100 Years Of Social Media

Social media is not a phenomenon exclusive to our current Digital Age. It has a long tradition and distinct parallels with events in the past that seem to run in 100 years cycles. Editorial cartoons, postcards and even the Industrial Revolution were all forebearers to how we communicate today through social media.

Editorial Cartoons– from Legacy Newspapers to e-Readers

With his jug ears, buck teeth and yellow nightdress, the Yellow Kid hardly looked like an icon for comic and commercial success, but that’s exactly what he became in the late nineteenth-century America. Created by artist R.F.Outcault, the Yellow Kid who critiqued the social foibles of the day was published in two major newspapers, The New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer and later Randolph Hearst’s upstart New York Journal. The term ‘yellow journalism‘ was attributed to this cartoon character as Hearst used the Yellow Kid to sensationalize the news.

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