A Medium Is Always Born Twice…

There Are No Old Media

“…In media history, scholars have recently discussed what it means to state that a medium has been introduced in a particular moment. Film historians Gaudreault and Marion (, ) point out that media are born not just once, but twice or multiple times, as their institutional and technological frames are redefined throughout time. From a different standpoint, Gitelman () has shown how the formation of new media is a blurred process in which technological innovations interact in complex ways with the development of the institutions that are connected to them.…”

The Double Birth of Wireless: Italian Radio Amateurs and the interpretative Flexibility of New Media

“…Gaudreault and Marion tend to conceive media's second birth as a process of institutionalization or 'constitution' (Gaudreault & Marion, 2005), responding to a broader tendency within media studies to address the history of media in evolutionary terms (Stöber, 2004). However, the early development of a medium is also characterized by the opening up of new potential applications and uses.…”

Imagination and Natural Movement: The Bray Studios and the “Invention” of Animated Film

“…Rather than seeing a single event or invention as establishing a medium, Gaudreault and Marion propose a dynamic model of media formation that follows a "gradated process" of "appearance, emergence and constitution." 11 In a sense, while animation had existed before, the medium of animation became constituted during the mid-1910s. Gaudreault and Marion emphasize two facets of this formation of a media identity.…”