Acta Diurna, Genesis of News

Have you ever thought of the ancestors of the newspaper? Where was it first published ? Can you imagine of a world with no medium to get connected with each other and no equipment to transact knowledge?

Oh God ! One cannot imagine...

I was pondering on that when the question popped up in my mind and I searched, asked myself and finally got certain information about the history of print media.

Media is the one that has the power to transact information from one place to another. If there exists no media we are isolated and live in various remote locations.

Let us have a look at how the print media has emerged.

History says that printed news was found in Rome and was named acta diurna. It was used to transact the orders of the government to the public and was initiated by the order of the Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator. The objective of publishing this was to inform the public about the order and activities of the govt.

  The Daily Courant, is the first newspaper in the world published in 1702 in London, and the interesting fact is that it has only one content page in printed format. Daniel Defoe published a report in 1703 which is considered as the first substantial work of modern journalism. The content of the report was a storm that had occurred in London which prolonged for a week.

The Fourth Estate, Media, especially printed media, renowed by this name was initially used by Edmund Burke, who was a renowed political scientist. It was he who coined the word at the first time in a discussion at British Parliament in 1787.

Since then, the face of the media changed a lot with the impact of the development of science and technology. Media got diversified in the later years with the popularity of printing, radio, television, internet and so on. We can also find the involvement of graphics and artificial intelligence in this sphere.

Mr. Muhammed Noufal. M

Head, Dept of Economics, Al Shifa College of Arts and Science, Kizhattoor