Social Media: The First 2,000 Years - Tom Standage

The author of this book argues social media is much older than we believe. Listen to this extract in which Tom Standage talks with Steve Paulson about his book, "Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years." which you can find here and answer the following questions:

 

1. What was the main content of the Martin Luther’s 'Ninety-Five Theses'?

2. What triggers him to follow up with a series of pamphlets in German?

     3. Did the Roman Church have any means of broadcast?

     4. What, according to the interviewee, is the difference between social media and broadcasting?

     5. What has been the effect of the role of the internet in this development?

     6. What’s the interface between broadcasting and social media?

     7. Explain the meaning of following phrases in bold uttered during the interview:

a.       They were masters of social media long before Mark Zuckerberg was a in twinkle in his mother’s eye there was media and it was social.

b.      It’s an incredibly effective way for him to galvanize support for his idea that the catholic church needed to be reformed

c.       My tongue is somewhat in my cheek

d.      I've actually plotted Luther's traffic stats.

e.      This is what modern scholars call synchronization of opinion.

f.        You are not describing the mass media here as the institutions we tend to know as the major newspapers, as television networks, where the news has gatekeepers and it's centralized and there are professional journalists.

g.       So we end up with this very centralized media system which has, yes, this small priesthood of journalists and politicians and businessmen that have access to it.

h.      The mass media era is the anomaly, a blip that has now come to an end.