教甄◆英文科題庫下載題庫

        The invention of the printing press meant that many copies of a document could be produced more quickly than before, but distribution still relied on personal connections. In early 1518 Martin Luther King’s writings spread around Germany in two weeks as they were carried from one town to the next. In January 1776, Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense”, which __12__ the colonists against the British crown, was printed in a run of 1,000 copies. By July 1776, around 250,000 people had been exposed to Paine’s ideas. Newspapers at the time had small, local circulations and were a mix of __13__ , contributions from readers, and items from other papers; there were no dedicated reporters. All these early media conveyed news, gossip, opinions and ideas within particular social circles or communities, with little distinction between producers and consumers of information. They were social media.

 The invention of the steam press in the early 19th century, and the emergence of mass-market newspapers such as the New York Sun, therefore, marked a __14__ shift. The new technologies of mass distribution could reach large numbers of people at an unprecedented speed, but put control of the flow of information into the hands of a__ 15__ few. For the first time, vertical distribution of news, from a specialist elite to a general audience, had a decisive advantage over horizontal distribution among citizens. This trend accelerated __16__ with the advent of radio and television in the 20th century. New businesses grew up around these mass-media technologies.

        In modern media organizations, news is gathered by specialists and __17__ to a mass audience along with advertising, which helps to pay for the whole operation. In the past decade, the Internet has disrupted this model and enabled the social aspect of media to __18__ itself. In many ways news is going back to its pre-industrial form, but supercharged by the Internet. Camera-phones and social media such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter may seem entirely new, but they echo the ways in which people used to collect, share and exchange information in the past. “Social media is nothing new; it’s just more widespread now,” says Craig Newmark. He __19__ John Locke, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin to modern bloggers. 

         News is also becoming more diverse as publishing tools become widely available, barriers to entry fall and new models become possible, as demonstrated by the astonishing __20__ of the Huffington Post, WikiLeaks and other newcomers in the past few years, not to mention millions of blogs. At the same time news is becoming more opinionated, polarized and partisan, as it used to be in the knockabout days of pamphleteering.
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