Oldal 37 [37]
36 | Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
oral to the written, ending with the audiovisual culture of electronic media.
The latter, according to Ong (2010), represents a new kind of secondary
verbalism compared to pre-literate, primary verbalism. By the end of the 20"
century, secondary literacy had developed into a complex phenomenon, as
the literacy provided by print periodicals, books, and encyclopedias and the
literacy provided by telecommunications, telephone, radio, and television
coexisted and intertwined, shaping public opinion, while the information
they conveyed formed the subjects of oral interaction.
Komenczi (2014) and Goldhaber (2004) emphasize the interdependent
nature of human abilities and forms of communication throughout history
and describe a permanent enrichment of mental processes related to the
technological achievements and culture of each era. Following Donald’s
logic, Komenczi presents a complex system of interfaces linked to different
cultural epochs: in the era of the verbal, the cognitive functions for perceiving
the environment were superimposed on a kind of secondary interface in the
theoretical culture, the book page, followed by the tertiary interface and then
the emblematic interface of the information society, the screen, which is
also capable of performing operations. According to Goldhaber, this typical
medium of the digital age influences human thinking, and can also lead to
the emergence of new skills in human evolution. The homo oralis’ verbal
skills are complemeted by homo typographicus’ ability to create and receive
printed resources, complemented today by homo interneticus’ interactions
in a virtual environment.
From the second half of the 20" century, the press and mass communication
lost its monopoly on narrative production. First family photography - and
with the spread of VHS technology from the 1980s, family videos — enabled
the everyday user to create a narrative. This trend has been further reinforced
by the everyday use of digital devices and smartphones since the turn of the
millennium.
With the emergence and spread of the internet, interpersonal and mass
communication has changed as well. From the 1990s to the turn of the
millennium, the communication patterns of the second half of the 20" century
were reproduced in the web 1.0 era. News portals followed the newspaper
structure of the written press, chat rooms simulated the conversational nature
of telephoning and text messaging, and the creation of e-mail accounts enabled
private electronic mail, which was faster than telephony but had a narrative
structure similar to conventional postal mail. However, the early 2000s saw
a major change in the world of the Internet: the web 2.0 revolution. Websites
were created that allowed for public online interaction between content
creators and recipients. Blogs allowed any user to publish diary-like posts to
which readers could respond with comments. Content-sharing portals also
appeared where users could publish their own videos, presentations, and
images. The third major change was the emergence of social media platforms
that were both integrative and individualistic. The functions of these new