Temporalities and Theory in Media History

Abstract

This essay discusses what the topical approaches to history—digital history and different concepts of historical temporality—have to offer for media history studies especially in terms of defining a common theory of media history. The outcome of the essay is that since often media historical approaches essentially take the plurality of media historical time and the layering of media forms for granted, these new trends do not provide a key for a ‘grand theory’ of media history. Whilst the new possibilities that digital history provides for media history are substantial, the advantages are first and foremost methodological. Since media history essentially consists of both breaks and outbreaks, different layers with a different logic and tempo in which the context of a given time and space is crucial, to find one’s own body of theory for media history is not even necessary.