Electronic media are media that use electronics for the end-user to access the content. In contrast to
‘static media’ like a printed media (news paper) most of the Electronic Media are created, transmitted
and accessed ‘electronically’ (with the help of devices & theories in Electronics).
Some of the most popular electronic media are:

Radio

Television

Fixed Telephone & Mobile Telephone

PDA (Personal Data Assistants)

Internet based communication
Today, any equipment used in the electronic communication process (e.g. television, radio, telephone,
desktop computer, game console, handheld device) may also be considered electronic media.
History


Transmission
o Wire and transmission lines
 Telegraph 1795-1832
 Facsimile 1843-1861
 Telephone 1849-1877
 Coaxial cable 1880
 Fiber Optics 1956-1970
o Wireless
 Radio 1897-1920
 Satellite 1958-1972
 Free Space Optics 1960s
o Internet
 Downloading 1969 (first
protocols for transferring
files )
 Live Streaming 1996
(RTP protocol)
Display and Output
o Information Processing 1940s
(Term)
o Galvanometer 18
o Telegraph Sounder 1844
o Telephone Receiver 1849-1877
o Light red 1801-1883
o Neon 1893-1902

Electrical Signal Processing
o Capture 1745 (Capacitor)
o Analog methods of Encoding
1830s (Morse code)
o Electronic Modulating 18321927
o Electronic Multiplexing 1853
(TDM)
o Digitizing 1903 (PCM
Telephone)
o Electronic Encryption 19351945
o Online Routing 1969
o Electronic Programming 1943current

Electronic Information Storage
o Recording Medium
 Punched card and Paper
Tape 1725/1846
 Phonograph Cylinder
and Disk 1857-1958
 Film 1876-1889
 Magnetic Storage 18982003
 RAM 1941-current
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

Teleprinter 1910
CRT 1922
Radio/Television Tuner 18941927
Speaker/Headphones 18761928/1930s
LED/LCD 1955-1962/1968
Laser Light Show 1970s
Computer Monitor 1950s/1976
(for PCs)
Large Electronic Display 1985
HDTV 1936 (Term) 1990s
(Standards)
HMD 1968-current
o

Barcodes 1952/1973
(UPC)
 Laser Disc 1969-1978
 Compact Disc/DVD
1982/1993-current
Content formats
 Content (media) 1877current
 Audio Recording 1877current
 Video Recording 1952current
 Digital File Formats
 Database Content and
Formats 1963-current
Interactivity
o Control Panel
o Input Device
o Game Controller
o Handheld
o Wired Glove
o Brain computer interface (BCI)
Fields of Application
Electronic media devices have found their way into all parts of modern life.




Journalism
o News
Commerce
o Marketin
g
o Advertisi
ng
o Barker
channel
o Digital
signage
o Graphic
Design
Education
o Professio
nal
Training
Science



Fine Art
o Digital Art
o Digital
photograph
y
o Experiment
al music
o Video
Industry
o Corporate
Communic
ations
o Business
Presentatio
ns
o Telecommu
ting
Software Interfaces



Entertainment
o Movies
o Music
o Television
o Video Games
Government
o Infrastructure
 Communications
 Transportation
 Public Services
 Community
bulletin board
o Military
Nonprofit Services

Engineering


Computer
Simulations
Virtual Reality
Advantage & Disadvantage of Print & Electronic Media
Print media reporters may cover subjects with greater depth than writers of electronic media. However,
electronic media's ability to break news at lightning speeds.
Print Media's Advantages: Content Quality Amid growing competition from online websites and other
electronic media, analysts argue that print media holds an edge through its content quality, which a
professional editorial staff can produce. Newspapers have emphasized this feature in their digital
subscription offerings, with a certain level of success.
Print Media's Disadvantages: Shrinking Audiences By any measure, traditional print media's audience is
shrinking. As content becomes increasingly digitized--and free--readers are turning away from print
publications. Peaking at just over $60 billion in 1950, total print media revenues fell to $20 billion by
2011, according to an analysis posted on The Verge website. Sharper declines occurred in 2008 and
2009, with revenues decreasing by 17.7 and 28.6 percent, respectively. The trend has forced print media
outlets to make major budget cuts as they struggle to remain relevant for smaller audiences.
Electronic Media's Advantages: Immediacy Electronic media's chief advantage is its immediacy, as
autocratic Middle Eastern rulers learned too late during the "Arab Spring" of 2010. Reports from
satellite networks like Al Jazeera made it impossible for authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Tunisia to
silence the truth, author-journalist Lawrence Pintak stated in a speech covered by Washington State
University's student newspaper "The Columbian."
Electronic Media's Disadvantages: Superficiality The relentless stimulation of electronic media has
inspired studies to determine how it affects learning. In an article for "Psychology Today," David Walsh
cites a British study that found frequent Internet users only needed two seconds to decide on visiting a
particular Web site. The most popular sites featured highly relevant search terms, suggesting that our
brains can evaluate information at faster and faster speeds, Walsh says. However, developing these
rapid fire processing skills may leave fewer resources for comprehension and retention.
==============
Important Electronic Media:
Electrical telegraph: is a telegraphy that uses electrical signals, usually conveyed via telecommunication
lines or radio. The electromagnetic telegraph is a device for human-to-human transmission of coded text
messages.
Fax (short for facsimile): is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and
images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device.
Telephone: A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic
signals suitable for transmission via cables or other transmission media over long distances, and replays
such signals simultaneously in audible form to its user.
Radio: is the wireless transmission of signals through free space by electromagnetic radiation of a
frequency significantly below that of visible light.
Television Communication: Based on satellites, antennas & earth stations, TV communication is one of
the largest and most popular networks In the electronic communication field.
Internet: The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard
Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve several billion users worldwide. It is a network of networks that
consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global
scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies.
=======
Telegraph
Telegraph Communication
the transmission over a distance of alphameric messages—telegrams—and the transcription of such
messages at the receiving station, accomplished by means of electrical signals transmitted by wire
and/or by radio signals; a form of telecommunication.
The characteristic feature of telegraph communication is that the message is delivered to the addressee
in the form of a printed or, more rarely, handwritten text. This feature and the speed of message
transmission have facilitated the significant development of telegraph communication, particularly in
administrative and business communications. In addition to transmitting telegrams, telegraph
communication may also be used for transmitting records of negotiations, for transmitting numerical
information, and for broadcasting news for newspapers and the radio and television media. Since the
1950’s and 1960’s, telegraph communication has also been used for data transmission.
Historical survey. The oldest form of telecommunication, telegraph communication began in the 1830’s.
In ancient times, only nonelectrical methods of long-distance communication, or signaling, were used—
light and sound; these were later supplemented by postal services. The drawbacks of these methods
included low speed of information transmission, dependence on the time of day and weather, and the
inability to observe secrecy in transmission. For these reasons, nonelectrical methods are now used very
rarely.
The principles of telegraphy were formulated in Russia by P. L. Shilling, who designed the first practical
electric telegraph equipment in 1832. Shilling’s system of telegraph communication was used in Great
Britain beginning in 1837 and in Germany. In 1836 Shilling laid an experimental telegraph line around
the Admiralty in St. Petersburg. The Winter Palace was linked by telegraph with the Main Headquarters
in 1841 and with the Main Administration of Railroads and Public Buildings in 1842. In 1843 a 25-km line
was laid between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo, a distance considered fairly long for that time. A
whole series of successful designs for telegraph equipment for these lines was developed by B. S. Iakobi
(M. H. Jacobi), who invented the electromagnetic register in 1839 and the letter-printing telegraph in
1850. In 1844 a telegraph communication line equipped with electromechanical equipment designed by
S. F. B. Morse was put into service in the USA.
The development of telegraph communication in the second half of the 19th century was associated
with the growth of industry and the network of railroads. In Russia, for example, approximately 27,000
km of telegraph lines and 160 telegraph stations were in operation in 1860; by 1870 these figures had
risen to 91,000 km and 714 stations. The longest telegraph line in the world was opened in 1871
between Moscow and Vladivostok, a distance of approximately 12,000 km. International telegraph lines
appeared in 1854. With the installation of submarine communications cables, intercontinental telegraph
links were also established.
FAX
The essential parts of a fax system are the transmitting devices that translate the graphic material into
electrical impulses according to a set pattern, and a synchronized receiving device that retranslates
these impulses and prints that. In a typical system, the fax scanner consists of a rotating cylinder, a
source projecting a narrow beam of light and a photoelectric cell. The copy to be transmitted is wrapped
around the cylinder and is scanned by the light beam, which moves along the cylinder as it revolves.
The output of the photoelectric cell is amplified and transmitted to the receiving end, where a similar
cylinder, covered with specially impregnated paper, revolves in synchronism with the transmitting
cylinder. A light of varying intensity moves along the rotation cylinder and darkens the paper by
chemically reproducing the pattern of the original. When the fax is done, it pops out as a blue print of
what the other person sent.
Telephone
The telephone was created through the cross-pollination of two fields of study - electricity and
acoustics. Although the invention of the telephone is usually credited to Alexander Graham Bell, many
inventors were working on the problem throughout the 1860s and 1870s, most notably Elisha Gray, who
filed a patent application for the same device only a few hours after Bell did. Although the basics of
electricity were known by the 1830s, nobody suggested transmitting speech electrically until 1854. The
telephone was finally invented on March 10, 1876. Into it were spoken the famous words, "Mr. Watson,
come here, I want to see you."
The telephone operates on simple principles. A telephone mouthpiece contains a thin metallic coating
separated from an electrode by a thin barrier (today we use plastic) which connects to a wire carrying an
electric current. When a person speaks into the mouthpiece, the acoustic vibrations from her speech
push the metallic coating slightly closer to the electrode, resulting in variations in voltage and therefore
a speedy conversion from acoustic to electric energy. The electric pulses are conveyed through a wire to
the speaker on the other end, where electric pulses are converted into acoustic energy again.
Converting speech to electrical energy before transmission is far more efficient than conveying speech
through a mechanical channel, for example a metal pipe, because the walls of mechanical channels
absorb so much of the acoustic energy as it travels. Well-insulated wires, however, are effective at
protecting electrical energy from dispersing before reaching its destination. Electrical pulses travel at the
speed of light, whereas acoustic pulses are limited by the speed of sound. In his 1627 book New Utopia,
Francis Bacon referred to the possibility of a long-distance network of tubes to transmit human speech.
Many historians consider this the first reference to something like a telephone. Unfortunately, he lacked
the scientific knowledge to understand why this would be impractical.
Three critical developments were necessary precursors to the invention of the telephone. First was the
understanding that an electrical current can create a magnetic field, and therefore mechanical or
acoustic energy. This is credited to Danish physicist Christian Oersted in 1820, who demonstrated that a
compass needle can be manipulated by running an electric wire over it. Second was the understanding
that the reverse is possible - electrical induction - that is, generating a current by placing a moving
magnet next to a wire. This insight is credited to inventor Michael Faraday in the year of 1821. The last
necessary development was that of the battery, a chemical device capable of producing a continuous
source of electricity. The first very crude battery was the "Leyden jar", a device for storing static
electricity invented by two Dutchmen in 1746. Volta and others developed more sophisticated batteries
throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
Often considered second in impact only to the printing press for revolutionizing human communication,
the telephone made it possible to connect people to others without dependency on the postal service.
Every domain of human affairs, from business to daily life, was changed radically and permanently.
Globally, the telephone has saved humanity trillions of dollars in communications costs. The basic design
of the telephone has not changed since its initial invention.
Radio Communication
Unless you are sitting right beside the transmitter, your radio receiver needs an antenna to help it pick
the transmitter's radio waves out of the air. An AM antenna is simply a wire or a metal stick that
increases the amount of metal the transmitter's waves can interact with.
Your radio receiver needs a tuner. The antenna will receive thousands of sine waves. The job of a
tuner is to separate one sine wave from the thousands of radio signals that the antenna receives. In this
case, the tuner is tuned to receive the 680,000-hertz signal. Tuners work using a principle called
resonance. That is, tuners resonate at, and amplify, one particular frequency and ignore all the other
frequencies in the air. It is easy to create a resonator with a capacitor and an inductor (check out How
Oscillators Work to see how inductors and capacitors work together to create a tuner).
The tuner causes the radio to receive just one sine wave frequency (in this case, 680,000 hertz). Now
the radio has to extract the DJ's voice out of that sine wave. This is done with a part of the radio called a
detector or demodulator. In the case of an AM radio, the detector is made with an electronic
component called a diode. A diode allows current to flow through in one direction but not the other, so
it clips off one side of the wave, like this:
The radio next amplifies the clipped signal and sends it to the speakers (or a headphone). The
amplifier is made of one or more transistors (more transistors means more amplification and therefore
more power to the speakers).
TV Broadcasting
Analog (or analogue) television is the analog transmission that involves the broadcasting of encoded
analog audio and analog video signal one in which the information to be transmitted, the brightness and
colors of the points in the image and the sound waves of the audio signal are represented by continuous
variations of some aspect of the signal; its amplitude, frequency or phase. All broadcast television
systems preceding digital transmission of digital television (DTV) were systems utilizing analog signals.
Analog television may be wireless or can require copper wire used by cable converters.
Broadcasters using analog television systems encode their signal using NTSC, PAL or SECAM analog
encoding and then use RF modulation to modulate this signal onto a Very high frequency (VHF) or Ultra
high frequency (UHF) carrier.
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) television displays an image by scanning a beam of electrons across the screen
in a pattern of horizontal lines known as a raster. At the end of each line the beam returns to the start of
the next line; the end of the last line is a link that returns to the top of the screen. As it passes each point
the intensity of the beam is varied, varying the luminance of that point. A color television system is
identical except that an additional signal known as chrominance controls the color of the spot.
Plasma screens and LCD screens have been used in analog television sets. These types of display screens
use lower voltages than older CRT displays. Many dual system television receivers, equipped to receive
both analog transmissions and digital transmissions have analog tuner (television) receiving capability
and must use a television antenna.
CRT TV Diagram
Internet
To understand the Internet, it helps to look at it as a system with two main components. The first of
those components is hardware. That includes everything from the cables that carry terabits of
information every second to the computer sitting in front of you.
Other types of hardware that support the Internet include routers, servers, cell phone towers, satellites,
radios, smartphones and other devices. All these devices together create the network of networks. The
Internet is a malleable system -- it changes in little ways as elements join and leave networks around the
world. Some of those elements may stay fairly static and make up the backbone of the Internet. Others
are more peripheral.
These elements are connections. Some are end points -- the computer, smartphone or other device
you're using to read this may count as one. We call those end points clients. Machines that store the
information we seek on the Internet are servers. Other elements are nodes which serve as a connecting
point along a route of traffic. And then there are the transmission lines which can be physical, as in the
case of cables and fiber optics, or they can be wireless signals from satellites, cell phone or 4G towers, or
radios.
All of this hardware wouldn't create a network without the second component of the Internet: the
protocols. Protocols are sets of rules that machines follow to complete tasks. Without a common set of
protocols that all machines connected to the Internet must follow, communication between devices
couldn't happen. The various machines would be unable to understand one another or even send
information in a meaningful way. The protocols provide both the method and a common language for
machines to use to transmit data.
You've probably heard of several protocols on the Internet. For example, hypertext transfer protocol is
what we use to view Web sites through a browser -- that's what the http at the front of any Web
address stands for. If you've ever used an FTP server, you relied on the file transfer protocol. Protocols
like these and dozens more create the framework within which all devices must operate to be part of
the Internet.
Two of the most important protocols are the transmission control protocol (TCP) and the Internet
protocol (IP). We often group the two together -- in most discussions about Internet protocols you'll see
them listed as TCP/IP.
What do these protocols do? At their most basic level, these protocols establish the rules for how
information passes through the Internet. Without these rules, you would need direct connections to
other computers to access the information they hold. You'd also need both your computer and the
target computer to understand a common language.
=========
Advantages & Disadvantages of Electronic Media
Electronic media has affected my life quite a bit. In seventh grade I decided to leave “brick and mortar
school” to join an online school. This caused me to be very familiar with electronic media at an early age,
before electronic media gained the mass popularity it has today. I was using electronic books before
Kindle, I was using online classrooms to see my teachers, and was asked to watch related Youtube
videos when the teacher could not lecture that day. This caused me to become very knowledgeable in
electronic media. I learned from my use of media over the computer that there are many positive
aspects, but also some negative.
The internet has caused our way of viewing media to completely alter. Our access to media is now
easier, and quicker than ever. Previously, the forms of traditional media all had one medium to be
accessed through; newspapers would be delivered to your porch, to view your favorite TV show you
would have to be in front of the television when it aired, and to listen to your music you had to use your
radio. Now though, all of these can be accessed through the internet electronically. Television and radio
shows can be viewed on your computer or even your phone. The same applies to electronic books in all
forms. Newspapers, magazines, novels, and comic books can all be read through an internet-connected
device instantly. Even mail is now delivered instantly with email. There are positive and negative aspects
to this concept though. While it is extremely efficient to have access to all of these at once, it is also
causing the original mediums to disappear. Newspapers have lost much popularity, book stores are
continuously going out of business, and companies that offer instant television and movies (like Netflix)
are causing movie rental companies, and even television to lose business. (Farfan, 2012) It is being seen
more and more that people enjoy receiving their media all in one place and even participating in it
themselves now. With sites that allow you to speak your mind like Facebook, or blogs to large amounts
of individuals, you can now report your own news and information. Users of social networking sites and
blogs can now share and spread news much faster than if they were to wait to hear it from a major
media syndicate. But once again, there are downsides to this new approach. It is now very difficult to
filter through what is true and what is faked. There have been many stories of someone posting “news”
that turned out to be completely false, but yet many still believed it.
Those of us with access to electronic media have grown accustomed to the new developments of
instantly, and efficiently receiving our media. I believe the pros outweigh the cons, but there are
definitely drawbacks to our new way of connecting. News must now be read with some skepticism for
fear of receiving faulty information, companies that were once the largest around are now unable to
evolve and stay in business. We should not stop the progress we have made with electronic media, but
we should keep in mind what we are losing in the process.