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The Pursuit of Media History

What exactly is the object of media history? And to what extent is there such a thing as a proper historical study of the communication media, recognizable as a discipline on its own merits and not just as a hyphenated offshoot of technological or cultural history? The question may be asked not only in relation to the growing academic interest in historical research, but also as an exercise in method for anybody planning or initiating studies on media or media-related issues dealing with the past. To answer, one will have to consider such general items as the temporal depth, the cultural identity and the social discernibility of the phenomenon of media, items that add up to the criteria through which a subject appears ‘historical’ in the strict sense that it allows the use of historical methods proper. For other methods the quest for such criteria as identity and discernibility may seem futile. The media are there; they certainly exist as textual or intentional entities, and further considerations of the status of the object may not necessarily demand clarification ahead of the exploration. For a historian, however, the question comes up the moment the term ‘media history’ is coined. What sort of history is this: a subject history analogous with the history of crafts or prices, or a ‘perspective’ more on a par with complex items such as cultural history? Above all: what assistance may the historian get from other disciplines of media research?