The history of media evolution echoes the development of society. From early oral and written communication, from printing technology to the contemporary internet, the development of new media is both the end and the starting point.

A new media’s birth represents the outcoming of the expansion of both people’s production of information and information’s density.

A new media would also shape the social culture through its transmission, thus creating the media power.

This essay examines the evolution of media power through the development of media. Five key media will be discussed: printing, photography, television, radio, and digital media. A tetrad methodology would be applied to each media. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan raised the media tetrad in 1988 to examine the effects on society of any technology/medium by dividing its effects into four categories: enhances, reverses, retrieves, obsolesces. The definition of media power is essential for understanding the development of media. Marshall McLuhan argued that “the medium is the message” (1964). From his perspective, people are affected by the way a message is transmitted even before people begin to understand the message. Therefore, any deconstruction of media power should also start from the medium itself rather than the contents. According to Xiaowen Chen’s (2011) theory, media power is a public influence power that has its roots in possession and transmission of information, and makes comes into effect by filtering and disseminating information. It is not a compelling force, but a subtle influence. A model of dam explains the theory well that the medium is like a dam, separating the upstream information from the downstream public and creating a gap between information input and output. Media power thus is brewed in this gap.

Printing: The First and Most Revolution The early printing was manual copying. It cost much time and effort, thus made the presswork expensive. The transition took place in 1454. People were astonished when they saw the unbonded pages of the Bible printed in high clarity at Frankfurt’s traditional harvest festival. That was Johannes Gutenberg's masterpiece. Gutenberg invented movable-type printing by synthesizing an alloy of zinc, lead, and antimony for movable letters. He also improved an oil-containing ink for printing presses and a wooden press. The movable-type printing’s high efficiency reduced the cost greatly. According to records, Gutenberg’s Bible cost only one-tenth of a manuscript one. Later, the streaming machine started another revolution in printing efficiency and created commercial printing.

Printing overall contributed greatly to the social reform. Firstly, it created a linear thinking mode. Printing enhanced the written texts in that copies of books and declarations were produced in quantity. Therefore, more and more people gained access to books and were addicted to reading. In this process, a linear way of thinking was formed. People tended to rely on what they were reading and separate themselves from the scenes of life.

Gutenberg’s printing also marked the beginning of mass media. Newspapers emerged in the primitive form for the political groups or merchants to exchange information, or make claims. With the streaming technology, printing also evolved to be even faster and more convenient. Capitalism seized the opportunity and opened a new market in newspapers. Readership was sold as a commodity to display the reader’s identity, usually in politics. Merchants also sought to open a larger market by posting advertisements in the newspaper. In general, the newspaper was used to convey messages that represented the interests of the class, while the audience could only passively accept this information.

From this point, the “information gap” between the “media dam” began to widen. The media power in printing was owned by the elites, like capitalists and political giants, since they can control the contents that would be transmitted by the printing media. While printing made information and knowledge available for more people, it also had the potential danger in that public opinion could be manipulated.

Photography: To See is to Believe? Born in 1837, photography brought vision to human history. It was a hit overnight when the French artist Louis Daguerre made the entire photographic process free to the world on August 19. At first, photography was mostly conducted in studios of portraits. It was like an evolution of painting. It was not until the 1880s when the dry plate and flexible celluloid film were invented that photography became portable enough to be conducted in the field. But before the end of the 1890s, photography was only a serious art form (Kovarik 2016). A Danish police reporter Jacob Riis invented flash photography and photo halftone printing. The flash made it possible for the photographers to catch images when there was not enough light. The halftone printing enabled photos to be printed on newspaper with ink dots, thus increasing efficiency. From then on, photography’s function widened from simple art to a reflection and interpretation of society. It started to have an influence on social reforms along with journalism. Photography’s influence keeps growing since it has been more and more portable.

From a historical perspective, photography mainly affects society by enhancing people with their connections with life scenes, just as before the printing time. Susan Sontag (2001) argued that photography provides images of the real-life and enables people to approach the world actively, rather than absorbing information from the projection of the events. Photography also created the visual culture among the public that soon obsoleted plain text contents. Whether commercial advertisement or news, attaching proper photos became the most promising way to attract the audience. The visual culture also retrieves people’s dependency on images. In the ancient tribes, a man who looked stronger would be selected as the leader. Nowadays, politics with an elegant demeanor would win more tickets. A better appearance design matters more than the function of a product. By this hypnotic effect of the visual culture created by photography, public opinion became easier to be manipulated by the media power. Essential Theories The Magic Bullet Theory and Two-Step Flow Communication Theory are essential for understanding how media power developed with photography. Both theories were mentioned during the first half of the 20th century. The Magic Bullet Theory believes that media messages can directly influence people’s thoughts and cause powerful changes to society immediately. The Two-Step Flow Communication Theory created a model that the information is firstly released by the mass media, then received and interpreted by the key opinion leaders (KOL), then transmitted to the mass audience. Combining these two theories, the media does need direct influence on all the public to manipulate public opinions. The power behind the media can apply their influence by controlling and forming a group of KOLs to get across the message. KOLs have more access to the information sources and then interpret from the perspective that represents their interests while transmitting. The audiences would then be influenced and act as the power’s wish. Photography in media makes the saying “to see is to believe” obsolete. It seems that photography brings not only visual but also reality to the public. In fact, a photo itself is already the photographer’s interpretation of reality. But before it being transmitted to the mass audience, KOL and media owners will also interpret it to convey their message. An old saying goes as “to see is to believe”.

Photography relies much on subjective interpretation to get across the messages it conveys. This is outstanding in the news. Though press photography is thought to be a branch of documentary photography, the photos will be selected and edited by the editor or press to transmit their intentions to the public. If being pushed to the extreme, photos can become an adjunct to authenticity, rather than the embodiment of authenticity. There are famous examples of fake photos. For example, when the Swiss newspaper Blick reported an incident of foreign visitors being shot in Egypt in November 1997, the water stains on the ground were turned red as blood in the news picture to create an atmosphere of terror. Another example was the Israeli ultra-Orthodox newspaper HaMevaser’s report on the Charlie Hebdo shooting event. There were a few female leaders joining the parade in mourn of the dead and against terrorism, like Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Mayor Hidalgo of Paris. However, the newspaper cut all the female participators in the picture.

Radio: First Interactive Media Radio stands out for its accessibility. It was firstly invented by Samuel Morse, Joseph Henry, and Alfred Weil in the 1830s. They transmitted telegraph signals by radio waves using Morse code. It was used for armies and ships.

From the 20th century, radio started to take the function of mass media. The audiences could easily have access to the radio as long as they had a device. It had its golden age in the 1930s to 1940s since it was attached to cars. Later on, the development of television and the internet gradually chipped away at the radio market. According to the media theorist McLuhan (1966), radio was having “a re-tribalizing effect”. It means that radio retrieved the oral culture and led to a trend of departure from literacy. Meanwhile, the development of language made radio’s content more divertive and enhanced the oral culture. Since radio creates a one-to-one connection with every audience, it builds private theaters of the mind. The audiences have their own imagination according to the radio contents, thus creating unique experiences. The radio program "War Of The Worlds" broadcasted in 1938 is the best proof of how the audiences were passively accepting information and building up their own theater in mind. It was a radio drama telling the story of Martians' invasion of the earth. There was only a prologue at the beginning of the drama. For about the next twenty minutes, the broadcast was presented as a typical evening of radio programming being interrupted by a series of news bulletins. Then, there was the breaking news of the Martians' invasion. The late audience had no clue what happened and took it seriously, thus causing a mass panic.

Television: Television is a visible version of radio. In the early 1900s, people succeeded in transmitting moving images over a radio system that used mechanical rotating perforated disks to scan a scene into a time-varying signal (Stephens, 2015). This became the prototype of modern television. After the end of World War II, with standardized electronic methods of scanning and displaying images, television broadcasting expanded rapidly after World War II, becoming an important mass medium for advertising, propaganda, and entertainment. Television enhances the visual culture created by photography as it transmits moving images. In 1960, television debating was introduced in the US presidential election. Before the debating, most politicians believed Nixon would win since he had accumulated years of experience in office while Kennedy was too young. However, on television, Kennedy showed his confidence with a handsome appearance and an embellished look. Nixon, on the contrary, was suffering from a fever. Kennedy won with 49.72 percent of the vote. Though Kennedy proved to be a great president, the fraudulence of visual culture is still very dangerous. The television could easily flip into tools of propaganda and fake advertisement when pushed to the extreme. The popularity of television to some extend obsolesced theaters. With television, people no longer needed to physically visit the theater to enjoy a performance. When radio and television enriched people's entertainment and make communications more convenient, they widened the gap between the information and the public. The scholars raised the agenda-setting theory to explain how media power strengthened in this period. The theory assumed that though the contents in the radio and television did not directly influence the audience's thoughts, they attempted to guide the audience to think according to the agendas set by the media. The media achieved this by deciding how or whether an event would be presented to the audience.

Digital Media: Omniscient and Omnipotent Digital media’s emergency was based on the internet. Meanwhile, digital media is like a web that weaves in all the media forms. It creates a participatory culture that enhances the audience’s sense of participation. It obsolesces single means of media. For example, before people were passively listening to the radio and receiving information. With the instant messaging platform in the digital media age, radio programs focus on interacting with the audience. The host would set up a topic and encourage the audience to chat according to the topic. Digital media also retrieves many cultural contents that are on the verge of extinction. For example, cultures of the minority groups. Digital media not only provide platforms for them to share but also encourages reproduction. For example, Hua Yin Lao Qiang (华阴老腔) was a traditional Chinese folk music in Shanxi. This form of music was once on the verge of extinction. But the vloggers who visited the place made videos of this art form and post it on the internet. It then became known to many popular musicians and performed on main stages, like Spring Festival's Gala. In the digital age, it seems that the media power becomes more democratic and visible since the internet enables every user to have their voice. The dam seemed to be broken. However, the fact is contradictory. Digital media forms a panopticon imperceptibly. A panopticon is originally used to describe a design of jail that every prisoner is separated into a single room in a round building with a tower in the middle, standing the warden. Since the warden is invisible to the prisoners, the prisoners would be kept in the terror of the surveillance. The concept then widens to describe a spatial relation in a system. There is an invisible central monitor in the system. Due to the invisibility, everyone in the system would conduct self-monitoring. Digital media is exactly such a system. The central tower now becomes the internet’s root servers. The servers can have panoramic surveillance over all the users and information on the internet because all the data that existed on the internet must go through them first. Then, the internet users are physically separated. Though they can exchange information, the process is under surveillance. For example, it seems that everyone can post and share their opinions on the blog. However, the postmaster has the power to set the rights of the visitors and adjust the information posted on the page. The postmaster can decide who can leave a comment. The platform can also decide if a post is proper. Another example is the recommendation algorithm. By collecting the user’s viewing data, the platform would automatically filtrate contents to cater to the user. It can also be used to discipline the user by pushing information that contains the concept that the monitor wants to convey. In this way, the panopticon can be organized silently through the internet. Though it seems less authoritative, it can have a wider influence by controlling users’ self-consciousness.

Conclusion Looking back on the history of media's development, media had always been shaping our living environment. If the oral communication is a point-to-point transmission, the written text extends the transmission to a point to a line. The printing further develops the transmission from a dot to a side. Till now, digital media has created even virtual spaces outside the real world. Media technology has been expanding the human communication space. The development of media technology also causes the transformation of media power. Through the history of media, its control over public opinion has been growing stronger and more subtle. Meanwhile, from printing to the internet, the audience’s role has also transformed from passive receivers to participators. This also required the media to reconstruct its power. From my perspective, media is closely related to the whole international livelihood. Only when media power is returned to the public, will the establishment of a harmonious society be within reach. Media power should be used to realize the equalization of rights, rather than deepening the information gap.