The 18th Century and Participation Media

As our students explore the 18th century and the concept of participation (as in digital culture and Web 2.0), I'd like to connect the two areas in a couple of ways.

In the 18th century, a new sense of "the public" emerged. There were many reasons for this, but high among them was the emergence of mass media. Sure, printing had been around since the mid-15th century, but it was in the 1700s that printing was both frequent and cheap enough for literally hundreds of thousands of people to be regularly consuming the same content tied closely to current events. This is the time when periodicals emerged and when newspapers began to take off.

London coffee houses were
vital social centers in the 18th century

We've taken for granted this sort of thing for centuries, but think about how much that changed the way people thought and acted.