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21 Examples of Traditional Media

John Spacey, updated on September 29, 2024

Traditional media are forms of communication that predate the internet-era. These are mostly mass media that often required large investments and licenses such that the ability to communicate to a large audience was historically controlled by a small elite. The Internet-age changed this whereby anyone with a blog, vlog or social media account can publish to the world. The following are the common types of traditional media.

Billboards	Books
Buttons & Pins	Fax
Film	Fliers
Magazines	Mail
Newspapers	Photography
Posters	Radio
Stickers	Street Art
T-shirts	Telegraph
Telephone	Television
Video Games	Word-of-mouth
Zines

Zines are self-published newsletters, fliers and magazines that have a small circulation. These existed as early as the 1940s but were mostly a 1990s phenomena that emerged with home printers / photocopiers that democratized access to publishing. Zines peaked in the years before the commercialization of the internet in the mid-1990s. At this time, they were commonly distributed at universities, music shops, bookstores, cafes, restaurants and community facilities.

Stickers are media in the sense that they are commonly used as a type of guerilla marketing. For example, it was/is common to promote musical artists with stickers.

Buttons are small communications that are pinned to clothing. These are particularly associated with 1980s culture and currently have nostalgic appeal.

Media that emerged in the internet-age is known as new media.

Summary

Traditional media simply includes any media that existed before the 1990s when the internet was first commercialized. This timeline is used because the internet broadly changed the way that people communicate based on a large number of digital media options that emerged based on internet infrastructure.