The
History
of Media
People have been making media for tens of thousands of years. Each new form, from writing to printing, radio, film, TV and the internet, changed who got to speak and who got to listen. This module tracks those big shifts, with a close look at Canada's own media story.
- 00First Principlesp.2
- 01Marks, symbols & writingp.4
- 02The printing pressp.5
- 03Photos, radio & filmp.6
- 04Broadcast & propagandap.7
- 05Internet, social & Indigenous mediap.8
- ✦Self-check · Make it · 5 Questions · Side Questp.9
You'll need: pencil, ruler, calculator, a long strip of paper (at least 60 cm), a phone for recording and someone from another generation to interview.
Principles
A first principle is a basic truth you can build on. History isn't just dates: it's cause and effect. Each new medium changed how people lived, learned and argued. Start with what you already know.
What do I already know?
What is necessary?
Everything in this module is built from four bricks. Rate yourself on each one, then check the example to see if your rating holds up.
What is the objective?
By the end, you'll be able to tell the story of media and explain how each new medium changed society.
- 01Describe the earliest media: rock art and writing.
- 02Explain why the printing press was such a big deal.
- 03Trace photography, radio and film, including Canadian firsts.
- 04Explain how broadcast media and propaganda work.
- 05Connect the internet, social media and Indigenous media to earlier changes.
- 06Retell one event in three different eras of media.
The list on the left is ours. Now make it yours. What do you want out of this?
How much do you know about the history of media right now? Shade the boxes in pencil. You'll come back at the end (p.9) and shade it again in pen.
Why start this way? When you know what you already have (1), what you need (2) and where you're going (3), you learn faster and you notice the gaps. Every module on the Media Path starts with these same three questions.
Messages in stone
The oldest media we know of are marks on rock. The oldest known figurative art (a picture of something real) is on Sulawesi, Indonesia: a cave scene of people and a wild pig dated in 2024 to at least 51,200 years ago. The famous paintings at Lascaux, France, are around 17,000 years old.
Áísínai'pi (Writing-on-Stone)
In southern Alberta, the sandstone cliffs of Áísínai'pi hold thousands of petroglyphs (carvings) and pictographs (paintings) made by Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) people over many generations. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019 and is still a sacred place for the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Writing came much later. In Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), people pressed wedge-shaped marks into clay more than 5,000 years ago. This cuneiform started as a way to keep records, like counting grain and animals.
In the 1840s, a syllabic writing system for the Cree language spread quickly across the Prairies and North. It's often credited to missionary James Evans working with Cree speakers; some Cree oral histories describe the syllabics as having a Cree origin.
What it changed: writing let ideas outlive the person who had them.
Scale: 1 cm = 1,000 years.
Everything from the press to TikTok fits in the last 6 mm.
Draw this timeline on a 60 cm strip of paper. Mark "today" at one end. Add the three events above. How does it feel to see it?
Early writing began with pictures and then became simpler symbols. Invent 6 symbols for things in your life (phone, bus, friend, food…). Write a 3-symbol "sentence." Could someone else read it without you explaining? What does that tell you about how writing systems develop?
Print goes viral
Around 1450 in Mainz (in today's Germany), Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press with movable metal type: individual letters that could be arranged, inked, printed and reused. Before that, most books in Europe were copied by hand.
Gutenberg wasn't first
In China, Bi Sheng made movable type from baked clay in the 1040s. In Korea, the Jikji, a Buddhist text printed in 1377, is the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type. Gutenberg's system was the one that spread fastest in Europe.
What it changed
- Books got cheaper, so more people could own them and learn to read.
- Ideas spread faster and further, including arguments: printed pamphlets helped spread Martin Luther's ideas after 1517.
- Spelling and grammar started to become more standard.
- Newspapers grew out of printed news sheets in the 1600s.
How long ago was 1450?
Made-up numbers: a scribe copies 3 pages a day; a print shop makes 3,000 printed pages a day.
Real numbers varied a lot; the point is the jump in scale.
Metal type is a mirror image of the printed letter. Write your name so it reads correctly in a mirror. Check it with a phone camera's selfie mirror or a real mirror.
Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan wrote about the press in The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), where he used the phrase "global village." What do you think he meant? Does it describe the internet better than the press?
Photos, radio & film
Photography. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce made the oldest surviving camera photograph in France around 1826–27; its exposure probably took hours, maybe days. In 1839, Louis Daguerre's process (the daguerreotype) was announced to the world. Photos were faked almost from the start: one famous 1860s portrait of Abraham Lincoln is his head on another politician's body.
Film. In 1895, the Lumière brothers held one of the first public film screenings for a paying audience in Paris.
Radio. In December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi reported receiving a wireless signal sent across the Atlantic, the Morse code letter "S", at Signal Hill in St. John's. (Newfoundland was separate then and joined Canada in 1949.)
Quebec-born inventor Reginald Fessenden is often credited with the first radio broadcast of voice and music, on Christmas Eve 1906, though historians debate the details.
What it changed: people could see faraway places and hear distant voices, live.
New media started arriving faster and faster.
A daguerreotype needed the subject to sit still for many seconds or more. Take a "long exposure" photo with your phone (try Live Photo or a slow-shutter app) of someone moving. What happens?
Fessenden's 1906 broadcast and Marconi's 1901 signal are both debated. Find two sources about one of them. Do they agree? Why might inventors' stories get simplified over time?
Broadcast & propaganda
Broadcasting sends one message to huge audiences at once. Canada built public institutions to make sure Canadian stories reached Canadians: the CBC was created in 1936 (CBC Television began in 1952), and the National Film Board (NFB) in 1939.
Propaganda
Propaganda is media designed to push people toward a belief or action, often by being one-sided or misleading, usually for a political cause. During the Second World War, every side used it. In Canada, posters urged people to buy Victory Bonds (loans to pay for the war), and the NFB made wartime films.
| Technique | Looks like |
|---|---|
| Fear | "If we don't act, disaster!" |
| Us vs them | A heroic "us," a scary "them" |
| Big vague words | Freedom! Duty! Honour! |
| Repetition | The same slogan, everywhere |
The 1938 "War of the Worlds" panic
Orson Welles's radio drama about a Martian invasion is famous for causing mass panic in the U.S. Many historians now say the panic was greatly exaggerated, partly by newspapers keen to show radio was dangerous. A story about media misinformation was itself partly misinformation.
Marshall McLuhan, a professor at the University of Toronto, wrote "the medium is the message" in Understanding Media (1964). His idea: the form of a medium changes us, not just what's said on it.
Find a Second World War Canadian poster online (try Library and Archives Canada or the Canadian War Museum). Which techniques from the table does it use? Who is it trying to persuade, and to do what?
Pick one: a phone, a TV or a book. How does the medium itself (not the content) change how people behave? For example, what does a phone change about how families eat dinner?
The network era
The internet grew out of ARPANET, a U.S. research network first connected in 1969. Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web in 1989, and it opened to the public in 1991. Social media platforms followed in the 2000s.
What it changed: for the first time, almost anyone could publish to the world, cheaply and instantly. That brought new voices, and new problems like misinformation and harassment.
APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network) launched in 1999, building on Television Northern Canada (1992). It's often described as the world's first national Indigenous broadcaster.
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), directed by Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk and made in Inuktitut, won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Ask someone from another generation: what's the first media you remember? How did you get news growing up? Record a 2-minute answer (with permission).
For much of Canada's history, Indigenous peoples were mostly shown in media made by outsiders. Why might it matter that communities make their own media? Find one APTN, NFB or Isuma production by an Indigenous creator and describe what it shows.
Quick self-check
Six questions, covering every stop. Show your thinking. Answers are upside down at the bottom; no peeking till you're done.
1 · About how old is the oldest known figurative cave art?
2 · Where in Alberta can you see Blackfoot rock art?
3 · Name a movable-type invention that came before Gutenberg's.
4 · Where was Marconi's 1901 transatlantic signal received?
5 · Which Canadian wrote "the medium is the message"?
6 · What is APTN, and when did it launch?
Re-shade your knowledge meter
How much do you know about the history of media now? Flip back to p.3 and shade the meter again in pen (or shade this one). Did any of the four bricks on p.2 move from "Not yet" to "Got it"?
One story, three eras
Same event, three media. Retell one real event as a 1450 printed broadside, a 1940 radio bulletin and a 2026 short video. Watch how the medium changes the message.
1 · Pick your event
Something real from your work, family or community (a game, a storm, a festival).
2 · Must-haves
- The same facts in all three versions
- Each version uses its medium's strengths
- A note on what each version can't do
Printed news sheet
A bold headline, a woodcut-style picture, and the story in short paragraphs. No photos!
30-second script
Sound only. Describe what listeners can't see. Add a sound effect cue.
3-frame storyboard
Hook in the first second, captions on screen, a clear ending.
Reflect: which version told the story best? Which one would be easiest to fake or exaggerate?
Before you film, record or post: ask anyone who appears in your work for permission. If you're under 18, check with a parent or guardian before sharing online. Keeping it on your device is totally fine.
5 Questions
I Still Have
This module didn't answer everything. Good. Write 5 new questions it didn't answer, one of each type below. There are no wrong questions, only ones nobody's asked yet.
★ Star the one question you'd most like answered. You'll need it on the next page.
1What I'll find out
Break your big question into 2 or 3 smaller ones you could actually answer.
2Where I'll look
3How I'll share it
Who I'll share it with:
Done by: