Introduction
It has become difficult to distinguish once traditional media from the new media, as the former have integrated all the capabilities of the latter. In such a scenario, it would help to compare a traditional medium of communication with a relatively modern/new medium with respect to the circumstances around their origin, and how did they facilitate interpersonal and mass communication. This essay will discuss and analyze two cases: coffee houses as really old media, and podcasts as new media. While the coffee houses gained importance in Europe the mid-1600, and have been around since then, their importance as facilitators of peer networking and communication has become less significant as new forms of media have emerged. Podcasts on the other hand are barely a decade old, and people are still experimenting to find ways to use it effectively for communication, marketing, and advertising purposes.
Coffee houses came to Europe in mid-17th century. These provided a public space where people could sit and enjoy a cup of coffee, nearby their place of profession or in busy markets. The first coffee house was opened in Venice in 1640s, Britain in 1650s, and Netherlands in 1660s (Standage, 2013). Habermas wrote extensively about the coffee houses in Germany and how they led to the emergence of a robust public sphere where people engaged in critical debates about everything (Briggs & Burke, 2010). The coffee houses were tastefully decorated with chairs, tables, paintings, and book-shelves. Frequenting coffee house became a pursuit of the intelligent and wise. The establishment owners subscribed to magazines, newspapers, and periodicals regularly for their patrons. The increase in footfall caught the eye of the advertisers, and pamphleteers as well.
This was the time the printing press had been invented, but large scale newspapers funded with advertising revenue had still to make an appearance. The coffee houses served as a medium for credible transmission of information, sometimes bordering on gossip and rumor. People from same vocation or otherwise, nobility or merchant, talked and discussed matters of trade, science, politics, and society over a cup or two of coffee.
The coffee houses promoted free speech among the people who were deemed equal in that particular space, at that particular time. There were no barriers to entry. You pay a penny to be able to access everything, including the magazines, pamphlets, and participate in lively talks inside its precincts.
People from different walks of life enjoyed freedom of right to speech in a public space. The credentials of the person added credibility to the information or the news. Also, a person could prove his mastery for his trade/vocation at length by engaging like-minded people into enlightening discourses.
The coffee houses laid the foundations for estimating early public opinion about the state of affairs in the country, or the literary prowess of a new book, or any such thing that could benefit by critical appreciation. It was democratic because everybody had an equal opportunity (to the extent that they had money) to access the coffee houses. There was no exclusive membership based on criteria such as member of the nobility, or member of the Royal Society, etc.
A pattern emerged in the location of the coffee houses and the nature of the vocation of the people who frequented these. The major activity in the neighborhood of a coffee house influenced the nature of discussion going around in its premises. As Peter Burke (2010) writes, the coffee houses were precursors to ‘clubland,’ that were intentionally specific with regard to their patrons.
The coffee houses encouraged knowledge creation and transmission by bringing together people sharing similar interests under a common roof, however, away from their formal spaces of work that restrict informal and free conversations. The Child’s coffee house was known for scientific discussions, and so were Garraway’s and the Grecian (with Isaac Newton discussing his works in great depth). The politicians were a regular at the coffee houses situated around Westminster and Saint James’s. The gusto, and curiosity, were at their peak when the House would be in session. The artists met at Slaughter’s while the literary minds reviewed poems and plays of the day at Will’s coffee house in Covent garden (Standage 2013).
These communities also led to the formation of business groups, scientific societies, and literary clubs that aided recreational, intellectual and commercial pursuits. What was discussed at coffee house, was repeated elsewhere, travelling either by word of mouth or written correspondences among different people.
New methods of mass communication came up with Social media networks at the helm. The new and faster methods of content production and dissemination that were now available with individuals such as amateur artists, college sophomores, and high school students changed the mass media radically
Blogs, wikis, podcasts emerged as a form of individual expression that can be distributed to a larger group of audiences. They are one-to-one and one-to-many form of communication, and foster collaboration amongst the creators and the audience. These bypass the traditional communication models based on gatekeeping and licensing. The sender has more than one way of sharing the content, and the receiver has multiple ways of listening to it, at the same time being free from place and time restrictions (Kleinman, 2007).
Podcasts emerged as an on-demand service where the listeners could listen to the audio content uploaded by someone else on the internet. They can listen to it online, or store it on their hard drive and listen later. The podcasts are produced as serialized versions of a course lecture, a documentary, book chapters, drama, or music. One can download these or stream online to access the content (Kleinman, 2007).
The podcasts became a rage with the proliferation in hardware and software related to production, editing, and distribution of audio content. The late 1990s, and early 2000s witnessed the invention of portable media players fitted with a hard drive. No need for Compact Disks and Cassettes. One can simply save the file to the device, and play it whenever she or he wants to (Sterne, 2008).
The most revolutionary aspect of the podcasts is the freedom to create and disseminate the content. The cheap and affordable audio recording devices, and editing software have made creating innovative/creative audio content a breeze. In case of broadcasting, the audio equipment costs a lot of money, and needs a lot of technical expertise for operation.
Transmission with broadcasting requires licensing electromagnetic waves which are scarce, expensive, and not everyone’s cup of tea because of the monopoly that media conglomerates enjoy. The transmission problem for podcasts is solved by growth of high speed internet that facilitates uploading and downloading tones of data onto the servers. No licensing needed, no high-end equipment, free from content dictatorship by the advertisers and regulation by the State (Sterne et. al 2008), podcasting has emerged has a niche medium for academic lectures, webinars (web-seminars), and audio documentaries.
Marketers are also exploring the medium of podcasts for targeted advertising, and promotion. While ads are inserted in certain sections of a podcasts, some podcasts are ads in themselves. Just like there are no restrictions to creation and dissemination of podcasts, accessing them is equally very easy. No special devices required. No permissions.
Coffee houses vs. Podcasts
The circumstances around the emergence of coffee houses and podcasts were vastly different. However, both coffee houses and podcasts serve important media and mass communication needs of the people. However, coffee houses provided greater scope for collaboration than the podcasts, as people can always put in their opinion at the time of discussion. In case of podcasts, the discussion boards are a great way to invite audience feedback and comments. Apart from that, podcasting largely remains a one-to-one, one-to-many medium of communication, except when people are podcasting their ideas/opinions on a subject).
Coffee houses are a medium of face-to-face oral communication among people. They can decide the flow of information: dialogue, turn taking, group discussion etc. Podcasting does not allow the audience to face the speaker. Also, podcasts have a planned script that the narrator narrates using techniques such as voice modulation, background scores etc. Coffee-houses are in-the-present spontaneous conversations without a formal script or a chance at retakes/rehearsals.
Coffee houses have an appeal of intellectual discourse, where the people with similar interests meet and talk about tidings related to their field. On the other hand, the podcast content is generic as well as niche, with a lot of recreational humor. The inherently conversational nature of coffee houses is reflected in interactive nature of podcasts. The narrator tries to make it as enjoyable and interactive as possible using storytelling techniques.
Coffee houses grew without female participation for a long time, because were absent from public sphere and discussion in those days. In case of podcasts, men and women have contributed alike to the medium, and no one gender is entirely absent (even though the ratio of usage may vary.)
The major similarity between coffee houses and podcasts is that both can be said to have bypassed the gatekeeping measures. Jürgen Habermas recorded the emergence of bourgeoisie public sphere in the 18th century where cafes and salons became the hub for discussing political matters. This democratization of participation in public sphere is further facilitated through the internet and social media, as these help in bypassing the structural restrictions and gatekeepers that guard accessibility to traditional media (Laurier & Philo, 2007).
Both coffee-houses and podcasts have provided impetus to academia, and learning. The coffee-house conversations amongst budding scientists of the 17th and 18th century Europe (and America) were compiled into newsletters to be circulated far and wide. This served as the foundation of science journals that document the latest developments and discoveries. Podcasts have become a popular medium for academic lectures, especially lectures on history, and political sciences. It is also being used by researchers of Oral History as means to share and archive the recordings. Some of the most popular podcasts include Germany: memories of a nation, Nature’s weekly podcast on science, BBC Podcasts, and others.
Just as the paparazzi and ethnographers in 17th century Europe visited coffee-houses to collect and disseminate the latest scoop, news and broadcast houses of today were quick to pick up the podcast trend, and churn creative and informative content. They already had the equipment for creating high-end audio content, and now they can customize these according to their audience.
Both coffee-houses and podcasts enjoy high reputation among the marketers, in the sense that both these media can be used for targeted advertising. Coffee houses visited by poets, and authors had become place of choice for new book launches. Those frequented by merchants were a hub of new business investment, and in general new product announcements and advertisements were stuck in coffee-houses for greater visibility. Similarly, marketers are using podcasts to reach their target audience, which mainly comprise the educated, the affluent, and the more mobile ones. In this sense, it can be said that even though coffee houses and podcasts put no barriers to entry, their audience comes from a rather homogenous background.
Conclusion
In 17th and 18th century, coffee houses facilitated conversations among the people and became a hub of public opinion, and intellectual discussions. But they were slow, and the content of the conversation could not be reproduced into multiple copies for distribution. The word travelled orally, or through magazines put together by industrious curators. Cut to 400 years later, and there are podcasts with on-demand audio content that can be used to serve a variety of communication needs. A Podcast once created and uploaded can be accessed and reproduced any number of times, at any place, at any time. If the two were to come together, the best way would be listening to a podcast covering a FIFA match, live in a coffee-house along with let’s say 100 other people.
Works Cited
Briggs, A., & Burke, P. (2010). Social history of the media: From Gutenberg to the Internet. Cambridge.
Kleinman, S. (2007). Displacing place: Mobile communication in the twenty-first century. New York: Peter Lang.
Laurier, E., & Philo, C. (2008). A parcel of muddling muckworms’: revisiting Habermas and the Early Modern English coffee-houses. Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 259-281.
Standage, T. (2013). And so to the coffee house: how social media promotes innovation. In Writing on the wall: Social media-The first 2,000 years (pp. 104-123). USA: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Sterne, J., Morris, J., Baker, M., & Freire, A. M. (2008). The politics of podcasting. fibreculture, 13.
