BIAS OF COMMUNICATION - HAROLD INNIS

‘Bias of communication’ – Innis’ idea that communication technology makes centralization of power inevitable.

Harold Innis was one of the first scholars to systematically analyze the possible linkages between communication media and the various forms of social structure found at certain points in history.

Innis maintained that before elite discovery of the written word, dialogue was the dominant mode of public discourse and political authority was much more diffused. Gradually the written word became the dominant mode of elite communication.

By the intervention of new writing material like paper, pen, the elite were able to gain control over and govern mass regions. Thus, new communications media make it possible to create empires.

Similarly, the structure of the later social order also depended on media technology available at that point of time.

e.g. The telephone and telegraph permitted even more effective control over larger geographic areas.

Thus, the development of media technology has gradually given centralized elite increased power over space and time.

As political economist he believed that newer forms of communication technology would make even greater centralization inevitable. He referred to this as the inherent bias of communication

Ref: Mass Communication Theory by Stanley J. Baran and Dennis K. Davis