Mass Communication Chronology

1455 Johann Gutenberg invents printing press
1644 Milton’s Aeropagetica appears
1690 Publick Occurrences, first newspaper in America, published
1704 First newspaper ad appears
1741 First magazines appear in the Colonies
1790 Bill of Rights and First Amendment adopted
1833 Benjamin Day’s New York Sun ushers in penny press
1836 Charles Babbage develops plans for a mechanical computer in England
1844 Samuel Morse invents telegraph
1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone
1877 Thomas Edison demonstrates phonograph
1894 America’s first movie (kinetoscope) house opens
1895 Louis and Auguste Lumière introduce single-screen motion picture exhibit William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer embark on yellow journalism
1896 Hearst sends infamous telegram to reporter in Cuba Press services founded
1912 Radio Act of 1912 signed into law
1915 Pulitzer endows prize that bears his name
1920 KDKA goes on the air
1922 Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion published First commercial announcement broadcast on radio
1924 The American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Canons of Journalism adopted
1926 NBC begins network broadcasting Talking pictures introduced
1927 Radio Act of 1927 creates the Federal Radio Commission
1933 Payne Fund’s Movies, Delinquency, and Crime published
1934 Communications Act passes, creates the Federal Communications Commission
1938 War of the Worlds broadcast
1939 First public broadcast of television World War II erupts in Europe / Paperback book introduced in the United States

1940 Paul Lazarsfeld’s voter studies begin in Erie County, Ohio
1941 United States enters World War II / British develop first binary computer
1942 Carl Hovland conducts first war propaganda research / British develop Colossus, the first electronic digital computer, to break German war code 
1945 World War II ends Gordon Allport and Leo Postman’s rumor study published
1946 John Mauchly and John Atanasoff introduce ENIAC, the first “full-service” electronic digital
computer
1947 Hutchins Commission issues report on press freedom / The Hollywood Ten called before the House / Un-American Activities Committee
1948 Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics published Cable television invented
1949 George Orwell’s 1984 published / Carl Hovland, Arthur Lumsdaine, and Fred Sheffield’s Experiments in Mass Communication published
1951 Harold Innis’s The Bias of Communication published / Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now premieres / UNIVAC becomes the first successful commercial computer
1953 Carl Hovland, Irving Janis, and Harold Kelley’s Communication and Persuasion published
1954 Murrow challenges McCarthy on television
1955 Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz’s Personal Influence published
1957 C. Wright Mills’s Power Elite published / Soviet Union launches Sputnik, Earth’s first
human-constructed satellite / Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance published
1958 Television quiz show scandal erupts

1959 C. Wright Mills’s The Sociological Imagination published
1960 John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon meet in the Great Debates / Television in 90 percent of all U.S. homes / Joseph Klapper’s Effects of Mass Communication published
1961 Key’s Public Opinion and American Democracy published / Kennedy makes nation’s first live TV presidential press conference / Schramm team’s Television in the Lives of Our Children published
1962 Festinger’s cognitive dissonance article appears / Sidney Kraus’s Great Debates published / Air Force commissions Paul Baran to develop a national computer network 
1963 JFK assassinated / Albert Bandura’s aggressive modeling experiments first appear / Networks begin one-half-hour newscasts
1964 McLuhan’s Understanding Media published
1965 Color comes to all three commercial TV / networks Comsat satellite launched
1966 Mendelsohn’s Mass Entertainment published / Berger and Luckmann’s The Social
Construction of Reality published
1967 Merton’s On Theoretical Sociology published
1969 Blumer coins “symbolic interaction” / ARPANET, forerunner to Internet, goes online
1971 Bandura’s Psychological Modeling published
1972 Surgeon General’s Report on Television and Social Behavior released / McCombs and Shaw introduce “agenda-setting” / Gerbner’s Violence Profile initiated / FCC requires cable companies to provide “local access” / Ray Tomlinson develops e-mail
1973 Watergate Hearings broadcast live
1974 Blumler and Katz’s The Uses of Mass Communication published / Noelle-Neumann introduces “spiral of silence” / Goffman pioneers frame analysis /Home use of VCR introduced / Term “Internet” coined

1975 ASNE’s Statement of Principles replaces Canons / Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop operating system for personal computers
1977 Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak perfect Apple II
1978 Digital audio and video recording adopted as media industry standard
1981 IBM introduces the PC / Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model introduced
1983 Journal of Communication devotes entire issue to “Ferment in the Field” / CD introduced
1985 Meyrowitz’s No Sense of Place published
1990 Signorielli and Morgan’s Cultivation Analysis published
1991 Gulf War explodes, CNN emerges as important news source
1992 ACT disbands, says work is complete
1992 World Wide Web released
1993 Ten years after “Ferment,” Journal of Communication tries again with special issue,
“The Future of the Field”
1996 Telecommunications Act passes, relaxes broadcast ownership rules, deregulates cable
television, mandates television content ratings
1998 Journal of Communication devotes entire issue to media literacy / MP3 introduced
2000 Name change of “Critical Studies in Mass Communication” to “Critical Studies in Media
Communication”
2001 Terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
2003 FCC institutes new, relaxed media ownership rules / U.S. invasion of Iraq / Social networking websites appear / Bloggers’ Code of Ethics formalized
2004 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly focuses edition on media framing / American Behavioral Scientist devotes two entire issues to media literacy / Facebook launched
2005 YouTube launched / News Corp (Rupert Murdoch) buys MySpace
2006 Google buys YouTube / Twitter launched

2007 Journal of Communication publishes special issue on framing, agenda-setting, and priming
2008 Journal of Communication publishes special issue on the “intersection” of different mass
communication research methods and theoretical approaches
2009 Potter’s Arguing for a General Framework for Mass Media Scholarship published / Internet overtakes newspapers as a source of news for Americans / American Society of Newspaper Editors becomes American Society of News Editors / Radio and Television News Directors Association becomes Radio Television Digital News Association / Social networking use exceeds e-mail