The term “lingua franca” effectively means the tongue of trade. In Jesus’ day, it was a form of Greek. Today it is English—the official language for international communications. It is reasonable then to consider the ‘media franca’ the mode for communicating in an era.
For much of human history, the media franca was oral tradition. With the evolution of the printing press, it became books, though the oral tradition continued strongly through theatre. In the 20th century, it became a four-horse race between books, radio, film and TV. Now it is all of the above through the true media franca of the Internet.
