho presented as an art installation, a semibiographic movie on the process of producing the movie, a murder scene that became a cliché as well as borrowings or references in other movies and countless books, reviews and articles about it. Psycho is a favorite subject of the studies which primarily analyze its narrative, film score, and psychoanalysis. This study, choosing a restricted angle, aims to analyze the gaze and voice over with regard to the relationship between characters and places. With this aim the embodied metaphors which are closely linked with 'the eye' in the movie are also researched. The look, the gaze and the metaphors of the eye contribute greatly to the aesthetics and psychology of the movie. The use of the gaze and voice over for making meaning to reflect the psychological states of the characters is researched thoroughly. In accordance with this purpose, the techniques and elements which are relevant to this subject are mentioned including mise-en-scéne, cinematography, film setting and decor.

SummaryThe article explores the works of Jurgis Baltrušaitis on depraved perspectives. In particular, it examines his references to Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher in the books dedicated to anamorphoses, aberrations, Egyptomania and distorting mirror’s reflections. The paper questions what led Baltrušaitis to the dialogue with the German visionary. The close reading of Baltrušaitis works reveals that in Kircher’s pre-modern thinking the art historian found those domains of between-the-two, communalities of art and science, art and nature, art and social imaginary that have become more important in postmodernist period. Kircher’s treatises, previously uninterpreted in the context of art history, encouraged the development of the broader studies of images focused on visual phenomena that remained for a long time outside the autonomous field of art history. Without privileging an aesthetic and evolutionary approach in art history, Baltrušaitis’ works reveal anthropological and ontolo...

Generally speaking, technology may be considered a cornerstone of twentieth century life, especially in the Western World. However, because there seems to be a need for a healthy and wide appreciation of industrial and socio-cultural issues that relate to technology in general and audiovisual archives in particular, this article basically proposes to give some thought to this. Some of the issues include education and university-industry partnerships, problems of manufacturers and users, standardisation, and obsolescence of products.

The article aims at investigating the persistence and comeback of old media technologies (phenomena we define, in short, ‘retromedia’) by developing a distinctive theoretical approach named retromedia-in-practice and based on practice theory. Far from being abandoned and forgotten, many old media devices and artefacts (such as vinyl records, cassette tapes, analogue photographic cameras, early videogames and brick mobile phones, to mention just a few notable examples) are nowadays readopted by young generations and niche media subcultures. However, most of the existing literature focusing on these cases has limits and shortfalls, resulting in a partial and misleading understanding of these phenomena: scholars and theorists often put at the centre the cultural fascination for vintage objects and the nostalgia effect; other studies rely on a taken-for-granted distinction between old and new media; the relational and processual nature of media change is rarely addressed; and in general, research lacks a framework capable of adequately integrating symbolic processes with material and technological features. In order to cope with these shortfalls, the article adopts the approach of practice theory, which enables to focus not on the media themselves, but on the practices associated with them. After presenting the distinctive framework of analysis, we exemplify our approach by analysing three different cases coming from music (vinyl records), photography (Polaroid-like instant photography) and videogaming (the ‘consolization’ of old arcade games). These case studies rely on original empirical data coming from authors’ qualitative research. The article concludes by arguing that a shift from considering retromedia as objects or discourses to retromedia-in-practice allows to both address the processual nature of retromedia and propose an interpretation that keeps together media materiality, their meanings and also the embodied activities and behaviours that are attached to them.

This article makes the case for a comparative approach to communication technologies throughout history, arguing that various types of comparisons could enrich both historical research and technology theorization. The article proposes a critical typology of five categories of comparison: The deterministic category compares the supposedly direct effects of major changes in communication technology; the all-encompassing category integrates technologies into wider evolving complexes where various technologies interact; the discursive category examines the utopian and dystopian discourses accompanying technological changes, and their power to shape technology; the deconstructing categpry contrasts distinct phases in the history of a supposedly singular technology; and the one-dimensional category focusses on a single social domain to see how it has been transformed by different technological changes.

Former Federal Communications Commissioner Michael J. Copps (sworn in May 31, 2001; served until December 31, 2011) reflects on how his time on the commission helped pave the way for the 2015 net neutrality decision. He offers his historical perspective on the role of the public in media policymaking and upcoming issues for citizens and activists.

In this article, I explore the potential of style concepts, and especially the concept of the baroque, for the history of science. I argue for a pragmatic theory of style that avoids the traditional problems of essentialist or idealist style concepts. A pragmatic style concept is very useful for describing larger cultural structures, based on resemblances between different practices, especially if evidence of concrete circulations of knowledge is lacking. Style concepts such as the 'baroque' are not only relevant for discerning large scale structures, but they can also be an indispensable tool for historians of science to make sense of particular practices or objects. I illustrate this by analysing one of the most striking marvels of the baroque: a clock made from a sun fl ower plant. The historiography has analysed this object as part of the controversy around copernicanism. In order to come to grips with this object, however, it is important to embed it in its baroque context. From studying the meanings of clocks, magnetism and sun fl owers in different practices, certain resemblances come to the fore. These resemblances point at a broader 'baroque culture', which in its turn helps us to better contextualise and understand the sun fl ower clock.

Vor 100 Jahren zogen die Fernschreiber in die Redaktionen ein. Im Bauch der Ticker sorgte erste Digitaltechnik für hohes Tempo. In Deutschland blockierte der Staat zunächst ihr schnelles Netz, dann setzte er es selbst für weltweite Propaganda ein.
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KEY WORDS SCHLAGWÖRTER: Agenturjournalismus, ASCII, Datennetz, Digitalisierung, Fernschreiber, Hellschreiber, Journalismus, Maschinentelegraf, Nachrichtenagentur, Olympische Spiele 1936, Partei, Post, Presseagentur, Presse-Hell, Pressesprechfunk, Propaganda, Propagandaministerium, Radio, Reichspost, Reichspressekonferenz, Rundfunk, Schreibmaschine, Springschreiber, Telegrafie, Telegrafenalphabet, Telekommunikation, Teleprinter, Teletype, Teletypewriter, Telex, Ticker, Typenbildfernschreiber, Zeitungen ORGANISATIONEN: Internationale Fernmeldeunion / International Telecommunication Union ITU International Telegraph Union, NSDAP, Reichsministerium für Propaganda und Volksaufklärung, Sender Königs Wusterhausen UNTERNEHMEN PUBLIKATIONEN: Associated Press AP, C. Lorenz, Havas, Hell, Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro DNB, Innerdeutscher Presserundspruch, Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company / Teletype, New York Times , Reuters,  Siemens & Halske, Sozialdemokratischer Pressedienst, Telegraphen-Union (Hugenberg), Transocean, United Press UP, Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau WTB
PERSONEN Rudolf Hell, Joseph Goebbels, Heidi Tworek, André Uzulis

This paper describes the history of Net
Neutrality's politicization in the US between 2005 and 2007.
After establishing this context, the paper describes
the relevant legislation in the North American, UK and EU
contexts.  It proposes a theoretical perspective on this negotiation, arguing that politicized discourses about Net Neutrality conflate various
types of political, economic, and consumer issues, and
proposing an analysis based on “network power” (Castells,
2009) that can connect these various interpretations. The
paper concludes with recommendations for further research.

This paper looks to engage Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception in the question of the relation of silence and sound in linguistic expression, with an emphasis on the lived time of this experience. Silence, I argue, is not " outside " of or absolutely " other " than language, but rather ingredient in it. But we must be careful to avoid thinking this relation as one element of a homogenous mixture of silence and sound. Rather, silence belongs to language both as that which motivates and is " bridged " by sounding language, and as an aspect of sounding language that I will call " radical sounding. " I develop this (one that shares resonances with James Risser's " vibrancy of speech " and Ernst Bloch's " darkness of the lived moment ") as the field of operative language that " forgets itself " in its very operation, but that is nonetheless glimpsed (if only marginally) in the experience of dialogue, and thus open up a path to engage, also, the dangers of misreading the silence-sound relation—in particular, the danger of silencing others and, ultimately, silencing ourselves.

DVD menus often suffer from serious usability problems, which has a negative impact on the user experience. The reason for this is that there is a lack of design standards. In this paper we describe the development of user interface guidelines for DVD menus and present the final guidelines. In order to obtain usable and applicable guidelines we went through three phases, which included among other usability-engineering methods an expert walkthrough, a user study, and card sorting, as well as building a prototype, and validating and improving the guidelines.

DVD menus often suffer from serious usability problems, which has a negative impact on the user experience. The reason for this is that there is a lack of design standards. In this paper we describe the development of user interface guidelines for DVD menus and present the final guidelines. In order to obtain usable and applicable guidelines we went through three phases, which included among other usability-engineering methods an expert walkthrough, a user study, and card sorting, as well as building a prototype, and validating and ...

In this paper I examine two limit cases in which the body is threatened: the experience of emergency as described by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Flight to Arras, and the experience of illness as described by Jean-Luc Nancy in his autobiographical essay The Intruder. In the first case, the everyday relationship to the body is revealed to be illusionary; the body becomes a powerful yet obedient machine. In the second case, the everyday relationship to the body is also suspended, but this time in favor of a weak and objectified body. I argue that these apparently opposite experiences actually presuppose a similar notion of the everyday body, which I further conceptualize, through Merleau-Ponty and his analysis of the body, as deficient and therefore inherently repressed. The paper concludes with the suggestion that writing about one’s own body may be seen as a way to fight the everyday tendency towards repression, and I propose overwriting as a term that can capture this process.

Media reform is a great and formidable challenge. Across international contexts, reformers are inspired by what the late C. Edwin Baker referred to as the democratic distribution principle for communicative power: ‘a claim that democracy implies as wide as practical a dispersal of power within public discourse’ (Baker, 2007, p. 7). The challenge is made manifest in battles over the future of investigative journalism, media ownership, spectrum management, speech rights, broadband access, network neutrality, the surveillance apparatus, digital literacy and many others waged in pursuit of the normative ideals at the heart of Baker’s vision. At the same time, those committed to media reform confront formidable challenges: entrenched commercial interests and media conglomerates; sometimes powerful, sometimes disorganized and sometimes neoliberal governments; a general public often disenfranchised, digitally illiterate and not focused on issues of media reform; and always, the uphill battle of organization, mobilization and influence that is the work of any activist.

In light of these significant challenges, the central question addressed by this volume is: what strategies might be utilized to overcome these obstacles in the pursuit of media reform? The chapters included in this volume aim to present and analyze successful strategies that have helped to advance media reform efforts in a variety of countries and contexts throughout the world.

The remainder of this introductory chapter includes a working definition of media reform in light of the many challenges we currently face, and concludes with an overview of the chapters included in the volume.

Suggested citation: Freedman, Des and Obar, Jonathan A., Media Reform: An Overview (July 17, 2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2632151

Computer Science is the scientific approach to the automatic processing of data and information using digital computing machines. Computer Science has developed itself at the interface between two scientific disciplines: on the one hand it emerges from the formal logical method of mathematics, on the other hand, it takes genuine problems of engineering sciences and tries to develop machine-based designs for application-oriented questions.
The basic principle of the computer is the conversion of all signs and sign processes in arithmetic operations. In this respect, the history of computer science refers to earlier traditions of thought, which already had an automation of calculations in mind. Before the computer was invented as a tangible machine, there were already operational concepts of the use of symbols, which provided the guidelines for the upcoming development of the computer. The arithmetic, algebraic and logical calculi of operational use of symbols can be understood as pioneers in computer science. The key-thought behind the idea of formalization is based on the use of written symbols, both schematic and open to interpretation.

What might it mean to use books rather than read them?

This work examines the relationship between book use and forms of thought and theory in the early modern period. Drawing on legal, medical, religious, scientific and literary texts, and on how-to books on topics ranging from cooking, praying, and memorizing to socializing, surveying, and traveling, Carla Mazzio and Bradin Cormack explore how early books defined the conditions of their own use and in so doing imagined the social and theoretical significance of that use.

The volume addresses the material dimensions of the book in terms of the knowledge systems that informed them, looking not only to printed features such as title pages, tables, indexes and illustrations but also to the marginalia and other marks of use that actual readers and users left in and on their books. The authors argue that when books reflect on the uses they anticipate or ask of their readers, they tend to theorize their own forms. Book Use, Book Theory offers a fascinating approach to the history of the book and the history of theory as it emerged from textual practice.

This book, based on a library exhibition at the University of Chicago, has been put online by the University of Chicago library and thus has no restrictions on use.

This article focuses on public debates about the emotional quality of electronically recorded voices of early radio and TV announcers. The following questions will be addressed in connection with this main research focus: Which technical problems did the sound designers of the early 1930s encounter in transforming a natural human voice into an electro-acoustic voice design? What psycho-acoustic and ethno-cultural aspects of voice performance have been rated most important in the context of such transformations? By which means were the boundaries of social communities and gender displayed in early e-voice-designs?

The analysis of discussions and surveys carried out by early radio magazines in Germany (Radio Amateur, Funk, Radio für alle), Russia (Radio front, Radio Vsem) and the United States (Radio broadcast; Radio service bulletin) with regard to the quality of female and male announcer voices should provide an answer to the posed questions. The first part of the study examines press materials, in which the problem of low vs. high voice pitch was discussed with regard to the semantic differentiation of hard vs. soft news in newsreels. Based on the analysis of early sound films, the second part of the study deals with the interrelationship between the voice stereotypes of radio and TV announcers on the one hand and the voice stereotypes of classical horror films (monster, scream queen) on the other hand. The purpose of this analysis is to determine the contribution of electronically reproduced voices to the emergence of mass media publicity.

This previously unpublished paper talks about the role of DVD (Digital Video Disk) as a delivery system for Hollywood movies. It includes a descriptive analysis of DVDs released from 1997 to 2004, identifying its trends, changes and evolution through time.