Media & Elections

I decided that the best place to start my capstone is with the introduction of the radio to politics. While radio was only used for entertainment purposes initially (perhaps all you use it for today), in its prime it had significant value to informing the public about news and elections, as it was faster, and more personal to the audience compared to newsprint. This move was certainly the most challening to make, as research information was somewhat scarce on the topic. However, I did find interesting statistics such as "in 1924 only 4.7% of Americans were reported to have a radio in their home. But by 1932, over 60% of Americans had a radio in addition to in their automobiles". 1924 was the first radio broadcasted election, thus requiring establishment for infrastructure and all sorts of other corporate involvements. Click the PDF to read the full move, and feel free to look at the sources I used.