define mass communication essay

Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication

(32 reviews)

ISBN 13: 9781946135261

Publisher: University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing

Language: English

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Reviewed by Jenny Dean, Associate Professor, Texas Wesleyan University on 2/27/24

This book is pretty comprehensive, but it is getting old in the media world where things are changing at a great pace. The basic text is good, but needs supplementary materials to truly keep pace with technology today. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

Content Accuracy rating: 3

I am sure the book was accurate when it was published, but the world keeps changing, and it isn't as current as it needs to be. But, it still isn't bad for a free book to access.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

Once again, same issue. The book is almost seven years old and hasn't been updated. The issue is that the examples and illustrations are getting to be a bit dated. I suspect that there aren't any updates of this book planned, which is unfortunate. If updated, this would be a fantastic read for students.

Clarity rating: 5

It is simple to read and is easily accessible. It meets the needs of a young college student.

Consistency rating: 5

Yes, the textbook is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework.

Modularity rating: 5

It is well-subdivided and easy to access. Good use of subheadlines. It is a smooth read, and easy to find information through headers, subheads, headlines, and blocks of type.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Everything is presented in a clear and concise manner.

Interface rating: 5

This textbook comes in a wide variety of formats and can be accessed by almost everyone through one method or another. It was super easy to access.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The text is clean and clear of errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

I don't think this book is as inclusive as the typical book written today. This is simply because times have changed, and the need for inclusive and culturally sensitive books has escalated exponentially from the time this book was written. It needs more culturally relevant examples. I wouldn't say that anything in the book is culturally insensitive or offensive, but it isn't as diversified as it needs to be.

This is an excellent book for an introduction to mass communication or an introduction to media and society course. It covers all the basics that I would expect to cover. It just needs some updating which can be done through supplementary materials.

Reviewed by Ryan Stoldt, Assistant Professor, Drake University on 12/15/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication thoughtfully walks readers through popular media and connects these media to questions about culture as a way of life. The book undoubtedly is comprehensive in its scope of American media but largely fails to consider how media and culture relate in more global settings. The book occasionally references conversations about global media, such as the differences between globalization and cultural imperialism approaches, but is limited in its engagement. As media have become more transnational their reach and scope (due to technological access, business models, and more), the American focus makes the text feel limited in its ability to explain the relationship between media and culture more broadly.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The text is accurate although it has limited engagement in some of the topics it explores. As such, this would be a good introductory text but would need to be paired with additional resources to dive into many topics in the book with both accuracy and nuance.

Many of the sections of the book are relevant, as the book often contextualizes media through a historical lens. However, the more current sections of the book (such as the section on the Internet and social media) have become outdated quickly. These, once again, would be useful starting places for classroom conversation about the topic but would need to be paired with more current readings to hold a deeper conversation about social media and society today.

Some terms could be further explained, but the text is overall well written and easy to understand.

Consistency rating: 4

The book pulls from multiple approaches to researching and discussing media and culture. The introductory chapter draws more heavily from critical media studies in its conceptualizations of the relationship between media and culture. The media effects chapters draw more heavily from more social scientific approaches to studying media. The author does a nice job weaving these approaches into a consistent conversation about media, but different approaches to studying media could be more forwardly discussed within the text.

The author has made the text extremely easy to use modularly. Chapters are self-contained, and readers could easily select sections of the book to read without losing clarity.

The book employs consistent organization across the subjects discussed. Each chapter follows a similar organizational structure as well.

Interface rating: 4

Because the text is so modular, the text does not flow easily when read on the publisher's website. Yet, downloading the text also raises some issues because of strange formatting around images.

I have not seen any grammatical errors.

As stated previously, the book is extremely biased in its international representation, primarily promoting Americans' engagements with media. The book could go further in being more representative of different American cultures, but it is far from culturally insensitive.

Understanding Media and Culture would be an extremely useful introductory text for a class focusing on American media and society. A more global perspective would require significant engagement with other texts, however.

Reviewed by David Fontenot, Assistant Professor, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 11/15/22

The text comprehensively covers forms of media used for mass communication and includes issues towards emerging forms of mass communication. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The text comprehensively covers forms of media used for mass communication and includes issues towards emerging forms of mass communication.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

In some places there is nuance missing, where I feel brief elaboration would yield significantly clearer comprehension without bias or misleading associations about media's influence on behavior.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

Still relevant and up-to-date with a valuable emphasis on issues related to internet mass media.

Very readable, with little jargon. Definitions are presented clearly and used in subsequent discussions.

Internal consistency is strong within the chapters.

Modularity rating: 4

The majority of chapters can be taken independently, with only a few larger structural pieces that lay the foundation for other sections.

The book takes an historical approach to media, which lends itself to a logical progression of topics. I might suggest, however, that for most students the material that is most accessible to their daily lives comes last with such an approach.

Interface rating: 3

The downloaded file has some very awkward spots where images seem clipped or on separate pages than the content that reference them. I only viewed this textbook in the online downloaded PDF format.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

No grammatical errors have jumped out at me in sections read so far.

There are quite a few opportunities to include discissions of media and culture that don't seem so anglo-centric but they are passed up.

I am using this textbook as the basis for an interdisciplinary class on media and the criminal justice system, and in that regard I think it will serve very well for an introductory level textbook. It provides a concrete set of core ideas that I can build off of by creating tailored content to my students' needs.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Johnson-Young, Assistant Professor, University of Mary Washington on 7/1/22

Appropriately comprehensive. Having some more up-to-date citations, particularly in the media effects theories criticisms section (with some more explanations) would be beneficial--perhaps supplementing with some ways these have been updated would... read more

Overall, content is clear and accurate.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Mass media may always need updating, but this is appropriate and up-to-date.

Clarity rating: 4

Is an accessible text in terms of clarity and provides necessary definitions throughout in order to provide the reader with an understanding of the terminologies.

Text introduces terms and frameworks and uses them consistently throughout.

Small, easy to read blocks of text--could easily be used in a variety of courses and be reorganized for a particular course.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

Topics presented clearly and in an order that makes sense.

Easy to read through and images clear and displaying readily. It would help if there was a way to move forward without having to click on the table of contents, particularly in the online format.

No errors that stick out.

While appropriately comprehensive for an intro text, more examples and/or acknowledgment of who has been left out and those impacts could be helpful in the social values or culture discussions.

Overall, this is a great text and one that could be used in full for a course or in sections to supplement other communication/media studies courses!

Reviewed by David Baird, Professor of Communication, Anderson University on 4/18/22

I don’t know if any intro textbook can cover “all areas and ideas,” but this text was adequate to the task—basically on par with any other textbook in this space. I didn’t see a glossary in the chapters or an index at the back of the book. On the... read more

When the text was published, it would have been considered “accurate.” The content was competently conceptualized, well written and reflective of the standard approach to this kind of material. I didn’t notice any egregious errors of content aside from the fact that the book was published some years ago is no longer very current.

The primary weakness of the book is that it was published more than a decade ago and hasn’t been updated for a while. The text is relevant to the focus of the course itself, but the examples and illustrations are dated. For example, the book uses a graphic from the presidential election of 2008 in a treatment of politics, and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” is an example of current television programming.

I conducted a text search that tabulated the number of references to the following years, and these were the results: 2010: 588 2011: 49 2012: 8 2013: 4 2014: 0 2015: 2 2016: 0 2017: 0 2018: 1 2019: 1 2020: 0 2021: 1 2022: 1

The references to the more-recent years tended to crop up in forward-looking statements such as this one: “With e-book sales expected to triple by 2015, it’s hard to say what such a quickly growing industry will look like in the future.”

The second part of the question referred to the implementation of updates. I doubt that any updates are planned.

The text is well written and meets the usual standards for editorial quality.

The framework and "voice" are internally consistent.

The chapter structure provides the most obvious division of the text into accessible units. Each chapter also has well-defined subsections. Here’s an example from one chapter, with page numbers removed:

Chapter 13: Economics of Mass Media

Economics of Mass Media Characteristics of Media Industries The Internet’s Effects on Media Economies Digital Divide in a Global Economy Information Economy Globalization of Media Cultural Imperialism

This aspect of the text makes sense and is largely consistent with similar textbooks in this area.

The text is available in these formats: online, ebook, ODF, PDF and XML. I downloaded the PDF for purposes of my review. The formatting was clean and easy to work with. I didn’t notice any problems that made access challenging.

I can’t say with certainty that a grammatical error or typo can’t be found in the textbook, but as I noted above, the writing is strong. I’ve seen much worse.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The text seems to be around a dozen years old now, so it doesn’t include discussion of some of the high-profile perspectives that have surfaced in more recent years related to race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. However, the book does discuss examples of media issues “inclusive of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds,” and this material is presented with sensitivity and respect.

This is a reasonably good resource for basic, intro-level definitions and explanations of some of the major concepts, issues and theories in the “Mass Communication” or “Media and Society” course, including:

• functions of the media • gatekeeping • media literacy • media effects • propaganda • agenda setting • uses and gratifications

The textbook also offers the standard chapters on the various media—books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, etc. These chapters contextualize the various media with standard accounts of their historical development. My feeling is that much of the historical background presented in this book is more or less interchangeable with the material in newer textbooks.

However, the media industries have changed dramatically since the textbook was written, so all of the last decade’s innovations, developments and controversies are entirely missing. Of course, even a “new” textbook is going to be somewhat dated upon publication because of the book’s production timeline and the way that things change so quickly in the media industries—but a book published in 2021 or 2022 would be far more up-to-date than the book under review here.

The bottom line for me is that if one of an instructor’s highest priorities is to provide a free or low-cost textbook for students, this book could work with respect to the historical material—but it would have to be supplemented with carefully selected material from other sources such as trade publications, industry blogs and news organizations.

Reviewed by Kevin Curran, Clinical Assistant Professor, Loyola Marymount University on 3/21/22

This is one of the most comprehensive media studies books I’ve read. It attacks each media platform separately and with sufficient depth. That is followed by economics, ethics, government/law, and future predictions. Takeaways attend of each... read more

Takeaways attend of each section will aid comprehension. Exercises at end of sections could be jumping off point for discussions or assignments. Chapters end with review and critical thinking connections plus career guidance.

The Chapter 2 rundown on both sides of media theories and summary of research methods was well-done.

Everything about this tome is good, except for its dating.

The book is well-researched and provides valuable, although often dated, information. The author used a variety of sources, effective illustrations, and applicable examples to support the points in the book.

It can be very hard to keep up with constant changes in the mass media industry. This book was reissued in 2016, but it has not been revised since the original copyright in 2010. The dated references start on page 2 when it speaks of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey as existing, when that circus ceased in 2017. The medium-by-medium exploration is well done, although the passage of time affects the end of each chapter.

Adoption of the book as-is will mean developing an update lesson for each chapter. For example, while smartphones are mentioned, they had not achieved saturation status at the time this volume was published.

The points are presented clearly. References with hyperlinks are available at the end of each section for those who still have questions or want more information. However, it is possible that because of the age of the book, some of those links may no longer be available.

The media chapters each follow a similar pattern in writing and order.

This will break up easily. The first chapter gives a good taste of what is to come. The book provides a comprehensive look at the history and influence of each medium individually. The last group of chapters necessarily contains many flashbacks to the medium sections.

It follows a logical pattern from the introduction to the individual medium chapters to the “big picture” chapters. That does require signposting between the two sets of chapters that some might find frustrating.

Interface rating: 2

The book is a standard PDF with links. The scan could have been better, as there is a lot of white space and illustrations are inconsistently sized. Users hoping for lots of interactivity are going to be disappointed.

The book is well edited. It is hard to find errors in writing mechanics.

The authors took a broad view of the mass media world. The music chapter was very well done.

Reviewed by Lisa Bradshaw, Affiliate Faculty, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 11/26/21

This textbook, downloaded as a 695-page PDF, contains 16 chapters and covers a variety of media formats, how they evolved, and how they are created and used, as well as issues related to media impact on society and culture. It is quite comprehensive in its coverage of media for the time of its writing (copyright year 2016, “adapted from a work originally produced in 2010”).

Content seems accurate for its time, but as technology and media have evolved, it omits current references and examples that did not exist when it was written. There does not seem to be bias and a wide variety of cultural references are used.

As mentioned previously, this textbook’s copyright year was 2016, and it was adapted from a 2010 work. It’s not clear how much of the content was updated between 2010 and 2016, but based on the dates in citations and references, the last update appears to have been in 2011. Even if it had been updated for the year 2016, much of the information is still out-of-date.

There is really no way to write a textbook about media that would not be at least partially out of date in a short time. This text’s background and history of the evolution of the various media forms it covers is still accurate, but there is much about the media landscape that has changed since 2010–2016.

Due to the textbook’s age, references to media platforms and formats such as MySpace, Napster, and CDs seem outdated for today’s media market. The textbook refers to previous political figures, and its omission of more recent ones (who were not on the political landscape at the time of writing) makes it seem out-of-date. To adapt it for modern times, these references need to be updated with fresh examples.

The writing level is relatively high. A spot check of the readability level of several passages of text returned scores of difficult to read, and reading level 11-12 grade to college level. The author does a good job of explaining technical terminology and how different media work. If adapting the text for students with a lower level of reading, some of the terminology might need to be revised or explained more thoroughly.

The text is consistent in its chapter structure and writing style. The order of topics makes sense in that chapters are mostly structured by media type, with beginning and end sections to introduce each respective media type in general, and conclude with a look to the future.

If adapting and keeping the same structure (intro to media in general, coverage of different media types in their own chapters, and main issues related to media), this 695-page textbook could be condensed by eliminating some of the detail in each chapter. There are a number of self-referential sentences that might need to be removed. If adapting the text to a more specific subject, the instructor would need to go through the text and pick out specific points relevant to that subject.

Each chapter introduces the respective media type and concludes with a summary that reflects on the future of that type and how it might evolve further. The chapters overall follow the same structure for consistency: overview, history, the media in popular culture, current trends, and potential influence of new technologies, with end-of-chapter Key Takeaways, Exercises, Assessment, Critical Thinking Questions, Career Connection, and References.

The text is well written and logically structured and sequenced. Despite its length, it’s easy to find information, as it’s ordered by chapters that address each media type and major issues related to media, and each chapter has a parallel structure with the others, all following mostly the same pattern.

I did not notice grammatical errors. The text is clearly and accurately written, and appears to have been thoroughly copyedited and proofread.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I did not notice cultural insensitivity in the text. A wide variety of cultural references are used. Examples from around the world and from many different cultures are included, including discussions of digital divide and inequity issues related to media access in disadvantaged populations.

Reviewed by Adria Goldman, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Mary Washington on 7/11/21

The text nicely breaks down different forms of mass communication. The text provides some historical background and discussion of theory to provide context for discussing mass media, which is all useful in helping students understand media and communication. There is not much discussion about the cultural significance of media. If using the text in a course, supplemental readings on the significance of culture and diversity, the importance of media representation, and media influence on an individual level (ex: impact on identity), would be especially helpful for a course exploring media and culture. The text does not feature a glossary or index, however the bolding of key concepts throughout the text is helpful in defining key terms.

The content is error-free. More discussion on culture would provide a more accurate account of mass communication and its significance.

The subject is very relevant and the book features topics important for a discussion on mass communication. As mentioned in other parts of this review, there is not much diversity featured throughout the text, which can impact the relevancy of the material to audiences and impacts the relevancy of the content in discussions on mass media and society. Updates would be straightforward to implement.

The text is clear and easy to follow.

The text is consistent in its use of terms and its framework. Since the book title mentions a focus on culture, an interesting add-on would be to have each section (on a specific type of mass communication) feature a discussion of culture and its significance.

The text's modularity is useful. It looks like it would be easy for students to follow and for instructors to re-structure in order to fit their course design.

The information follows a logical order, beginning with a discussion on the significance of mass communication and then going into each type.

No issues with interface noted.

No glaring grammatical issues noted.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

There is not much focus on the significance of culture. More discussion on the role of race, class, sex, gender, religion and other elements of identity would be helpful in exploring mass communication--past, present, and potential for the future. The text could also use an update in images and examples to include diverse representation and to further communicate the role of culture, diversity, and representation in communication and mass media.

The book provides an understanding of mass communication that would be easy for undergraduate college students to follow. The optional activities would also spark interesting discussion and give students the opportunity to apply concepts. Students using the text would benefit from (1) more discussion on culture's significance in media and communication and (2) more diversity in the images and examples used.

Reviewed by Brandon Galm, Instructor in English/Speech, Cloud County Community College on 5/4/21

One of the strong suits of this particular resource is its comprehensiveness, with topics ranging from specific mass comm mediums to the intersections/impacts of media on culture, politics, and ethics. There's enough here to easily cover a full... read more

The content is well-sourced throughout with a list of references at the end of each chapter. The hyperlinks on the references page all seem functional still. Hyperlinks within the chapters themselves--either sending the reader to the reference list or to the articles themselves--would be helpful.

As of this review writing, some of the content is relatively up-to-date. However, with a quickly changing landscape in mass communications and media, certain chapters are becoming out-of-date more quickly than others. The information discussed is more current than most of the information cited. The structure of the book lends itself to easy updating as technologies and culture shift, but whether or not those updates will take place seems unclear with the most recent edition being 5 years old at this point.

All information is presented in a way that is very clear with explanations and examples when further clarification is needed.

For a book covering as many different topics as it does, the overall structure and framework of this textbook is great. Chapter formats stay consistent with clearly stated Objectives at the start and Key Takeaways at the end. Visual examples are provided throughout, and each chapter also includes various questions for students to respond to.

Chapters are broken down into smaller sub-chapters, each with their own sub-headings hyperlinked in the Table of Contents. Each sub-chapter also includes the above-mentioned Objects, Key Takeaways, and questions for students. Chapters and/or sub-chapters could easily be assigned in an order that fits any syllabus schedule and are in no way required to be read in order from Chapter 1 to Chapter 16.

I would like to have seen the book laid out a bit differently, but this is a minor concern because of the overall flexibility of assigning the chapters. The book starts with broad discussions about media and culture, then shifts into specific forms of media (books, games, tv, etc.), then returns to more broad implications of media and culture. Personally, I'd like to see all of those chapters grouped together--with all of the media and culture chapters in one section, and all of the specific forms chapters in another. Again, this is a minor issue because of the overall flexibility of the book.

As mentioned above, hyperlinks--including in the Table of Contents and references--are all functional. I would have liked to have hyperlinks for the references in the text itself, either as a part of the citation or with a hyperlinked superscript number, rather than just in the references page. All images are easily readable and the text itself is easy to read overall.

No grammatical errors that immediately jumped out. Overall seems clear and well-written.

The text provides lots of examples, though most do come from US media. The sections dealing with the intersections between media and culture are similarly US-centric.

Overall, a solid introductory textbook that covers a wide range of topics relevant to mass communications, media, and culture. The text is bordering on out-of-date at this point, but could easily be updated on a chapter-by-chapter basis should the publisher/author wish to do so.

Reviewed by Dong Han, Associate Professor, Southern Illinois University Carbondale on 3/30/21

It covers all important areas and topics regarding media, culture, and society. Different media forms and technologies from printing media to social media all have their own chapters, and academic inquiries like media effects, media economics, and media and government also receive due attention. This textbook will meet the expectation of students of all backgrounds while introducing them to theoretical concerns of the research community. Its chapter layout is properly balanced between comprehensiveness and clarity.

Its content is accurate and unbiased. The textbook is written with ample research support to ensure accuracy and credibility. References at the end of each chapter allow readers to track sources of information and to locate further readings.

It is up-to-date in that the major cultural and media issues it identifies remain highly relevant in today’s world. However, since it was first produced in 2010, some more recent occurrences are not part of the discussion. This is not meant to be a criticism but a reminder that an instructor may want to supplement with more recent materials.

It is written with clear, straight-forward language well-suited an introductory textbook. The chapter layout, as mentioned earlier, is easy to access.

The book is consistent in terms of terminologies and its historical approach to media growth and transformation.

Each chapter is divided in sections, and sections in turn have various reading modules with different themes. For undergraduates taking an introductory course, this textbook will work well.

The topics are presented in an easy-to-access fashion. The textbook starts with a general overview of media and culture and a persistent scholarly concern with the media: media effects. Then it moves through different media in alignment with the chronological order of their appearance in history. The last few chapters focus on important but non-technology-specific topics including advertising and media regulations. For an introductory textbook, it is very accessible to the general student body.

The textbook does not have significant interface issues. Images, charts, and figures all fit well with the text.

There are no grammatical errors.

The textbook has a number of examples of minority cultures and ethnicities. It does not, however, have ample discussions on media and culture phenomena outside of the US, except those that have had significant impact on American culture (e.g., Beatlemania).

All considered, this is a very good textbook to be used in an introductory course. It is comprehensive, easy-to-read, and can help prepare students for future in-depth discussions on media, culture, and society.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Johnson-Young, Assistant Professor, University of Mary Washington on 7/6/20

Comprehensive text regarding mass communication, culture, and effects. The historical perspectives are helpful for understanding, particularly as it goes on to focus in on convergence throughout the text. A more complete glossary or index would be helpful for terms for an introduction text, but key terms are highlighted and defined throughout. Extra examples would help throughout, particularly with theories and research methods.

Accurate, up to date information on history, concepts, and theories.

The information focuses on important historical moments, theories, cultural impacts, and moves to the present with ideas and examples that will likely remain relevant for quite some time.

Clear, easy to read text that would benefit introductory students of mass comm.

Introduces terms and concepts and then utilizes them throughout.

The separation of the larger text into smaller sections is incredibly helpful and makes reading and assignments of readings easy, leading also to the ability to separate into sections that would be appropriate for any course organization.

Organization is logical and easy to follow. Importantly, because of the modularity, it would also be easy to re-organize for one's course.

Navigation works, images clear and detailed.

No glaring grammatical errors.

The examples and images demonstrate diversity in race and also provides examples outside of the United States, which is important. There is some diversity in terms of gender and sexual diversity, more of which would be beneficial and various sections would be appropriate for that inclusion.

This is an excellent and comprehensive text for intro students that includes important historical moments and thorough coverage of main concepts and theories in the field, with a diverse set of moments and examples.

Reviewed by Emily Werschay, Communication Studies Instructor, Minnesota State University System on 10/22/19

Overall, this textbook is quite comprehensive in covering various channels of media, particularly from a historical perspective, and would work well for an introductory course. It features the same focused areas of content that are in my current publisher textbook and incorporates elements of culture as well. It does not provide a glossary or index, which would be helpful, but key terms are in bold.

The text contains accurate research with clearly-cited references that give credibility to the content.

The historical content is well-crafted. The text provides a clear and informative introduction to the history of media and does well with the rise of newspapers, television, and movies. You will not, however, find a reference more recent than 2010, which means any advancements in media and technology in the past decade are not covered. An instructor using this text would have to supplement content on current types of media such as streaming television and music services and the current debate of social media shifting toward news publishing in terms of content delivery. While the text includes culture and political climate of the past, much would need to be supplemented for the last ten years.

The text is professional and well-written. It is well-suited to a college reading level.

The chapter format, writing style, and overall presentation of information are consistent throughout the text. I appreciate the defined learning outcomes and key takeaways pulled out in each chapter.

The text is divided into clear chapters focusing on one medium at a time, much like other publisher texts for mass communication. For example, books, newspapers, magazines, music, radio, movies, and television each get their own chapter. Each chapter begins with clearly defined learning outcomes, and features key takeaways, exercises, assessments, and critical thinking questions at the end, as well as a section on career connections.

The topics are presented in chronological order from the history of mass communication, through the various mediums, and finally to the future of mass communication (though most will find the content particularly about recent and current trends will need to be supplemented as it is outdated).

I didn't find any problems with the interface as it is a standard text that can be viewed as a PDF, but an index would really help navigation. I will say that it's not particularly user-friendly, so I may try integrating the online format chapter-by-chapter into D2L so that I can break it up by modules and add links to make it more interactive with supplemental resources.

Professional, well-written text with no errors.

I don't believe readers will find any of the text culturally insensitive or offensive. The text is focused on U.S. media, however, so some supplemental content may be needed.

This textbook is very comprehensive and will work well for an introductory course. It covers the same focus areas as my publisher text, so I feel comfortable switching to this textbook for my Introduction to Mass Communication course with the awareness that it does not cover the past decade. I will need to provide supplemental information to update examples and cover current topics, but that is generally accepted in this particular field as it is continually changing with advancements in technology.

Reviewed by Bill Bettler, Professor, Hanover College on 3/8/19

This text is comprehensive on several levels. Theoretically, this text echoes the framework employed by Pavlik and McIntosh, which displays sensitivity to convergence. However, this text understands convergence on multiple levels, not just the three employed by P and M. This text is well-researched, with ample citations on a whole host of media topics. Each chapter has multiple ways that it tests the reader, with "Key Takeaways," "Learning Objectives," etc. And finally, the text features chapters on the history and development of key historical media, as well as key emerging media.

Some students find Pavlik and McIntosh a bit too transparent in their Marxist assumptions. While this text certainly introduces Marx-based theories about media, it seems to do a better job of contextualizing them among several other competing perspectives.

Some of the popular culture texts felt a bit dated--for example, opening the "Music" chapter (Chapter 6) with an extended case study about Colbie Caillat. Unfortunately, this is the nature of mass media studies--as soon as books come into print, they are out of date. But I have a hard time imagining my mass communication students being inspired and engaged by a Colbie Caillat case study. I'm not sure what the alternative is; but it seemed worth mentioning. Other examples are much more effective and successful. The historical examples from different types of media are well-chosen, thoroughly explained, and insightful. Also, this text discusses emerging media more successfully than any other texts I have used.

The style of this text is straightforward and scholarly. It seems to strike an effective balance between accessibility and specialized language. For example, key concepts such as "gatekeeper" and "agenda setting theory" are introduced early and applied in several places throughout the text.

Like Pavlik and McIntosh, this text uses the concept of "convergence" to explain several key phenomena in mass communication. Unlike P and M, this text understands "convergence" on more than three levels. Like P and M, this concept becomes the "glue" that holds the various topics and levels of analysis together. As mentioned before, this text is especially effective in that it introduces foundational concepts early on and applies them consistently across succeeding chapters.

On one hand, this text rates highly in "modularity," because I could imagine myself breaking its chapters apart and re-arranging them in a different order than they are presented here. This is in no way meant as a criticism. I routinely have to assign chapters in more conventional texts in a different order. The fact that the technology involved in delivering this text makes it easier to re-arrange is one of its best selling points. The reason I scored this as a "4" is because some of the chapters are quite dense, in terms of volume (not in terms of difficulty). Therefore, I could see students perhaps losing focus to some degree. I might combat this by making further breakdowns and re-arrangements within chapters. This is not a fatal flaw--but it does seem like a practical challenge of using this text.

As mentioned above, some of the chapters are quite dense, in terms of volume. Chapter One is such a chapter, for example. I could easily see Chapter One comprising two or three chapters in another textbook. Consequently, there is a likelihood that students would need some guidance as they read such a dense chapter; and they would likely benefit from cutting the chapter down into smaller, more easily digestible samples. On the other hand, the Key Takeaways, and Learning Objectives, will counteract this tendency for students to be overwhelmed or confused. They are quite helpful, as are the summarizing sections at the ends of each chapter.

I did not encounter any problems with interface. In fact, the illustrations, figures, charts, photographs, etc. are a real strength of this text. They are better than any other text I have seen at creating "symbolic worlds" from different forms of media.

The writing style is professional and free of errors.

This is a genuine concern for mass media texts. Media content is a direct reflection of culture, and today's culture is characterized by a high level of divisiveness. I did not detect any examples or samples that were outwardly offensive or especially controversial. But, perhaps, there is a slight bias toward "the status quo" in the case studies and examples--meaning that many (but certainly not all) of them seem to be "Anglo," Caucasian artists. Looking at the "Music" chapter, for example, some popular culture critics (and students) might lament that Taylor Swift is an exemplar. While this choice is undeniable in terms of the popularity of her recordings and concerts, some might hope for examples that represent stylistic originality, genre-transcending, and progressive ideas (Bruno Mars, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, etc.).

I have been using the same text for seven years (Pavlik and McIntosh). I have decided to adopt Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication. It is simply more thorough in its sweep of history and contextualization of culture, more multi-layered in its theoretical perspectives, and more rich in its examples and insights. This books is recommendable not just as an open source text, but as it compares to any conventional text. Students will benefit greatly from reading this text.

Reviewed by Hsin-Yen Yang, Associate Professor, Fort Hays State University on 11/29/18

Understanding Media and Culture: an Introduction to Mass Communication covers all the important topics in mass communication and media history. It also provides case studies, Key Takeaways, Exercises, End-of-Chapter Assessment, Critical Thinking Questions, and Career Connections in every chapter. Although this book does not provide a glossary, the comprehensiveness of the book still makes it a great textbook choice.

While the information was accurate and the discussions on key issues were supported by good references, it was odd to see the questionable formatting and quality of the first reference on page 3: Barnum, P. T.” Answers.com, http://www.answers.com/topic/p-t-barnum. --> First of all, Answers.com is not considered as a credible source by many scholars and the other half of the quotation marks was missing.

The major weakness of this book is the fact that many of the references were outdated. For example, on page 479, the statistics in the section, "Information Access Like Never Before," the cited reports were from 2002 and 2004. When discussing topics such as Net Neutrality, digital service providers, new policies and technologies, the urgency for updated information becomes evident. However, as the author correctly pointed out: "Although different forms of mass media rise and fall in popularity, it is worth noting that despite significant cultural and technological changes, none of the media discussed throughout this text has fallen out of use completely."

The writing in this book is very clear and easy to understand. The colored images, figures and tables should be very helpful in terms of student comprehension and engagement.

The framework and terminology are consistent throughout the book.

Each chapter can be assigned to students as a stand-along reading, and can be used to realign with other subunits should an instructor decide to compile reading within this book or from different sources.

Each chapter follows similar flow/ format: the history, evolution, economics, case studies and social impact of a mass medium, followed by Key Takeaways, Exercises, End-of-Chapter Assessment, Critical Thinking Questions, Career Connections and References. It was easy to navigate the topics and sections in this book.

I downloaded the book as a PDF and had no problem to search or navigate within the file. The book can also be viewed online or in a Kindle reader.

I spotted a few minor formatting or punctuation issues such as the missing quotation marks stated earlier, but no glaring errors as far as I know.

While it mainly focuses on American media and culture, this book contains statistics and cases from many countries (e.g. Figure 11.7), provides many critical thinking exercises and is sensitive towards diverse cultures and backgrounds.

Overall, this is a high-quality textbook and it contains almost all the key issues in today's media studies in spite of the somewhat outdated data and statistics. The strengths of this book are: Excellent historical examples, critical analysis and reflections, clearly defined key issues and in-depth discussions. Even when using the most recent edition of textbooks, I always research for updates and recent cases. This open resource textbook makes an outstanding alternative to those high-priced textbooks.

Reviewed by Hayden Coombs, Assistant Professor, Southern Utah University on 8/2/18

Perhaps the best quality of this text, Understanding Media and Culture is a very comprehensive textbook. I have used this text in my Mass Media & Communication course for two years now. Each chapter focuses on a different type of medium, starting with the earliest books and working its way up to the latest technological advancements in mass media. Other beneficial topics include: Media & Culture, Media Effects, Economics of Mass Media, Media Ethics, Media and Government, and the Future of Mass Media. These topics provide a solid base for a 100 or 200-level introductory communication course. They also were written in a way that each chapter provided sufficient material for a week's worth of discussion.

This book was written in a very unbiased manner. It is completely factual, and not much room is left for subjective interpretation. The discussion questions allowed multiple themes and schools of thought to be explored by the students. Because this book is intended for an introductory course, the information is fairly basic and widely-accepted.

My biggest issue with this title was that the latter chapters were not written with the same quality as the first ten or so chapters. However, that was the thought I had after the first semester I used this text. Since then, multiple updates have been written and the entire text is now written in the same high-quality throughout. Because this title is being constantly updated by its authors and publishers, the text is never obsolete.

Terminology is clearly defined, and students have little trouble finding definitions in the glossary. Because this text is written for an introductory course, there are not many intense or confusing concepts for students to understand.

Consistency rating: 3

As previously mentioned, the biggest struggle I've had with this text is the fact that the latter third was not written to the same quality of the first ten chapters. However, this issue seems to have been remedied in the latest edition of this text.

The modularity was the biggest selling point for me with this text. Our semester runs 15 weeks, the same number of chapters in this text. I was able to easily focus our classroom discussions and assignments on the chapter theme each week. The text also provides plenty of material for two or three discussions.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

The text starts by introducing some basic concepts like culture and effects. From there, it focuses on ten different types of media (books, newspaper, radio, television, etc.). The concluding three chapters go back to concepts such ethics and the future of mass media. While not a major issue, there was a major difference in the tone of the two types of chapters.

This text is available in .pdf, kindle, .epub, and .mobi formats, as well as in browser. While nothing fancy or groundbreaking in terms of usability, it is simple and all of my students were able to download the format that best suited their individual needs.

The text contained no grammatical errors that I noticed in the latest edition, a tremendous improvement from the first semester I used this text.

I did not find the content to be culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. It used a variety of examples from the world's history, but I found none of them to be inherently offensive. The subject matter and the fact that this is an introductory text probably assist with the cultural relevance because it is easy to understand, but the themes rarely get into "deep" discussion.

This is a fantastic text. Comparing it to other texts for my COMM 2200 Mass Media & Society text, this textbook was not only easier for my students to understand, but it was written and compiled in a way that made teaching the material enjoyable and easy. I have recommended this book to the other instructors of this course because it allows our students to save money without sacrificing anything in terms of content or learning.

Reviewed by Heather Lubay, Adjunct Faculty, Portland Community College on 8/2/18

Overall the book is comprehensive, covering everything from books to radio to electronic media & social media. Each topic has a descent amount of information on both the history and evolution, as well as where we are today (though, as tends to be the nature of the industry, the “today” piece gets outdated quickly. However, the text covers the topics that most other texts of this subject cover as well. I would have liked to have seen just a bit more depth and analysis, instead of the broad, surface-level coverage.

The text is fairly accurate, though, with the rapid rate of change, it’s difficult to be accurate shortly after publication. Using sites such as MySpace as an example, or only looking at movies put out through about 2007, impacts the accuracy as society has changed and moved on. Students in 2018 are given more of a historical perspective from when they were kids more so than having a representation of what media means in today’s world.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 2

This is a hard one because the historical information stands the test of time, but many of the examples fall short for today’s students. The Social Media chapter still references MySpace and Friendster as current platforms and only goes as far as FaceBook & Twitter. The author makes it a point to clarify when the book what published, which helps, but, again, it’ll be hard for a current student to see past that when they’ve grown up with the platform being discussed as “new” and have moved on.

The book is fairly fast-paced and easy enough to follow for lower level or beginner students. Examples are easy to follow and the key takeaway boxes and exercises help further basic understanding.

The chapters are fairly consistent, covering the basic history, evolution, and influence/impact.

The text can easily be used as formatted, or broken up into sections and moved around.

The organization is fairly straightforward. Earlier forms of mass communication are covered first, moving on to newer forms. Once students have a basic understanding of each form, they can then move on to topics like ethics, government, and economics, which need that basic understanding to fully grasp the larger concepts.

The book is easy to navigate with had no issues viewing the photos or charts.

The book is well written and free of any gratuitous errors.

The book does a good job of focusing on US media and society. It uses pretty typical examples, though it could incorporate more relevant examples to today’s students. Some case studies reference minority groups, but it would have been nice to see even more examples featuring minority groups. Also, Using YouTube as a “new” viewing outlet and discussing “The war between satellite and cable television” and DirectTV versus Dish makes the cultural relevance more towards older generations than younger ones.

Overall the book does a great job with the history of mass communication and society. It would work for any lower level course. However, the examples are fairly out of date and the instructor would have to present more recent and relevant examples in class.

Reviewed by Randy (Rachel) Kovacs, Adjunct Associate Professor, City University of New York on 6/19/18

I like the way that the author has broadened the scope of the book to incorporate so many aspects of culture, society, politics and economics that some people would be inclined to distinguish from the mass media, when in reality, all these aspects of contemporary life are intertwined with and influenced by media messages. It provides an historical retrospective but also shows how convergence and constantly-evolving technologies have driven the way consumers use the media and the way producers will use those technologies to rivet the attention (and influence the purchasing choices) of today’s consumers. The text incorporates the most salient areas of media’s evolution and influence.

The book appears to be objective and adopts a critical but non-partisan perspective. It presents data, including media laws and policies, accurately, and the cases it cites are well documented. The author provides sufficient references to support the facts he states and the conclusions he draws. Caveat--The media landscape and technologies are constantly evolving, so the book is accurate for its time of publication but needs to be updated to include new developments.

The way that the author integrates the historical perspective with current roles of social media in is a clear indication of its relevance. The dates may change, as may the celebrities, industrialists, spokespersons, and there may be geopolitical and cultural shifts, but the author’s explanation of theories/principles and the cases selected show how mass media power and influence are here to stay. The author advances the salient issues at each juncture and contextualizes so they we can relate them to current events. The book could be updated but is still has relevance/longevity.

The book is written in a language that is accessible to the layman/beginning student of mass media. The cases that are boxed, and key takeaways at the end of each chapter further distill what is already explicated. There are many concrete facts but a minimum of jargon and any terms used are adequately explained.

The framework and the terminology are consistent. There is also a consistent structure in terms of the visual layout and breakdown of each chapter’s sections, which makes the material far more accessible to students. It’s reassuring in a way, because students know where to go in each chapter for clarification of terms and restatement of the major media developments or areas of impact.

The book’s content is broken down within chapters into (pardon the expression) digestible chunks. The way each subsection is organized makes sense. The major sections where media, developments, policies, etc., are first introduced are illustrated by boxed portions and then reiterated clearly at the end of the chapter with small, chunked takeaways and questions that challenge the students to ponder issues more deeply. The modules are distinguished by color, typset, size of font, etc. which is aesthetically appealing.

The organization makes sense and the topics segue smoothly from one area of media focus to another. Also, the way the book opens with an overview of mass media and cultural is a good starting point from which to document specific historical eras in the development of communication and to transition from one era of communication to another within a context of technology, politics, industry and other variables.

: The text does not have any interface issues, as it is easy to navigate, all illustrations, charts, and other visuals are clear and distortion-free. All features of the book are legible and all display features are legible and functional.

The book is grammatically accurate and error-free.

The book represents a range of cultural groups in a sensitive and bias-free way. Its discussions of media with regard to both dominant cultures and various minority cultures is respectful, bias-free, and non-stereotypical. It is culturally relevant and inclusive.

For many years, I have used a textbook that I have regarded as very high quality and comprehensive, but as it has become increasingly expensive and out of reach financially for many of my students, I find it hard to justify asking my struggling students to add another financial burden to them. Why should I when they can use this OER textbook? I am seriously considering using Understanding Media and Culture in future semesters and recommending it to my colleagues.

Reviewed by Stacie Mariette, Mass Communication instructor, Anoka-Ramsey Community College on 5/21/18

This OER is very comprehensive. I used it for an online course as a PDF textbook. While this discipline evolves faster than any other communication area I teach, this book remains solidly grounded in a wide variety of resources and foundational... read more

As I use it more often, I find myself wanting to update it only for examples regarding the evolution in technology/platforms and the societal/cultural changes that result – not to change the historical content of what is already there.

I haven't come across any factual errors at all.

The examples in this book are often dated. This is my one very mild criticism of this text and only reflects the nature of the information. As we grow into new media and adapt as a society to those delivery methods, it's only natural. I actually use updating the examples in the textbook as an assignment for students.

Some closer to up-to-date examples that I have added into my teaching of the course and to the materials are:

"Fake news" and social media's role in spreading it, especially in terms of Facebook and the last election

Data mining and algorithm practices

"Listening" devices and digital assistants, like Siri and Alexa

The subculture of podcasts

Business models – both for artists and consumers – of streaming services across all media

The chapter on convergence is short and could be a text all on its own. Information relating to this topic is sprinkled throughout the book, but the concept itself is so important to analyze that I like to think about it on its own. This is an area I will beef up in future semesters for my own students.

Streaming services and online journalism overall are two areas that I have noted to update and reference in nearly every chapter.

The short segments and snippets of information are very helpful and clear for students. It's all very digestible and the vocabulary is at just the right level.

The discussion questions and further reading/information are placed in logical places in each chapter. And this consistency helps the reader understand their prompts and what to do next – and additionally the important topics to take away.

I love how this text can be reordered very easily. Since it's so comprehensive, I actually omit a couple of the chapters (radio and magazines) to take the info at a slower pace and have never struggled with remixing other chapters.

In fact, I plan to blend Chapters 11 and 16 (Social Media and New Technology) for my upcoming semesters and have no doubt the text and materials will allow for this.

I like how the chapters primarily focus on one medium at a time. From there, the structure of evolution, technological advancements, social/cultural implications and then a look at trends and emerging controversies helps to build to exciting and relevant discussions and for students to have the backdrop to bring their own insights.

The interface is reliable and easy-to-use. I deliver it as a PDF within my online classroom software. I have never had issues with students downloading and reading on multiple devices – or even printing and referencing – based on their preferences.

This book is very concise and grammatically crisp. It's clear that the authors of the version I am using valued precision in their language and it helps students to see this resource as high-quality!

Cultural and societal relevance are important in this discipline and it's purposely covered in each and every chapter. However, as I mentioned earlier, the examples are outdated in many cases. So I layer this into class discussions and supplement with further readings and assignments. Some of the topics I add are: Representation in entertainment media, like TV and film, for example how the #MeToo movement gained ground based on the film industry Ways that online gaming culture is permissive of the communication of –isms, like sexism and racism Ways that social media and screen time are impacting attention spans, interpersonal relationships/communication and child development How citizen-sourced video and reporting differs from that of trained journalists and how important the differences are The section on media effects is helpful and thorough. I always include a key assignment on this topic. It's also an area I plan to emphasize even more in the future – particularly the idea of tastemaking and gatekeeping. There are many crossovers to many examples that are more up-to-date than the version of the text I have been using.

I love this book and it is on-par with many others I have reviewed for my Introduction to Mass Communication class.

Reviewed by Stacy Fitzpatrick, Professor, North Hennepin Community College on 5/21/18

The presentation of the historical context of media evolution in the US is clear and reasonably detailed, providing a good foundation for an introductory level course. As other reviewers have mentioned, this text was published in 2010 and is out of date in multiple areas, particularly with respect to media laws and regulation, social media, and newer developments of technology (e.g. preference for streaming television, technological and social advancements in gaming). Beyond needing updates to reflect newer advancements in media, this text would benefit from more attention to global media structures, including how they vary across political systems and how they impact how citizens use media to communicate. Additionally, an index and glossary would be helpful for navigation.

I am basing this on the fact that this was published in 2010. Considering the publication date, the factual content for that particular time frame is presented accurately, clearly cited, and reasonably unbiased. There is perhaps an unintended gender bias in the presentation of some content (e.g. Sister Rosetta Tharpe is absent in the music section, as is Nina Simone), though this could be a result of a broader, societal gender bias. Images, charts, and graphs are used well and clearly explained.

The historical content is fine, but the text is almost 9 years out of date and there is a great deal of content that needs to be updated. Making the necessary updates may take some time since the content is tightly written and there are reflections of the date of publication throughout the examples used, images presented, and media discussed. Using this text in class would require the instructor to provide supplemental content on newer advancements in media.

This text is appropriate for a freshman/sophomore level course and reads well. Important terms are defined and each section includes an overview to set a context and clearly defined learning objectives.

The language, terminology, and organization of the text is consistent throughout. This makes moving between chapters easy since they follow a similar format.

With a few exceptions (chapters 1 and 2), the text lends itself well to using different sections at different points. Where there are self-references, there is typically a hyperlink to the section referenced. This is useful for those reading the text online, but less useful if printed sections of text were used.

Chapters 1 and 2 clearly present a structure that the following chapters follow. The only chapter that seems to really break that flow is Chapter 16, but that is more a result of the text being so out of date than a significant change in structure.

I found the online reading format the easiest to navigate. The Word and PDF versions are somewhat more awkward to navigate without using a search keyboard function.

There were a couple minor typos, but no significant grammatical errors that might impact comprehension. The readability assessment (via MS Word) indicated a reading grade level of 13.1, which is consistent with lower division college coursework.

There is a heavy focus on US media, which is acknowledged early on in the text. More integration of content related to global media would strengthen the text. There should be more examples that integrate multiple forms of diversity, such as gender, ability, age, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Additionally, without an update, younger students may not understand some of the references. For example, younger students in 2018 don’t know Napster as a file-sharing site since it has rebranded to become a streaming site more similar to Spotify.

It would be great to see an update in the content of this text for 2018 that also incorporates broader perspectives of multiple identities and global perspectives. As is, I would use sections of the text and supplement that content with more current examples and issues. Balancing the cost of textbooks in this field with the quality and recency of the content is an ongoing challenge.

Reviewed by Craig Freeman, Director, Oklahoma State University on 5/21/18

The book covers all of the topics you would expect in an inter/ survey course. read more

The book covers all of the topics you would expect in an inter/ survey course.

The book does a good job of accurately surveying mass communications. Good job sourcing information.

The most recent citations are from 2010. That's just too far in the past for a rapidly changing subject like mass communication.

The book is clear and easy to read. Well written.

The book is internally consistent, with recurring sections.

The book does a good job breaking the information down into smaller reading sections.

The book follows the standard structure and flow for introductory texts in mass communication.

The interface is fine. It's a big book. Would appreciate active links to help skip chapters.

No grammatical errors.

I would appreciate a little more diversity in the examples used.

Really wish the authors would update this a bit. It does a great job with the history. Needs updating on the modern issues.

Reviewed by Kateryna Komarova, Visiting Instructor, University of South Florida on 3/27/18

Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less

The title Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication suggests that we are looking at a comprehensive introductory text. In my opinion, this book is the most valuable to GE courses and entry level courses across Mass Communication disciplines, as it does excellent job in covering the fundamentals of mass communication. The textbook is heavy on history, which is a great thing.

I found the content to be accurate and, to my knowledge, error-free.

In comparison with other introductory texts, the content is generally up-to date with current trends. Yet, the distribution of attention towards various forms of media tends to be slightly disproportional. For instance, print magazines alone (essentially, one of many forms of print media that’s experiencing a stable continuous decline) receive as much attention as all forms of social media altogether. As a communications practitioner and an instructor, I was pleased to see information on the merge of paid media and social media (content partnerships and native advertising being the prime examples, albeit these particular terms were not used by the author). On the other hand, some aspects of current media landscape (such as the role of mobile apps, for instance) could be explored further.

The text is written in simple, easy-to-understand language and would be appropriate to non-native speakers.

I find this text to be consistent in terms of terminology.

The book is organized in rather non-trivial fashion, without a unified approach to chapter categorization. Yet, I found this approach refreshing. I loved that the author suggests specific learning outcomes for each section (example: "Distinguish between mass communication and mass media"), key takeaways, and practical exercises. The question bank provided as part of this textbook is a treasure box! It’s a great resource that allows me to have more fun in the classroom by asking interesting questions that wake up the students and generate some amazing answers. The chapters are designed to be used selectively, in no particular order. Big plus.

The content is presented in chronological pattern: from past to future. Other than that, I did not trace much consistency in the material. For instance, Media and Culture is followed by Media Effects, after which the author switches to reviewing various forms of media (Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, etc.). The chapters to follow are Economics of Mass Media and Ethics of Mass Media. I find to be an advantage, as the subsections may be used selectively, and the order may be easily redesigned.

I read the textbook online via the Open Library portal http://open.lib.umn.edu/mediaandculture/chapter/1-2-intersection-of-american-media-and-culture/ . I found the navigation to be very easy. Good interface.

I did not spot any grammatical errors.

I found the content USA-centric. For this reason, it may have limited application to global courses (such as Global Citizens Project courses offered at USF). The majority of case studies are drawn from the United States; much attention is paid to the history of mass media in the USA and current U.S. legislation safeguarding privacy. In today’s increasingly globalized culture and economy, a broader outlook on media and culture may be expected. More international references would enhance the points made by the author. It is important for students to understand that major trends in mass communication, such as convergence of the media, are not unique to the United States. Similarly, increasing media literacy should be positioned as a global, rather than national, priority.

It is a great introductory text that provides a current overview of various forms of media and highlights the role of mass communication in society.

Reviewed by Joel Gershon, Adjunct Professor, American University on 2/1/18

The book should be the perfect fit for my course Understanding Media, as it indeed covers all of the subject matter of the course. The problem is that it is not up to date and therefore detracts from the complete picture that each one of these topics delves into. For example, the music section poses the question: How do the various MP3 players differ? It refers to Spin as a magazine (it ceased its print operations in 2012). Or in the section on television, there is a question about the war between satellite and cable television. I think the winner of that is neither, as streaming a la carte is what people are talking about in 2017 as the direction TV is going in.

This criticism, of course, is obvious and easy. It's actually an exhaustive book that does contain a wealth of useful information, although no glossary or index – glaring omissions. Unfortunately, it suffers from not being up to 2017, when we are living in an up-to-the-second world. Especially in a field like media studies, it makes this book unusable in its entirety. The chapter ethics and economics aren't as badly out of date.

It is accurate for the time it was written in, but in today's world, much of this doesn't hold up. Just one example, there is the claim that Reader's Digest has the third highest circulation of all magazine, which is no longer the case in 2017. It is not in good shape. Even the references to "President Obama," obviously show that it was written a different era with a very different landscape for the media world. Still, the great majority of it appears to be represented fairly, albeit in an outmoded way. It's just that the trends and latest innovations in 2010 won't even make sense to a college freshman whose frame of reference likely came about three years after

Content is up-to-date, but not in a way that will quickly make the text obsolete within a short period of time. The text is written and/or arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement.

Obviously, this is a major weak link of the textbook. I've already commented on this, but I think any time the textbook is referring to MySpace or Friendster in a way that suggests that they are viable social media sites, it makes itself into a caricature of an outdated guide.

No real problem here. The book is fully clear, well-written and to the point. The problem is that the point was made in 2010. That said, there is no glossary or index.

Again, this book is solid as a foundational textbook to get students the basic information regarding the history and meaningful cultural highlights of different forms of media. From radio to media and democracy, the lessons are thorough and contain useful and important information. It's just that some of this information is outdated.

The book is quite easy to read, the organization is fine and reads like any typical textbook. I will say that there have been advancements made, and that this book should be more interactive and multi-media if it wants to keep up with the Joneses.

It's fine in this regard. The writing itself is great and it's broken up nicely. Very readable and I wish it was up to date because it's a solid textbook.

This is fine for 2010, but there is no interactivity or video or things to let us know that we are in 2017.It's basic and fine, but nothing stands out are particularly innovative.

Written well. No issue here at all.

Again, this is the fatal flaw of the book. It's just not going to be persuasive if it doesn't manage to maintain the sensibilities of someone in 2017. Between politics and technology there have been extreme shifts in the media in the past few years and a book like this would need to be updated monthly to stay relevant. It could work as a historical document to see how people thought in 2010, but not really as a relevant book today.

Reviewed by Suzi Steffen, Instructor, Linn-Benton Community College on 6/20/17

This text is rather comprehensive, at least for the time it was published. It covers pretty much any topic one might want to cover in a Media and Society or introductory media and communications class, though for those interested in topic areas like journalism, advertising, and public relations, this textbook is much more about the history of those areas than how they are surviving and functioning today (and that's fine with me; I can update with information that's more recent). There is no index (at least in this form), and there is no glossary, but terms are well-defined within each chapter and within pull-out boxes as well. It would be incumbent upon the professor and students to keep some kind of glossary or wiki, which is not a bad idea for a media history/media and society class in any case.

Often in a textbook for media and society or media history, one can see the author's world view shining through - is capitalism too much for media? Should media creators take an "unbiased" view of the world? How is a medium influenced by the way it is funded? The book has a solid conversational tone and is authoritative on its history, but I might prefer a little more analysis of media ownership and consolidation. As for accuracy, yes, the facts seem quite accurate to the best of my knowledge, and the text is written (and edited) by someone with a journalist's view of language - it's useful, it's best done well, and occasionally it lends itself to some essayistic moments.

I'm not sure there's a way to write a book like this that can keep it relevant past the month in which it was written, much less seven years later. Many of the examples the author uses to illustrate music, social media, books, newspapers (some of which don't exist anymore), magazines (ditto), etc., are simply no longer relevant. It *is* interesting to read about what the author thought was relevant at the time, and what the author thought would last, but this kind of book needs almost constant updating during this time of constant media churn and reinvention. I am giving it a 3, but really it's more like a 2.5 as any instructor would need constantly to find new examples that students will understand.

The book is accessible and lucid, absolutely. As with any history of a large discipline, the book contains a fair amount of jargon that is relevant to each portion of the subject matter covered, and the book is good about not only giving context and giving definitions but also setting aside boxed or special areas for examples that reinforce what it's talking about. The key takeaways at the end of each chapter, added to the exercises that are meant to help the students understand what's important in the dense historical detail and context of each chapter, are helpful as well.

This book is wonderfully consistent with terminology and the framework it employs to discuss media across a wide range of areas. From the beginning of each chapter, where an introduction lays out the plan of the chapter, to the end of each chapter - where a box of "key takeaways" explains what students should have learned - the book keeps a tone of very slightly amused detachment, mixed with earnest passion for certain topics, throughout, which is utterly consistent with how media people actually live their lives.

The text is definitely modular. It's written in a way that could easily be read in various chunks as the instructor or professor wishes to assign it. Blocks of text are broken up with images, a few charts, and a few stories that are boxed and that illustrate examples of topics within the chapters.

I think it's hard to know how to organize a media history/media and society textbook. Do you start with the printed word? But then, what about radio? Should radio come closer to magazines or closer to movies and TV? In that case, where do audiobooks and podcasts go? So, even as any instructor would grapple with these sorts of questions, the book is laid out in a way that made sense to the author - and that can be ripped apart and reassigned by each instructor. There's no need to read economics at the end of the course; perhaps, despite the fact that it's at the end of the book, it should come at the front end of the course - and because it's modular enough for flexibility, that's not a problem.

I read the textbook on my desktop Kindle and on my phone. It's not super with the images or charts, and the boxed questions and exercises at the end are especially hard to take. This interface could use a little attention, at least in the Kindle applications area. It's not impossible; it just needs some work.

No errors that I saw, though a textbook without at least a few grammatical errors is a miracle.

It's hard to say whether it's culturally insensitive or offensive because, well, I'm a white woman. I note that it talks about U.S. media's places (different for advertising, PR, newspapers, etc.) in the Civil Rights Movement and to a certain extent it discusses the ways that major media have been controlled or run by men, by white men, by straight white men. But I don't think the text addresses any of these things in the depth or with the clarity of thought that one would like to see in 2017. (Yes, it's a 2010 text.) In gaming, in Twitter discussions, in talking about newspapers or online media, the book is simply behind the times, and that makes it culturally problematic if not insensitive.

I am reluctant to adopt this book with students who really need more recent examples to make sense of how things are going now, today, in 2017, though it's also relevant for them to learn the history of how we got here (if anyone can really understand that at this point). I'd love to use a newer edition if one comes out. I might use or adapt parts of it along with other readings for my media and society class in 2018, but I'll be cautious about that.

Reviewed by Shearon Roberts, Assistant Professor of Mass Communication, Xavier University of Louisiana on 6/20/17

The textbook hits the standard areas for a typical Introduction to Mass Communication course: evolution of media industries, media and society, media effects and theories, media law and ethics, the digital age, and global media. It is comprehensive in its case studies and historical events that are typically taught for an Introduction to Mass Communication course. The text is current as there is a chapter on the Internet and Social Media and several chapters look at the digital revolution as it impacts media industries. There is no glossary or index, however. Instructors will have to rely on chapter sections for lesson planning.

From Gutenberg to Apple and Google, the book provides content that is accurate on the development of media. The author thoroughly cites case studies and provides questions for critical thinking about issues affecting media industry trends and on the impact of the media on the public. Statistics, data and trends are appropriately cited for reference check on accuracy of estimates.

Case studies and citations stop at 2010. However, the author makes projections for media trends up to 2020. Since media industries are most vulnerable to yearly change, the information in the book holds for now, although the positions of some of the digital media players have changed since the book has come out. However, the author is careful to clarify dates for events that were transformative for media industry changes, at the point in which these events occurred, even if changes have occurred since the book was published in 2010. Within another 5 years, the book is likely to need some updates to digital age developments.

The language used is accessible for a first year student taking an Introduction to Mass Communication course. The theory, ethics and law chapters are broken down for a 1000-2000 level course. The case studies and critical thinking boxes are useful in helping to break down and apply a wealth of information in the text for students to conceptualize the importance of historical events and their social or cultural impacts.

The author is clear on defining media industries, digital convergence and common theories in mass communication.

Instructors can easily use the text as is, or piece together sections on history, digitization and media and society from several chapters, depending on the instructor’s preference.

The text follows the standard logic for media introduction courses moving students through print, to audio, to film to broadcasting and to the digital age. The author wisely weaves in the impact of new media in each of these phases of evolution so the student does not have to wait until the end of the text to see the impacts of the changes of the industry, as they understand media to be today.

While the interface is simple, all graphics and text boxes, as well as assignments are designed similarly throughout the text and easy to locate as an e-text for student work.

Sentences throughout the text are concisely written and the text appears thoroughly proofed.

It was important for me to see examples of race, gender and global dimensions of the media represented as case studies, assignments and critical thinking in the book. From using The Birth of a Nation and its outcry from the NAACP in the film chapter to the rice of BET, or the understanding stereotyping of African Americans in TV, this book has relevant examples that relate to minority students or for a Historically Black University. I did however see no mention of the black press, or the work of alternative media in introduction narratives left out of the mainstream media. However, most introductory media textbooks, also leave this out. If this is an interest area for diverse students, unfortunately instructors are left to source that information themselves. But the most prominent case studies for diverse groups can be found in this text.

It was surprising to discover such an open-textbook as the cost of Intro to Mass Communication textbooks are typically over $100 and students only use this textbook once. This is a valuable resource. I hope the author would consider updating in a few years for recent developments and important case studies such as the #BlackLivesMatter movement and President Donald Trump's election for an examination of media literacy.

Reviewed by Gwyneth Mellinger, Professor and Director, School of Media Arts & Design, James Madison University on 6/20/17

The book covers all of the subject areas typically touched on in a media and society survey course; however, the discussions within chapters would benefit greatly from more examples and, in some cases, greater detail in explanation. I often thought the content was pretty thin. This was particularly so in Chapter 2, where the treatment of effects theories and media studies controversies required much more supporting discussion to be relevant to undergraduates. The greatest weakness in the text, and the specific reason I would not adopt it for my own course, is that the book's engagement of social and digital media is, for the most part, woefully out of date and separated into discrete chapter segments, rather than synthesized into discussions directly. A text on media and society assigned in 2017 cannot be comprehensive if it does not engage media in a way that makes sense to the students who are reading it. There is no index or glossary.

Content Accuracy rating: 2

There is no bias in the text and historical detail appeared to be represented accurately. Again, I question whether a book written in 2010, which lacks full context for the subject matter, can accurately reflect media and society for students in 2017. For example, in 4.6, online journalism is represented as blogs and online newspapers. That is an accuracy issue for today's students.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 1

The book is out of date. Examples and context stop at 2010, and many cultural references will not resonate with current students, which is the point of examples and cultural context. The Beatlemania example early in the book and the references to 2009 in the opening paragraphs advertise the lack of currency. Significantly, the book cannot be easily updated in its current form because its approach and perspective are also out of date. By failing to integrate social media and the Internet into the central narrative, the book emphasizes legacy media in a way that is no longer relevant.

The book is clearly written, though additional examples and context would be helpful in places.

The narrative is consistent in terminology and framework.

The modularity of the text would allow use of sections of the text at different points in a course.

The content in Chapter 11 on evolution of the Internet and the impact of social media belongs near the beginning, not the end, of the text. In addition, the impact of media economics on content is downplayed by sequestering this discussion in Chapter 13. Each chapter on legacy media ends with a section on the impact of new technology on that medium. These sections feel tacked on.

There were no interface issues. That said, the book lacked the visual engagement used by many media and society texts to capture and maintain the interest of today's students.

The text is clean. Of note, the text correctly uses "media" as a plural noun. There was, however, this awkward subheading at 1.2: "What Does Media Do?"

The text is not culturally insensitive. It acknowledges cultural imperialism and the digital divides as issues. There are examples of media content that would be deemed inclusive. That is not to say, however, that today's students would find the examples culturally relevant. The book is written from their grandparents' perspective.

Without irony, the unknown author of the text includes in a media literacy checklist and discussion (1.8) the advice that students should scrutinize the identity and credentials of authors. This same section warns against anonymous online sources. This is a conceptual problem with this particular online text. It's not clear why the author wants to distance her/himself from the project, but it creates a question of credibility.

Reviewed by Elizabeth England-Kennedy, Assistant Professor, Rhode Island College on 4/11/17

The book is extremely comprehensive. Not only does it include all forms of mass media, but it intelligently and thoughtfully addresses critical concepts such as ethics and culture. Photojournalism (especially the work of muckrakers such as Jacob Riis) is not included, and investigative reporting is too briefly addressed, although including advocacy journalism was a sound choice. There is no index or glossary. The lack of a glossary is surprising since key words are already highlighted in text.

The text is accurate and information is fairly represented and free of personal bias. No errors were found.

This is the most concerning characteristic of the book: The information has long-term relevance and is written in a highly readable way that will enhance its longevity. However, the examples tend to be temporally but often not generationally up-to-date and positioned for longevity. For example, beginning the book with an example that is this far removed from today's undergraduates' world may lessen their interest in reading further, as opposed to beginning with more focus on Beatlemania and then moving to an example of an artist/group more accessible to their generation. Additional examples used later in the book are drawn from recent time frames, but may not be commonly accessed. This is the only aspect of the book that would make me hesitate to adopt it.

The text is written in lucid prose that is accessible to introductory readers, though individuals whose first language is not English could have some difficulty reading independently. However, with minimal pre-reading guidance (e.g., introducing concepts that will be included in an upcoming reading assignment, instruction on how to use the Learning Objectives and Key Takeaways to best effect), these readers should also be able to understand and effectively use the text. Context is given for jargon/technical terminology, and definitions are generally clear.

The text is consistent in format, terminology, framework, and tone.

Modularity rating: 1

The book is clearly divided into relatively short subsections that are logically sequenced. Longer sections tend to be broken up by images, all of which are relevant examples of concepts being discussed in the section. The Learning Objectives, Key Takeaways, End-of-Chapter Assessments, and Critical Thinking Questions sections for each module are useful for guiding student reading and could be easily adapted into learning exercises and assessments such as discussions, quizzes, exams, and writing assignments. The Career Connection section at the end of chapters is innovative, and could be especially useful for students considering majors in communications-related fields. Chapters and sub-sections could be used independently in reading packets or rearranged without their being weakened, making it a more flexible resource or textbook.

The organization is clear. Sections are clearly labeled and of approximately the same length. Titles of chapters and subsections are logical and clear. Topics are logical laid out: An overview of foundational concepts in the first two chapters frames the remaining chapters effectively. The remaining chapters are organized in a historically-logical order. This structure is well-designed to helps readers better understand how an increase in the number and forms of media channels impacts audiences and media effects. Chapters are also internally well-organized and could be used separately as desired.

There are no interface difficulties. Pictures are clear and free of distortion. Navigation is clear and easy to use. Because the sections are short, reader interest should be maintained despite the low level of images included. Multiple platforms can be used.

The text contains no grammatical errors. A nice touch by the author is to clarify and model the correct grammatical usage of "medium" vs "media."

No cultural insensitivity or offensiveness was found. The author acknowledges that the book is focused on US media and includes culturally diverse examples. Topics such as cultural imperialism are addressed specifically. Related topics such as cultural appropriation and marginalization are referenced, although these specific terms are not necessarily used (e.g., the latter is addressed in the chapter on music as an outcome of the oligopoly in music without using the term "marginalization"). This could have been taken further; for example, the section on "Issues and Trends in Film" does not address concerns about "whitewashing" or lack of diversity in Hollywood movies and the section on Independent films does not address movies that countered these trends (e.g., the work of Spike Lee and Robert Rodriguez). However, the book lays the groundwork necessary for a discussion of such concepts in class or for use of supplemental materials that build on this text.

The book could be used as a stand-alone for an introductory class. Sections could be used in more advanced classes as supplemental readings or in reading packets.

Reviewed by Kevin Smith, Instructor, Chemeketa Community College on 2/15/17

This text is comprehensive in its coverage of all major media platforms and key general concepts related to mass media. There are times (e.g. Chapter 2: Media Effects) when some concepts are defined vaguely, but this is not indicative of the book as a whole. There is no glossary nor index, but most terms are defined well in the context of each chapter. The review sections at the end of each chapter would also help students organize and recall relevant information as they study. There is little that I feel is missing from this textbook that would be appropriate for an introductory mass media course.

A neutral, objective tone is struck throughout, with no apparent errors or gaps in coverage of major media and concepts. To the best of my knowledge, I believe this text to be free of errors, although it needs to be updated.

While this text is outstanding in its coverage and clarity, it is now seven years out-of-date and needs to be updated. A text on mass media should reflect the most recent changes in technology and economic and political contexts.

This text appears to be written for college freshmen and sophomores. Perhaps even upper-level high school students could successfully grasp its content. Most jargon particular to the discipline is defined and illustrated thoroughly.

The text is rigorous throughout, with even weight given to all concepts. There are occasional overlaps between chapters in coverage of terms (e.g. media bias), but nothing that seems sloppy or out-of-place. The historical overview of media technologies blends seamlessly with the beginning and later chapters on media studies concepts.

The structure of the book lends itself exceptionally well to divisibility, while demonstrating the ability to maintain its own internal coherence. The text seems designed for a semester-long course, so those looking to use it for quarters or with students whose expected reading loads might be lighter will find it easy to pull only what they need from it without sacrificing clarity.

The book's content is designed expertly, with introductory chapters leading into a chronological overview of the history of media technologies (books to social media). The text concludes by expanding its scope to cover more general concepts (e.g.media ethics) that scaffold on previously discussed ideas. This framework would greatly aid students in comprehending central ideas in media studies as they relate to specific technologies and historical periods.

I did not notice any problems in this area, although a cover might be helpful in identifying the text.

I noticed some minor typos, but nothing that reflects poorly on the high level of discourse and mechanical aspects of the text.

The text employs examples that would be helpful to students as they seek to understand mass media in diverse settings. There was no inappropriate content noted. The text is respectful and inclusive in this sense.

The end of chapter summaries, takeaways, exercises and critical thinking questions are outstanding and would serve any instructor well in designing a course with relevant activities tied directly to the text, while also pointing to other sources in contemporary mass media. The book is an invaluable resource that deserves the attention of a group of scholars who can update its content in order that it be more relevant to students.

Reviewed by Amy Rawson, Professor, Century College on 2/8/17

Interestingly, this textbook was more comprehensive than I originally expected. The text covered all of the major areas to be expected in a mass communication textbook: Media, Books, Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, Movies, TV, Games, Internet & Social Media, Advertising & PR, Economics, Ethics, Media & Government and the Future of Mass Media. However, I am giving 4 stars because there is no index or glossary which I deem especially important for a mass communication textbook.

The textbook is accurate. I also like the chapter on the future of mass media. The textbook seems to be error-free and unbiased. Each chapter section includes a few learning objectives and a few "key takeaways." There are also exercise questions at the end of each chapter section. The examples in the exercise questions are dated. It would be nice to have more current examples. However, I would prefer questions about the chapter at the end of the entire chapter or at the end of each section in addition to the objectives, takeaways and exercises. Thus, I am giving 4 stars for outdated examples.

I agree with another reviewer that the examples are a bit dated (which quickly happens in a mass communication textbook). This affects the credibility of the overall text. For example, in Chapter 16.1 Changes in Media Over the Last Century the example box titled "Pay-for-it Content: Will it Work?" is from 2009! This is 2017.

The textbook is written in clear and easily understood language. It is accessible and comprehensible. It would be nice to have a glossary for students for the mass communication jargon.

The text seems to be consistent with terminology and framework. However, the textbook seems dated overall and new terminology and frameworks could be added to make it more relevant and interesting for students.

The modularity of the textbook is good. It is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned different points within the course. I like the division of the chapters into subsections.

The organization/structure/flow of the textbook is good. However, I agree with another reviewer that the textbook is too lengthy. In my opinion, 647 pages is too long. Although I have used other textbooks of similar length, there are many more vivid visuals for students and more timely information and examples.

The text is free of significant interface issues that may confuse or distract the reader.

The text contains no grammatical errors.

The textbook examples for cultural relevance could be more current.

Thank you for this opportunity. I like the idea of an open textbook and would be interested in doing more reviews in the future.

Reviewed by Tom Grier, Professor, Winona State University on 8/21/16

The book is comprehensive, covering the study of media and its intersection with culture, through an in-depth look at each of the major mediums, then content considerations, economics and ethics issues related to the mass media. read more

This text seems accurate. I didn't find glaring errors of fact in my reading. Though, as I will mention later in my review, many of the examples used in the text are now several years outdated, when more recent examples or case studies would be more relatable to a youthful college audience.

This is one area where I find some difficulty with the book -- as is the case with every text of this type. The world of media is ever-changing and fast-changing. The historical information about the invention, early adoption, and improvements to the mediums of mass communication (books, newspapers, radio, television, etc.) are fine. A few of the examples and case studies used to describe events related to the media feel outdated. This is most apparent in Chapters 1 and 2 on Media and Culture and Media Effects. Examples from 2010 and 2011, are not relative to college freshmen in 2016 who were in middle-school and probably not paying attention when these things happened. Therefore, the longevity of this text is limited, unless it is updated-revised at least every third year.

The author's writing style is informative and engaging. While the writing is clear and understandable, the chapters often get too deep and try to cover anything and everything in a particular content area-- or sub-chapter, when a couple statements and one case study would suffice.

I found the chapter formatting, writing style and narrative flow to be consistent from chapter to chapter.

Here, the text shines. First, it is broken into chapters that are easily identifiable and segment the content nicely. Within each chapter are several sub-chapters that allow readers to read and absorb material in smaller chunks. This will be helpful to the learning styles of younger people today.

For the most part, I agree with the author's organization and flow. My only thought, and it's just an opinion, is: Chapter 2 on Media Effects should be moved to Chapter 14, so it comes after the major media categories and then the economics of the media, and just before the ethics and law of media. To be fair, most mass media textbooks follow this same organization. When I teach the class, I always move the "effects" chapter to later in the semester, after I've discussed the media types, their history and development.

A second thought, I'd hold the footnoted source credits to the end of each chapter, or preferably to the end of the book. The sometimes very long list of footnoted sources between each sub-chapter stops the flow for readers that may wish to read a full chapter.

I downloaded the PDF version, and read that. I found the interface cumbersome. I wish paragraphs were indented. I wish it was easier to navigate from chapter to chapter or topic to topic without scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. I wish there was an easy way to get to a Table of Contents with one click, and then from there click topic-anchored reference points to skip to specific information sought.

I wish it had an index that had anchor links. I realize this would be a large undertaking to create and connect the links. But that would make searching and finding specific information easy and fast. If I was a college student studying for a chapter quiz or exam on the foundations of radio, I might like to scoot to the Index and click on Radio-Invention, or on Marconi and be led instantly to that content within the text.

And, probably an easy fix, I wish it was more evenly spaced. In my opinion, there should consistently be two spaces between sub-headed sections or sub-chapters. In most places in this text, a new, bolded subhead appears on the very next line under its preceding paragraph. This looks jammed and messy.

I have no problem with the grammar. It's clear, easy to follow, and written to be accessible to a college audience. I used the Gunning Fog Index to test several paragraphs throughout the text and found some of the writing aimed at an audience with 10-11 years of formal education, and in a few cases more than 15 years of education. The average of my selected readings came out at 12-13 years of education -- perfectly appropriate for a freshmen-level college course.

Other than my hope for some more recent case studies and examples, I find the text to be culturally relevant. A few of the examples mention MySpace, Napster and Kazaa as internet entities with which the audience should be familiar. In reality, today's college freshmen know almost nothing of these three internet terms. In my current Media and Society class, less than ten percent of the class had ever had a MySpace account. They had heard of MySpace, but really knew nothing. No one in the class knew about Napster or Kazaa first-hand... perhaps had heard of them in another class.

This text feels too long. This is a difficult thing. The author includes everything he feels needs to be discussed in each chapter. But it's too much for a college freshman-level class. Example: The chapter on Music is more than 50 pages long. While I agree college students should be able to read this much each week for a class, I'm confident they will not read this much. I believe the text could be condensed quite a bit while maintaining the content necessary to make it meaningful at the freshman level. It's a complete text, and would make a nice reference tool -- with better indexing and searching links within the body -- but it won't work at an entry level to the study of media. At my university, the "Media and Society" class is a 100-level course, used as a general education class that can fulfill a categorical credit-need for all students, not just Mass Communication majors. And we consider the class a "feeder" to the major, introducing students to the study of media and hopefully igniting an interest in students to consider a career in media, and therefore declare a Mass Communication major. This book, with its depth, might be more appropriate in an upper-vision media studies course.

Reviewed by Nick Marx, Assistant Professor, Colorado State University on 1/7/16

The text is a broad and comprehensive overview of all relevant forms of media today. Although this is a common organizational approach for survey textbooks of media, this particular volume utilizes it in a particularly clear and cogent manner. Instructors approaching media and culture from a mass comm/journalism standpoint are much likelier to find this text useful than are instructors who approach media and culture from a perspective emphasizing critical/cultural studies, historical poetics, and/or aesthetics.

Content is accurate and strikes appropriately diplomatic tones where contentious issues might arise that concern social and cultural power.

The text is quite relevant for the most part, but by the very nature of its subject matter will undoubtedly require updates every few years. Framing the intro of the "Future of Mass Media" chapter with a specific device--the iPad--rather than the set of cultural protocols such devices foster, for example, might prove to be one area where instructors redirect conversations after the next new device inevitably cycles through.

The text is lucid and easy to follow. The book is ideal for introductory-level courses, but is likely too survey-oriented for courses beyond that level.

The text is consistent in structure, tone, and subject matter.

Here the book really excels at guiding students through a programmatic approach to studying media. Each section of history/description is followed by useful discussion prompts and activities, easily lending itself to course adoption.

The book flows logically. Some medium-specific chapters might arguably be collapsed into others, but their separation provides instructors with a good range of options for organizing lesson plans as they wish rather than having to proceed sequentially.

The text is a cleanly organized PDF, but is quite cumbersome to navigate internally. At 700+ pages, there's no table of contents and little in the PDF that allows for quick and easy browsing without intense scrolling. I'd recommend a hyperlinked TOC and some mechanism that affords instructors/students the freedom to teach/read in a modular, not linear, fashion.

The book is very clean and free of any obvious errors.

The book appropriately qualifies and focuses on the US media context, drawing on a good diversity of examples throughout.

Reviewed by Robert Kerr, Professor, University of Oklahoma on 1/12/15

This book devotes almost 800 pages to achieving an impressive level of comprehensiveness, considering the vast subject material upon which it focuses. Moving from Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of the movable type printing press, through the beginning of the contemporary media age launched by the introduction of the telegraph in the mid 19th century, on into the explosive era opened with the beginnings of wireless communication, and ultimately into the revolution of Internet communication that by 2008 meant that U.S. households were consuming 3.6 zettabytes of information annually, the equivalent of a seven-foot-foot tall stack of books that covered the entire nation and represented a 350 percent increase from just three decades previously. This book manages to cover that remarkable series of media developments, and actually a good bit more, while keeping it all in broader context and without getting bogged down in the tedium of too much minutia from any one topic area.

This reviewer came across no errors of fact nor any pattern of bias in presentation.

The author of any text on this subject is faced with the challenge of achieving up-to-date content on a subject that explodes with new developments faster than any static text could ever stay fully up to date on for long. This text addresses that challenge by focusing on presenting a fully, dynamic framework that is so fully developed that it provides readers with a quite useful and enduring framework for considering crucial issues of media and culture in a manner that should give it a considerable shelf life. That framework is designed to help readers understand not only today’s media landscape but to consider what may be ahead for that landscape in terms of the future of media and culture.

The text breaks down relevant concepts and terminology with lucid, accessible prose so that even readers at the most introductory level should be able to always understand the discussion. Throughout the text, it very clearly helps readers think about each concept and related elements very clearly and in context that illuminates their significance.

This book’s use of terminology and framework is remarkably consistent. The author clearly has an instinctive, unified understanding of the essential dynamics driving the media world as it has evolved, exists today, and is unfolding going forward, and consistently discusses all topics in a context that never loses connection with that broad, fluid picture.

Chapters are organized into small modules, short subsections that by and large can stand alone and could be reorganized as an instructor might find more useful for the purposes of particular courses. Each chapter and each subsection includes highly useful learning objectives, key takeaways, and exercises, links to source materials and end-of-chapter assessments.

The book begins with a thorough overview that takes the reader quickly through a multifaceted assessment of the relationship between media and culture. With that foundation established, it moves into discussion of what is understood about the complex subject of media effects. Then it moves into narrower topics within the broader view considered so far, moving on to discussions of books, newspapers, magazines, music, radio, movies, and television, and then on to more recent developments such as electronic games, the Internet and social media. Then it steps back again to consider broader media influences such as advertising/PR, the role of economics in shaping the nature of mass media, ethical considerations, and government influence, before concluding with a substantial discussion of the future of mass media. The final chapter very effectively brings together the many strands of discussion from preceding chapters and synergizes them with a forward looking discussion of what the media future may hold. A table of contents within the book pdf itself would be helpful, as would content outlines at the beginning of each chapter. However, each chapter does contain very good breakdown highlights of each subsection’s learning objectives, key takeaways, and exercises, as well as extensive links to source materials and end-of-chapter assessments.

There do not seem to be any interface problems. The book is easy to navigate and the images/charts are displayed clearly, without distortion. Display features are presented quite distinctly and effectively throughout and should present readers with not distractions or confusion. The layout is somewhat visually plain, compared to many websites and even many traditional textbooks with more graphically elaborate designs, but the simple layout is easy to negotiate. The number of images/charts is not abundant, but is sufficient.

Grammar is used correctly throughout -- including use of the term “media” as a plural noun, which even too many academics have begun to use incorrectly as a singular term. It even includes an explanation of why it is incorrect to make that term singular, despite its popular usage in such manner. The text is very well written throughout, lively and to the point, with an easy flow that should enable readers to move through it almost effortlessly.

Over the course of this 761-page book, the reader is taken through an extensive range of discussion examples that span a multitude of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. This reviewer did not detect any instances of cultural insensitivity or offensiveness.

This book is written well enough to be of general interest as a stand-alone read, apart from the context of its use as a textbook.

Reviewed by Doug Trouten, Professor, University of Northwestern - St. Paul on 7/15/14

The text covers all of the major forms of media and significant related topics (advertising, media economics, ethics, etc.). While the text lacks a dedicated chapter for journalism, this topic is covered at length in some of the other chapters. No... read more

Content is accurate and free of glaring errors. Although written in a personal, conversational tone, the text avoids obvious personal bias.

The content is up-to-date, including discussion of social media and references to recent works of media criticism. The rapid development of new media makes it likely that some of the material in this (or any) book will quickly seem dated, but the most time-sensitive material is confined to a few chapters, which should facilitate future updates.

The book is written in clear, easy-to-understand language that should appeal to today's college-age reader.

The text shows good consistency, introducing key ideas early and using them to facilitate understanding of material covered in subsequent chapters.

The chapters are clearly divided into subsections, each with clearly stated learning objectives, key takeaways and learning exercises. Most subsections could stand on their own, and chapters focusing on specific forms of mass media could easily be rearranged or skipped if desired.

The topics are presented in a logical fashion. After introducing basic ideas about media and culture and media effects, the text moves to discussion of various forms of media in chronological orders, and ends with chapters on various mass media applications and issues, such as advertising, public relations, ethics and government regulation.

The text is a basic PDF, with fixed line breaks that limit display options. Most URLs are live links. Footnote numbers and references to chapter sections look like links but are not, which may confuse some readers. A format better-suited for e-readers would be welcome.

The text strives to be culturally neutral, and should not offend any particular group of readers. The text clearly focuses on the U.S. media context, and acknowledges this limitation early on.

This is an impressively comprehensive overview of mass communication, written in a clear and engaging manner. Discussion questions and exercises are helpful resources for classroom use. A glossary, index and more flexible e-format would make this text even more useful. This text is a welcome addition to the field, and will serve students and teachers well.

Chapter 1: Media and Culture
Chapter 2: Media Effects
Chapter 3: Books
Chapter 4: Newspapers
Chapter 5: Magazines
Chapter 6: Music
Chapter 7: Radio
Chapter 8: Movies
Chapter 9: Television
Chapter 10: Electronic Games and Entertainment
Chapter 11: The Internet and Social Media
Chapter 12: Advertising and Public Relations
Chapter 14: Ethics of Mass Media
Chapter 15: Media and Government
Chapter 16: The Future of Mass Media

Ancillary Material

University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing

About the Book

According to the author, the world did not need another introductory text in mass communication. But the world did need another kind of introductory text in mass communication, and that is how Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication was birthed.

The only question was: What would be the purpose of another introductory mass communication text?

Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication was written to squarely emphasize media technology. The author believes that an introduction to mass communication text should be a compelling, historical narrative sketching the *ongoing evolution* of media technology and how that technology shapes and is shaped by culture — and that is what he set out to deliver with his new textbook.

Today's students are immersed in media technology. They live in a world of cell phones, smart phones, video games, iPods, laptops, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and more. They fully expect that new technology will be developed tomorrow. Yet students often lack an historical perspective on media technology. They lack knowledge of the social, political and economic forces that shape media technology. This is not knowledge for knowledge's sake. It is knowledge that can help them understand, comprehend, appreciate, anticipate, shape and control media technology.

With this focus, Understanding Media and Culture becomes an appropriate title. Indeed, the title has particular significance. Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media is a key text in media studies. Written in the 1960s, Understanding Media was the subject of intense debates that continue to this day. Its central message was that the technology of media — not their content — was their most important feature. In a typically pithy phrase, McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." The title, Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication , situates the introductory text in a large, engrossing theoretical conversation.

The goal is to adopt a textbook that will support and complement your teaching of this course. Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication will support an engaging and interesting course experience for students that will not only show them the powerful social, political and economic forces will affect the future of media technology, but will challenge students to do their part in shaping that future.

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15.2 Functions and Theories of Mass Communication

Learning objectives.

Identify key functions of the mass media.
Explain how the media functions as a gatekeeper.
Discuss theories of mass communication, including hypodermic needle theory, media effects, and cultivation theory.

How does mass communication function differently than interpersonal communication? Do we have relationships with media like we have relationships with people? To answer these questions, we can look at some of the characteristics and functions of mass communication. One key characteristic of mass communication is its ability to overcome the physical limitations present in face-to-face communication. The human voice can only travel so far, and buildings and objects limit the amount of people we can communicate with at any time. While one person can engage in public speaking and reach one hundred thousand or so people in one of the world’s largest stadiums, it would be impossible for one person to reach millions without technology.

Another key characteristic of mass communication in relation to other forms of communication is its lack of sensory richness. In short, mass communication draws on fewer sensory channels than face-to-face communication. While smell, taste, and touch can add context to a conversation over a romantic dinner, our interaction with mass media messages rely almost exclusively on sight and sound. Because of this lack of immediacy, mass media messages are also typically more impersonal than face-to-face messages. Actually being in the audience while a musician is performing is different from watching or listening at home. Last, mass media messages involve less interactivity and more delayed feedback than other messages. The majority of messages sent through mass media channels are one way. We don’t have a way to influence an episode of The Walking Dead as we watch it. We could send messages to the show’s producers and hope our feedback is received, or we could yell at the television, but neither is likely to influence the people responsible for sending the message. Although there are some features of communication that are lost when it becomes electronically mediated, mass communication also serves many functions that we have come to depend on and expect.

Functions of Mass Media

The mass media serves several general and many specific functions. In general, the mass media serves information, interpretation, instructive, bonding, and diversion functions:

Information function. We have a need for information to satisfy curiosity, reduce uncertainty, and better understand how we fit into the world. The amount and availability of information is now overwhelming compared to forty years ago when a few television networks, local radio stations, and newspapers competed to keep us informed. The media saturation has led to increased competition to provide information, which creates the potential for news media outlets, for example, to report information prematurely, inaccurately, or partially.
Interpretation function. Media outlets interpret messages in more or less explicit and ethical ways. Newspaper editorials have long been explicit interpretations of current events, and now cable television and radio personalities offer social, cultural, and political commentary that is full of subjective interpretations. Although some of them operate in ethical gray areas because they use formats that make them seem like traditional news programs, most are open about their motives.
Instructive function. Some media outlets exist to cultivate knowledge by teaching instead of just relaying information. Major news networks like CNN and BBC primarily serve the information function, while cable news networks like Fox News and MSNBC serve a mixture of informational and interpretation functions. The in-depth coverage on National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, and the more dramatized but still educational content of the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, and the Discovery Channel, serve more instructive functions.
Bonding function. Media outlets can bring people closer together, which serves the bonding function. For example, people who share common values and interests can gather on online forums, and masses of people can be brought together while watching coverage of a tragic event like 9/11 or a deadly tornado outbreak.
Diversion function. We all use the media to escape our day-to-day lives, to distract us from our upcoming exam, or to help us relax. When we are being distracted, amused, or relaxed, the media is performing the diversion function.

Just as a gate controls the flow of traffic, the media acts as a gatekeeper, allowing some messages to travel through and others not.

Jacqui – Gates – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The Media as Gatekeeper

In addition to the functions discussed previously, media outlets also serve a gatekeeping function , which means they affect or control the information that is transmitted to their audiences. This function has been analyzed and discussed by mass communication scholars for decades. Overall, the mass media serves four gatekeeping functions: relaying, limiting, expanding, and reinterpreting (Bittner, 1996). In terms of relaying, mass media requires some third party to get a message from one human to the next. Whereas interpersonal communication only requires some channel or sensory route, mass media messages need to “hitch a ride” on an additional channel to be received. For example, a Sports Illustrated cover story that you read at SI.com went through several human “gates,” including a writer, editor, publisher, photographer, and webmaster, as well as one media “gate”—the Internet. We also require more than sensory ability to receive mass media messages. While hearing and/or sight are typically all that’s needed to understand what someone standing in front of you is saying, you’ll need a computer, smartphone, or tablet to pick up that SI.com cover story. In summary, relaying refers to the gatekeeping function of transmitting a message, which usually requires technology and equipment that the media outlet controls and has access to, but we do not. Although we relay messages in other forms of communication such as interpersonal and small group, we are primarily receivers when it comes to mass communication, which makes us depend on the gatekeeper to relay the message.

In terms of the gatekeeping function of limiting, media outlets decide whether or not to pass something along to the media channel so it can be relayed. Because most commercial media space is so limited and expensive, almost every message we receive is edited, which is inherently limiting. A limited message doesn’t necessarily mean the message is bad or manipulated, as editing is a necessity. But a range of forces including time constraints, advertiser pressure, censorship, or personal bias, among others, can influence editing choices. Limiting based on bias or self-interest isn’t necessarily bad as long as those who relay the message don’t claim to be objective. In fact, many people choose to engage with media messages that have been limited to match their own personal views or preferences. This kind of limiting also allows us to have more control over the media messages we receive. For example, niche websites and cable channels allow us to narrow in on already-limited content, so we don’t have to sift through everything on our own.

Gatekeepers also function to expand messages. For example, a blogger may take a story from a more traditional news source and fact check it or do additional research, interview additional sources, and post it on his or her blog. In this case, expanding helps us get more information than we would otherwise so we can be better informed. On the other hand, a gatekeeper who expands a message by falsifying evidence or making up details either to appear more credible or to mislead others is being unethical.

Last, gatekeepers function to reinterpret mass media messages. Reinterpretation is useful when gatekeepers translate a message from something too complex or foreign for us to understand into something meaningful. In the lead-up to the Supreme Court’s June 2012 ruling on President Obama’s health-care-overhaul bill, the media came under scrutiny for not doing a better job of informing the public about the core content and implications of the legislation that had been passed. Given that policy language is difficult for many to understand and that legislation contains many details that may not be important to average people, a concise and lay reinterpretation of the content by the gatekeepers (the media outlets) would have helped the public better understand the bill. Of course, when media outlets reinterpret content to the point that it is untruthful or misleading, they are not ethically fulfilling the gatekeeping function of reinterpretation.

In each of these gatekeeping functions, the media can fulfill or fail to fulfill its role as the “fourth estate” of government—or government “watchdog.” You can read more about this role in the “Getting Critical” box.

“Getting Critical”

The Media as “Watchdog”

While countries like China, North Korea, Syria, and Burma have media systems that are nearly if not totally controlled by the state regime, the media in the United States and many other countries is viewed as the “watchdog” for the government. This watchdog role is intended to keep governments from taking too much power from the people and overstepping their bounds. Central to this role is the notion that the press works independently of the government. The “freedom of the press” as guaranteed by our First-Amendment rights allows the media to act as the eyes and ears of the people. The media is supposed to report information to the public so they can make informed decisions. The media also engages in investigative reporting, which can uncover dangers or corruption that the media can then expose so that the public can demand change.

Of course, this ideal is not always met in practice. Some people have critiqued the media’s ability to fulfill this role, referring to it instead as a lapdog or attack dog. In terms of the lapdog role, the media can become too “cozy” with a politician or other public figure, which might lead it to uncritically report or passively relay information without questioning it. Recent stories about reporters being asked to clear quotes and even whole stories with officials before they can be used in a story drew sharp criticism from other journalists and the public, and some media outlets put an end to that practice. In terms of the attack-dog role, the twenty-four-hour news cycle and constant reporting on public figures has created the kind of atmosphere where reporters may be waiting to pounce on a mistake or error in order to get the scoop and be able to produce a tantalizing story. This has also been called being on “scandal patrol” or “gaffe patrol.” Media scholars have critiqued this practice, saying that too much adversarial or negative reporting leads the public to think poorly of public officials and be more dissatisfied with government. Additionally, they claim that attack-dog reporting makes it more difficult for public officials to do their jobs (Coronel, 2008).

In what ways do you think the media should function in a democratic society?
Do you think the media in the United States acts more as a watchdog, lapdog, or attack dog? Give specific examples to support your answer.
In an age of twenty-four-hour news and instant reporting, do you think politicians’ jobs are made easier or more difficult? Do you think reporters’ jobs are made easier or more difficult? Support your answers.

Theories of Mass Communication

Theories of mass communication have changed dramatically since the early 1900s, largely as a result of quickly changing technology and more sophisticated academic theories and research methods. A quick overview of the state of the media in the early 1900s and in the early 2000s provides some context for how views of the media changed. In the early 1900s, views of mass communication were formed based on people’s observation of the popularity of media and assumptions that something that grew that quickly and was adopted so readily must be good. Many people were optimistic about the mass media’s potential to be a business opportunity, an educator, a watchdog, and an entertainer. For example, businesses and advertisers saw media as a good way to make money, and the educator class saw the media as a way to inform citizens who could then be more active in a democratic society. As World War I and the Depression came around, many saw the media as a way to unite the country in times of hardship. Early scholarship on mass media focused on proving these views through observational and anecdotal evidence rather than scientific inquiry.

Fast forward one hundred years and newspapers are downsizing, consolidating to survive, or closing all together; radio is struggling to stay alive in the digital age; and magazine circulation is decreasing and becoming increasingly more focused on microaudiences. The information function of the news has been criticized and called “infotainment,” and rather than bringing people together, the media has been cited as causing polarization and a decline in civility (Self, Gaylord, & Gaylord, 2009). The extremes at each end of the twentieth century clearly show that the optimistic view of the media changed dramatically. An overview of some of the key theories can help us better understand this change.

Hypodermic Needle and Beyond

In the 1920s, early theories of mass communication were objective, and social-scientific reactions to the largely anecdotal theories that emerged soon after mass media quickly expanded. These scholars believed that media messages had strong effects that were knowable and predictable. Because of this, they theorized that controlling the signs and symbols used in media messages could control how they were received and convey a specific meaning (Self, Gaylord, & Gaylord, 2009).

The hypodermic needle theory of media effects claimed that meaning could be strategically placed into a media message that would then be “injected” into or transmitted to the receiver.

ChrisWaldeck – The Media Needle – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Extending Aristotle’s antiquated linear model of communication that included a speaker, message, and hearer, these early theories claimed that communication moved, or transmitted, an idea from the mind of the speaker through a message and channel to the mind of the listener. To test the theories, researchers wanted to find out how different messages influenced or changed the behavior of the receiver. This led to the development of numerous theories related to media effects. Media businesses were invested in this early strand of research, because data that proved that messages directly affect viewers could be used to persuade businesses to send their messages through the media channel in order to directly influence potential customers.

This early approach to studying media effects was called the hypodermic needle approach or bullet theory and suggested that a sender constructed a message with a particular meaning that was “injected” or “shot” into individuals within the mass audience. This theory is the basis for the transmission model of communication that we discussed in Chapter 1 “Introduction to Communication Studies” . It was assumed that the effects were common to each individual and that the meaning wasn’t altered as it was transferred. Through experiments and surveys, researchers hoped to map the patterns within the human brain so they could connect certain stimuli to certain behaviors. For example, researchers might try to prove that a message announcing that a product is on sale at a reduced price will lead people to buy a product they may not otherwise want or need. As more research was conducted, scholars began to find flaws within this thinking. New theories emerged that didn’t claim such a direct connection between the intent of a message and any single reaction on the part of receivers. Instead, these new theories claimed that meaning could be partially transferred, that patterns may become less predictable as people are exposed to a particular stimulus more often, and that interference at any point in the transmission could change the reaction.

These newer theories incorporated more contextual factors into the view of communication, acknowledging that both sender and receiver interpret messages based on their previous experience. Scholars realized that additional variables such as psychological characteristics and social environment had to be included in the study of mass communication. This approach connects to the interaction model of communication. In order to account for perspective and experience, mass media researchers connected to recently developed theories in perception that emerged from psychology. The concept of the gatekeeper emerged, since, for the first time, the sender of the message (the person or people behind the media) was the focus of research and not just the receiver. The concepts of perceptual bias and filtering also became important, as they explained why some people interpreted or ignored messages while others did not. Theories of primacy and recency, which we discussed in Chapter 9 “Preparing a Speech” , emerged to account for the variation in interpretation based on the order in which a message is received. Last, researchers explored how perceptions of source credibility affect message interpretation and how media messages may affect viewers’ self-esteem. By the 1960s, many researchers in mass communication concluded that the research in the previous twenty years had been naïve and flawed, and they significantly challenged the theory of powerful media effects, putting much more emphasis on individual agency, context, and environment (McQuail, 2010).

The next major turn in mass communication theory occurred only a few years after many scholars had concluded that media had no or only minimal effects (McQuail, 2010). In the 1970s, theories once again positioned media effects as powerful and influential based on additional influences from social psychology. From sociology, mass media researchers began to study the powerful socializing role that the media plays but also acknowledged that audience members take active roles in interpreting media messages. During this time, researchers explored how audience members’ schemata and personalities (concepts we discussed in Chapter 2 “Communication and Perception” ) affect message interpretation. Researchers also focused more on long-term effects and how media messages create opinion climates, structures of belief, and cultural patterns.

In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, a view of media effects as negotiated emerged, which accounts for the sometimes strong and sometimes weak influences of the media. This view sees the media as being most influential in constructing meanings through multiple platforms and representations. For example, the media constructs meanings for people regarding the role of technology in our lives by including certain kinds of technology in television show plots, publishing magazines like Wired , broadcasting news about Microsoft’s latest product, airing advertisements for digital cameras, producing science fiction movies, and so on. Although these messages are diverse and no one person is exposed to all the same messages, the messages are still constructed in some predictable and patterned ways that create a shared social reality. Whether or not the media intends to do this or whether or not we acknowledge that how we think about technology or any other social construct is formed through our exposure to these messages is not especially relevant. Many mass communication scholars now seek to describe, understand, or critique media practices rather than prove or disprove a specific media effect.

More recent media effects theories acknowledge that media messages do affect the receivers but that receivers also have some agency to reject or reinterpret the message.

Sean MacEntee – – CC BY 2.0.

Additionally, mass communication scholars are interested in studying how we, as audience members, still have agency in how these constructions affect our reality, in that we may reject, renegotiate, or reinterpret a given message based on our own experiences. For example, a technology geek and a person living “off the grid” have very different lives and very different views of technology, but because of their exposure to various forms of media that have similar patterns of messages regarding technology, they still have some shared reality and could talk in similar ways about computers, smartphones, and HD television. Given the shift of focus to negotiated meaning and context, this view of mass communication is more in keeping with the transactional model of communication.

Media Effects

Media effects are the intended or unintended consequences of what the mass media does (McQuail, 2010). Many of the key theories in mass communication rest on the assumption that the media has effects on audience members. The degree and type of effect varies depending on the theory. In general, we underestimate the effect that the media has on us, as we tend to think that media messages affect others more than us. This is actually so common that there is a concept for it! The third-party effect is the phenomenon just described of people thinking they are more immune to media influence than others. If this were true, though, would advertisers and public relations professionals spend billions of dollars a year carefully crafting messages aimed at influencing viewers?

There are certain media effects that are fairly obvious and most of us would agree are common (even for ourselves). For example, we change our clothes and our plans because we watch the forecast on the Weather Channel, look up information about a band and sample their music after we see them perform on a television show, or stop eating melons after we hear about a salmonella outbreak. Other effects are more difficult to study and more difficult for people to accept because they are long term and/or more personal. For example, media may influence our personal sense of style, views on sex, perceptions of other races, or values just as our own free will, parents, or friends do. It is difficult, however, to determine in any specific case how much influence the media has on a belief or behavior in proportion to other factors that influence us. Media messages may also affect viewers in ways not intended by the creators of the message. Two media effects that are often discussed are reciprocal and boomerang effects (McQuail, 2010).

The reciprocal effect points to the interactive relationship between the media and the subject being covered. When a person or event gets media attention, it influences the way the person acts or the way the event functions. Media coverage often increases self-consciousness, which affects our actions. It’s similar to the way that we change behavior when we know certain people are around and may be watching us. For example, the Occupy Movement that began on Wall Street in New York City gained some attention from alternative media and people using micromedia platforms like independent bloggers. Once the movement started getting mainstream press attention, the coverage affected the movement. As news of the Occupy movement in New York spread, people in other cities and towns across the country started to form their own protest groups. In this case, media attention caused a movement to spread that may have otherwise remained localized.

The boomerang effect refers to media-induced change that is counter to the desired change. In the world of twenty-four-hour news and constant streams of user-generated material, the effects of gaffes, blunders, or plain old poor decisions are much more difficult to control or contain. Before a group or person can clarify or provide context for what was said, a story could go viral and a media narrative constructed that is impossible to backtrack and very difficult to even control. A recent example of such an effect occurred at the University of Virginia when the governing body of the university forced President Teresa A. Sullivan to resign. The board was not happy with the president’s approach to dealing with the changing financial and technological pressures facing the school and thought ousting her may make room for a president who was more supportive of a corporate model of university governance (Pérez-Peña, 2012). When the story picked up local and then national media coverage, students, faculty, and alumni came together to support Sullivan, and a week later she was reinstated. Instead of the intended effect of changing the direction and priorities for the university, the board’s actions increased support for the president, which will also likely add support to her plans for dealing with the issues.

Cultivation Theory

Cultivation theory is a media effects theory created by George Gerbner that states that media exposure, specifically to television, shapes our social reality by giving us a distorted view on the amount of violence and risk in the world. The theory also states that viewers identify with certain values and identities that are presented as mainstream on television even though they do not actually share those values or identities in their real lives (Griffin, 2009). Drawing on cultivation as it is practiced in farming, Gerbner turned this notion into a powerful metaphor to explain how the media, and television in particular, shapes our social realities. Just as a farmer plants seeds that he or she then cultivates over time to produce a crop, the media plants seeds in our minds and then cultivates them until they grow into our shared social reality.

Cultivation theory states that heavy television viewing cultivates, or grows, certain ways of thinking about the world that are distorted.

Yoshihide Nomura – Watching TV – CC BY-ND 2.0.

Over decades of exploring cultivation theory, Gerbner made several well-supported conclusions that are summarized as follows:

Prime-time television shows and weekend morning children’s programming have been found to contain consistently high amounts of violence over the past thirty years.
Older people, children, African Americans, and Latino/as are more likely to be shown as victims of violence than are their young-adult, middle-aged, and/or white counterparts. This disparity is more meaningful when we realize that these groups are also underrepresented (relative to their percentage in the general population) on these shows while their vulnerability to violence is overstated.

The effects of television viewing on our worldview build up over years, but in general, people who are more heavy viewers perceive the world as more dangerous than do light viewers. Gerbner coined the phrase “mean world syndrome,” which refers to the distorted view of the world as more violent and people as more dangerous than they actually are.

Heavy viewers predict that their odds of being a victim of violence within the next week are 1 in 10, while light viewers predicted 1 in 100. Real crime statistics give a more reliable estimate of 1 in 10,000.
Heavy viewers fear walking alone on the street more than do light viewers, believing that criminal activity is actually ten times more prevalent than it actually is.
Heavy viewers believe that more people are involved in law enforcement and that officers draw and use their weapons much more than is actually the case.
Heavy viewers are generally more suspicious of others and question their motives more than do light viewers (the basis of the mean world syndrome).
Given that most people on television are portrayed as politically moderate and middle class, heavy viewers are more likely to assume those labels even though heavy users tend to be more working class or poor and more politically conservative than moderate. In short, they begin to view themselves as similar to those they watch on television and consider themselves a part of the mainstream of society even though they are not.

“Getting Competent”

Applying Media Theories

Although most do not get mass public attention, there are many media criticism and analysis organizations that devote much time and resources to observing, studying, and/or commenting on how the media acts in practice, which often involves an implicit evaluation of media theories we have discussed so far, in particular media effects theories. Media outlets and the people who send messages through media outlets (i.e., politicians, spokespeople, and advertisers) are concerned about the effects and effectiveness of their messaging. As we already learned, the pervasive view of media effects today is that media messages do affect people, but that people have some agency in terms of how much or little they identify with or reinterpret a message.

To understand media effects, media criticism organizations do research on audience attitudes and also call on media commentators to give their opinions, which may be more academic and informed or more personal and partisan. In either case, taking some time to engage with these media criticism organizations can allow you to see how they apply mass communication theories and give you more information so you can be a more critical and informed consumer of media. You can find a list of many media criticism organizations at the following link: http://www.world-newspapers.com/media.html . Some of these organizations have a particular political ideology or social/cultural cause that they serve, so be cautious when choosing a source for media criticism to make sure you know what you’re getting. There are also more objective and balanced sources of media criticism. Two of my personal favorites that I engage with every week are CNN’s show Reliable Sources ( http://reliablesources.blogs.cnn.com ) and the public radio show On the Media ( http://www.onthemedia.org ). Reliable Sources even has an implicit reference to reciprocal effects in its show description, stating, “The press is a part of every story it covers.” [1] On the Media ran a story that implicitly connects to cultivation theory, as it critiques some of the media’s coverage of violence and audiences’ seeming desensitization to it (Bernstein 2012).

Of the “functions of mass media” discussed earlier in the chapter, which functions do media criticism organizations like the ones mentioned here serve? Specifically, give examples of how these organizations fulfill the gatekeeping functions and how they monitor the gatekeeping done by other media sources.
Since media criticism organizations like Reliable Sources and On the Media are also media sources (one a television show and one a radio show), how might hey be contributing to reciprocal effects?
Using the links provided, find a substantial article, study, or report that analyzes some media practice such as the covering of a specific event. Apply some aspect of media effects from the chapter to the story. How might media effects theory help us understand the criticism being raised?

Key Takeaways

The mass media serves information, interpretation, instructive, bonding, and diversion functions.
As a gatekeeper, the media functions to relay, limit, expand, and reinterpret information.
The hypodermic needle theory of mass communication suggests that a sender constructs a message with a particular meaning that is “injected” into individuals within a mass audience.
Theories of media effects explore the intended or unintended effects of what the media does. Theories have claimed strong effects, meaning that media messages can directly and intentionally influence audience members. They have also claimed weak effects, meaning that media messages have no little power over viewers. More recently, theories have claimed negotiated effects, meaning that media messages do affect viewers but that viewers also have some agency to identify with, reject, or reinterpret a message.
Cultivation theory explores a particular kind of media effect claiming that media exposure, specifically to television, shapes our social reality by giving us a distorted view on the amount of violence and risk in the world.
Which function of mass media (information, interpretation, instructive, bonding, or diversion) do you think is most important for you and why? Which is most important for society and why?
What ethical issues are created by the gatekeeping function of the media? What strategies or suggestions do you have for bypassing this function of the media to ensure that you get access to the information you want/need?
Getting integrated: Discuss media messages that have influenced or would influence you in a professional, academic, personal, and civic context.

Bernstein, B., “The Story of the Times Gory Empire State Shooting Photo,” On the Media , August 24, 2012, accessed September 20, 2012, http://www.onthemedia.org/blogs/on-the-media/2012/aug/24/story-times-gory-empire-state-shooting-photo1 .

Bittner, J. R., Mass Communication , 6th ed. (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1996), 11.

Coronel, S. S., “The Media as Watchdog,” Harvard-World Bank Workshop, May 19, 2008, accessed September 19, 2012, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Conference/Conference%20papers/Coronel%20Watchdog.pdf .

Griffin, E., A First Look at Communication Theory , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2009), 352–53.

McQuail, D., McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory , 6th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010), 457.

Pérez-Peña, R., “Ousted Head of University Is Reinstated in Virginia,” New York Times , June 26, 2012, accessed November 11, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/education/university-of-virginia-reinstates-ousted-president.html?pagewanted=all .

Self, C. C., Edward L. Gaylord, and Thelma Gaylord, “The Evolution of Mass Communication Theory in the 20th Century,” The Romanian Review of Journalism and Communication 6, no. 3 (2009): 29.

“About This Show,” CNN Reliable Sources , accessed September 20, 2012, http://reliablesources.blogs.cnn.com . ↵

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Mass Communication

Defining mass communication.

Littlejohn and Foss define mass communication as “the process whereby media organizations produce and transmit messages to large publics and the process by which those messages are sought, used, understood, and influenced by audience” (333). McQuail states that mass communication is, “only one of the processes of communication operating at the society-wide level, readily identified by its institutional characteristics” (7). Simply put, mass communication is the public transfer of messages through media or technology-driven channels to a large number of recipients from an entity, usually involving some type of cost or fee (advertising) for the user. “The sender often is a person in some large media organization, the messages are public, and the audience tends to be large and varied” (Berger 121). However, with the advent of outlets like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and text messaging, these definitions do not account for the increased opportunities individuals now have to send messages to large audiences through mediated channels.

Text on a blue background, reading: Mass Communication * the process whereby media organizations produce and transmit messages to large publics and the process by which those messages are sought, used, understood, and influenced by audience.

Nevertheless, most mass communication comes from large organizations that influence culture on a large scale. Schramm refers to this as a “working group organizer” (115). Today the working groups that control most mass communication are large conglomerates such as Viacom, NewsCorp, Disney, ComCast, Time Warner, and CBS. In 2012, these conglomerates controlled 90% of American Media and mergers continue to consolidate ownership even more. An example of an attempt at such a takeover of power occurred throughout 2014 with Comcast and Time Warner pursuing a merger for $45 billion. If successful, this will be one of the biggest mergers in history.

Remember our definition of communication study: “who says what, through what channels (media) of communication, to whom, [and] what will be the results” (Smith, Lasswell & Casey 121)? When examining mass communication, we are interested in who has control over what content, for what audience, using what medium, and what are the results? Media critic Robert McChesney said we should be worried about the increasingly concentrated control of mass communication that results when just a handful of large organizations control most mass communication, “The implications for political democracy, by any standard, are troubling” (23). When interviewed, Ben Bagdikian, media critic and former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, cautiously pointed out that over the past two decades, major media outlets went from being owned by 50 corporations to just five (WGBH/Frontline). Both McChesney and Bagdikian warn about the implications of having so few organizations controlling the majority of our information and communication. Perhaps this is the reason new media outlets like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook have consistently grown in popularity as they offer alternative voices to the large corporations that control most mass communication.

Table labeled "Mass Communication Now: This table shows the six most prosperous media conglomerates of 2014. Included is a list of just SOME of the networks they own. From the left, the table reads Comcast (-NBC -MSNBC -AT&T); News Corporation (-FOX -Wall Street Journal -New York Post); Disney (-ABC -ESPN -Pixar -Miramax -Marvel Studios); Viacom (-MTV - Nick Jr. -CMT -Paramount Pictures); TimeWarner (-CNN -HBO -Time -Warner Bros.); CBS (-Showtime -Smithsonian Channel -NFL.com -Jeopardy -60 Minutes). At the bottom of the table, it reads "Image produced with information from businessinsider.com"

To understand mass communication one must first be aware of some of the key factors that distinguish it from other forms of communication. First, is the dependence on a media channel to convey a message to a large audience. Second, the audience tends to be distant, diverse, and varies in size depending on the medium and message. Third, mass communication is most often profit driven, and feedback is limited. Fourth, because of the impersonal nature of mass communication, participants are not equally present during the process.

Mass communication continues to become more integrated into our lives at an increasingly rapid pace. This “metamorphosis” is representative by the convergence occurring (Fidler) between ourselves and technology, where we are not as distanced from mass communication as in the past. Increasingly, we have more opportunities to use mediated communication to fulfill interpersonal and social needs. O’Sullivan refers to this new use of mass communication to foster our personal lives as “masspersonal communication” where (a) traditional mass communication channels are used for interpersonal communication, (b) traditionally interpersonal communication channels are used for mass communication, and (c) traditional mass communication and traditional interpersonal communication occur simultaneously.” Over time, more and more overlap occurs. “Innovations in communication technologies have begun to make the barriers between mass and interpersonal communication theory more permeable than ever” (O’Sullivan). Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat, and Instagram are great examples of new mass communication platforms we use to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships.

As more mass communication mediums develop, Marshall McLuhan states that we can understand media as either hot or cold depending on the amount of information available to the user, as well as the degree of participation. A hot medium “extends one single sense in high definition” (McCluhan 22). Examples of hot media include photographs or radio because the message is mostly interpreted using one sense and requires little participation by participants. An audience is more passive with hot media because there is less to filter. Television is considered a cold medium because of the large amount of multisensory information. Berg Nellis states “Virtual reality, the simulation of actual environment complete with tactile sensory input, might be the extreme in cold media…This and other cutting edge technologies seem to point to increasingly cold media as we move into the digital communication future” (256). Think about online video games, such as the military sci-fi game, Halo. Games like this can be played in teams but the players do not necessarily have to be in close proximity. Simply by logging onto the server gamers can connect, interact, communicate through microphones and play as a team. These games have become so involved and realistic that they represent cold mediums because of the vast amount of sensory input and participation they require.

Perhaps we are turning into a “global village” through our interdependence with mass communication. Suddenly, “across the ocean” has become “around the corner.” McLuhan predicted this would happen because of mass communication’s ability to unify people around the globe. Are you a player in what Hagermas calls the “public sphere” that mass communication creates by posting information about yourself on public sites? If so, be careful about what you post about yourself, or allow others to “tag” you in, as many employers are googling potential employees to look into their personal lives before making decisions about hiring them. As we continue our discussion of mass communication we want to note that mass communication does not include every communication technology. As our definition states, mass communication is communication that potentially reaches large audiences.

Survey of Communication Study. Authored by : Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by : Humboldt State University. Located at : https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Image of Mass Communication definition. Authored by : Spaynton. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Masscomm.png . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Image of Mass Communications Now. Authored by : Spaynton. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corporationsownmedia.png . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

11.1 Defining Mass Communication

Littlejohn and Foss define mass communication as “the process whereby media organizations produce and transmit messages to large publics and the process by which those messages are sought, used, understood, and influenced by audience.” McQuail states that mass communication is “only one of the processes of communication operating at the society-wide level, readily identified by its institutional characteristics.” Simply put, mass communication is the public transfer of messages through media or technology-driven channels to a large number of recipients from an entity, usually involving some type of cost or fee (advertising) for the user. “The sender often is a person in some large media organization, the messages are public, and the audience tends to be large and varied.” However, with the advent of outlets like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and text messaging, these definitions do not account for the increased opportunities individuals now have to send messages to large audiences through mediated channels.

Mass Communication - The process whereby media organizations produce and transmit messages to large publics and the process by which those messages are sought, used, understood, and influences by audience.

Nevertheless, most mass communication comes from large organizations that influence culture on a large scale. Schramm refers to this as a “working group organizer.” Today the working groups that control most mass communication are large conglomerates such as Viacom, News Corp, Disney, Comcast, Time Warner, and CBS. In 2012, these conglomerates controlled 90% of American media, and mergers continue to consolidate ownership even more. An example of an attempt at such a takeover of power occurred throughout 2014, with Comcast and Time Warner pursuing a merger for $45 billion. Though it ultimately failed, this would have been one of the biggest mergers in history.

Remember our definition of communication study: “Who says what, through what channels (media) of communication, to whom, [and] what will be the results?” (Smith et al.). When examining mass communication, we are interested in who has control over what content, for what audience, using what medium, and what the results are. Media critic Robert McChesney said we should be worried about the increasingly concentrated control of mass communication that results when just a handful of large organizations control most mass communication: “The implications for political democracy, by any standard, are troubling.” When interviewed, Ben Bagdikian, media critic and former dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, cautiously pointed out that over the past two decades, major media outlets went from being owned by 50 corporations to just 5. Both McChesney and Bagdikian warn about the implications of having so few organizations controlling the majority of our information and communication. Perhaps this is the reason new media outlets like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook have consistently grown in popularity, as they offer alternative voices to the large corporations that control most mass communication.

The Mass Communication table that shows Comcast, New Corporation, Disney, Viacom, Timewarner, and CBS

To understand mass communication, one must first be aware of some of the key factors that distinguish it from other forms of communication. First is the dependence on a media channel to convey a message to a large audience. Second, the audience tends to be distant, diverse, and varies in size depending on the medium and message. Third, mass communication is most often profit driven, and feedback is limited. Fourth, because of the impersonal nature of mass communication, participants are not equally present during the process.

Mass communication continues to become more integrated into our lives at an increasingly rapid pace. This metamorphosis is representative by the convergence occurring (Fidler) between ourselves and technology, where we are not as distanced from mass communication as in the past. Increasingly, we have more opportunities to use mediated communication to fulfill interpersonal and social needs. O’Sullivan refers to this new use of mass communication to foster our personal lives as “mass-personal communication,” where (a) traditional mass communication channels are used for interpersonal communication, (b) traditionally interpersonal communication channels are used for mass communication, and (c) traditional mass communication and traditional interpersonal communication occur simultaneously.

Over time, more and more overlap occurs. “Innovations in communication technologies have begun to make the barriers between mass and interpersonal communication theory more permeable than ever” (O’Sullivan). Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram are great examples of new mass communication platforms we use to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships.

Berg Nellis states, “Virtual reality, the simulation of actual environment complete with tactile sensory input, might be the extreme in cold media…This and other cutting-edge technologies seem to point to increasingly cold media as we move into the digital communication future.” Think about online video games, such as the interactive sci-fi game Fortnite . Games like this can be played in teams, but the players do not necessarily have to be in close proximity. Simply by logging onto the server, gamers can connect, interact, communicate through microphones, and play as a team. These games have become so involved and realistic that they represent cold mediums because of the vast amount of sensory input and participation they require.

Perhaps we are turning into a global village through our interdependence with mass communication. Suddenly, across the ocean has become around the corner . McLuhan predicted this would happen because of mass communication’s ability to unify people around the globe. Are you a player in what Habermas calls the “public sphere” that mass communication creates by posting information about yourself on public sites? If so, be careful about what you post about yourself or allow others to tag you in, as many employers are Googling potential employees to look into their personal lives before making decisions about hiring them. As we continue our discussion of mass communication, we want to note that mass communication does not include every communication technology. As our definition states, mass communication is communication that potentially reaches large audiences.

Evolution of Mass Communication

Societies have long had a desire to find effective ways to report environmental dangers and opportunities; circulate opinions, facts, and ideas; pass along knowledge, heritage, and lore; communicate expectations to new members; entertain in an expansive manner; and broaden commerce and trade (Schramm). The primary challenge has been to find ways to communicate messages to as many people as possible. Our desire to know prompted innovative ways to get messages to the masses.

Before writing, humans relied on oral traditions to pass on information. “It was only in the 1920s—according to the Oxford English Dictionary—that people began to speak of ‘the media’ and a generation later, in the 1950s, of a ‘communication revolution,’ but a concern with the means of communication is very much older than that” (Briggs and Burke). Oral and written communication played a major role in ancient cultures. These cultures used stories to document the past and impart cultural standards, traditions, and knowledge. With the development of alphabets around the world over 5,000 years ago, written language with ideogrammatic (picture-based) alphabets like hieroglyphics started to change how cultures communicated.

Figure 13.4 Image is in the public domain

Still, written communication remained ambiguous and did not reach the masses until the Greeks and Romans resolved this by establishing a syllable alphabet representing sounds. But without something to write on, written language was inefficient. Eventually, paper-making processes were perfected in China, which spread throughout Europe via trade routes (Baran). Mass communication was not quick, but it was far-reaching (Briggs and Burke). This forever altered how cultures saved and transmitted cultural knowledge and values. Any political or social movement throughout the ages can be traced to the development and impact of the printing press and movable metal type (Steinberg). With his technique, Gutenberg could print more than a single page of specific text. By making written communication more available to larger numbers of people, mass printing became responsible for giving voice to the masses and making information available to common folks (McLuhan and Fiore). McLuhan argued that Gutenberg’s evolution of the printing press as a form of mass communication had profound and lasting effects on culture, perhaps the most significant invention in human history.

In 1949, Carl I. Hovland, Arthur A. Lumsdaine, and Fred D. Sheffield wrote the book Experiments on Mass Communication . They looked at two kinds of films the army used to train soldiers. First, they examined orientation and training films such as Why We Fight that were intended to teach facts to the soldiers as well as generate a positive response from them for going to war. The studies determined that significant learning did take place by the soldiers from the films, but primarily with factual items. The army was disappointed with the results that showed that the orientation films did not do an effective job in generating the kind of positive responses they desired from the soldiers. Imagine—people were not excited about going to war.

With the transition to the Industrial Age in the 18th century, large populations headed to urban areas, creating mass audiences of all economic classes seeking information and entertainment. Printing technology was at the heart of modernization, which led to magazines, newspapers, the telegraph, and the telephone. At the turn of the century (1900), pioneers like Thomas Edison, Theodore Puskas, and Nikola Tesla literally electrified the world and mass communication. With the addition of motion pictures and radio in the early 1900s, and television in the ’40s and ’50s, the world increasingly embraced the foundations of today’s mass communication. In the ’70s, cable started challenging over-the-air broadcasting and traditional program distribution, making the United States a wired nation. In 2014, there was an estimated 116.3 million homes in America that owned a TV, according to Nielson, 2014 Advance National TV Household Universe Estimate. While traditionally, these televisions would display only the programs that were chosen to be broadcast by cable providers, more and more households have chosen to become more conscious media consumers and actively choose what they watch through alternative viewing options like streaming video.

Today, smart TVs and streaming devices have taken over the market, and it is estimated that over 80% of households have at least one streaming device. These new forms of broadcasting have created a digital revolution. Thanks to Netflix and other streaming services, we are less frequently subjected to advertisements during our shows. Similarly, streaming services like Hulu provide the most recent episodes as they appear on cable that viewers can watch any time. These services provide instant access to entire seasons of shows (which can result in binge-watching).

The Information Age eventually began to replace the ideals of the Industrial Age. In 1983, Time Magazine named the PC the first “Machine of the Year.” Just over a decade later, PCs outsold televisions. Then, in 2006, Time Magazine named “you” as the person of the year to remind their audience of their use of technology to broaden communication. Chances are that you, your friends, and your family spend hours engaged in data-mediated communication such as emailing, texting, or participating in various forms of social media. Romero points out that “the net has transformed the way we work, the way we get in contact with others, our access to information, our levels of privacy and indeed notions as basic and deeply rooted in our culture as those of time and space.” Social media has also had a large impact on social movements across the globe in recent years by providing the average person with the tools to reach wide audiences around the world for the first time in history.

If you’re reading this for a college class, you may belong to the Millennial or Gen Z age groups. Free Wi-Fi, apps, alternative news sources, Instagram, TikTok, and Clubhouse have become a way of life. Can you imagine a world without communication technology? How would you find out the name of that song stuck in your head? If you wanted to spontaneously meet up with a friend for lunch, how would you let them know? Mass communication has become such an integral part of our daily lives, most people probably could not function through the day without it.

What started as email quickly progressed to chat rooms and basic blogs, such as LiveJournal. From there, we saw the rise and fall of the first widely used social media platform, Myspace. Though now just a shadow of the social media powerhouse it once was, Myspace paved the way for social media to enter the mainstream in forms of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Instagram. Facebook has evolved into a global social media site. It’s available in 37 languages and has over 500 million users. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2005 while studying at Harvard University, and it has universally changed the way we communicate, interact, and share our lives with friends, family, and acquaintances. Many people argue about the good and bad qualities of having a Facebook profile; it can be looked at as your digital footprint in social media. Profiles log status updates, timeline photos and videos, and archive messages between members.

Another example of mainstream social media is Twitter. Twitter allows for quick, 140-character-or-less status updates (called tweets) for registered users. Tweets can be sent from any device with access to internet in a fast, simple way and connect with a number of people, whether they be family, friends, or followers. Twitter’s microblogging format allows people to share their daily thoughts and experiences on a broad and sometimes public stage. The simplicity of Twitter allows it to be used as a tool for entertainment and blogging but also as a way of organizing social movements and sharing breaking news.

Snapchat allows the user to send a photo (with the option of text) that expires after a few seconds. It can be looked at like a digital self-destructing note. Contrary to Facebook, there is no pressure to pose or display your life. Rather, it is more spontaneous.

Clubhouse is one of the most recent additions to the social media sphere. This app allows users to join specialized rooms that are audio-only. Clubhouse is like a live podcast with audience participation. The new service debuted during the Covid-19 pandemic, as many of the earliest members, vocal artists and comedians, sought a place to create live content and gain fans.

With new forms of communication emerging rapidly, it is important to note the corresponding changes to formal language and slang terms. UrbanDictionary.com is a famous site that can introduce any newbie to the slang world by presenting them various definitions for a term they don’t recognize, describe its background, and provide examples of how it’s used in context. For example, one of the most popular definitions claims that the word hella is said to originate from the streets of San Francisco in the Hunters Point neighborhood. “It is commonly used in place of ‘really’ or ‘very’ when describing something.”

In this age of information overload, multiple news sources, high-speed connections, and social networking, life seems unimaginable without mass communication. Can you relate to your parents’ stories about writing letters to friends, family, or their significant others? Today, when trying to connect with someone, we have a variety of ways of contacting them; we can call, text, email, Facebook message, tweet, or SMS. The options are almost endless and ever changing.

Society today is in the midst of a technological revolution. Only a few years ago, families were arguing over landline internet cable use and the constant disruptions from incoming phone calls. Now, we have the ability to browse the web anytime on smartphones. Since the printing press, mass communication has literally changed the ways we think and interact as humans.

We take so much for granted as “new technologies are assimilated so rapidly in U.S. culture that historic perspectives are often lost in the process” (Fidler). With all of this talk and research about mass communication, what functions does it serve for us?

Functions of Mass Communication

Mass communication doesn’t exist for a single purpose. With its evolution, more and more uses have developed, and the role it plays in our lives has increased greatly. Wright characterizes seven functions of mass communication that offer insight into its role in our lives.

Surveillance

The first function of mass communication is to serve as the eyes and ears for those seeking information about the world . The internet, television, and newspapers are the main sources for finding out what’s going on around you. Society relies on mass communication for news and information about our daily lives; it reports the weather, current issues, and the latest celebrity gossip and even start times for games. Do you remember the Boston Marathon bombing that happened in 2013? How did you hear about it? Thanks to the internet and smartphones, instant access to information is at the user’s fingertips. News apps have made mass communication surveillance instantly accessible by sending notifications to smartphones with the latest news.

Correlation

Correlation addresses how the media presents facts that we use to move through the world . The information received through mass communication is not objective and without bias. People ironically state, “It must be true if it’s on the internet.” However, we don’t think that in generations past, people must have without a doubt stated, “It has to be true because it was on the radio.” This statement begs the question, How credible are the media? Can we consume media without questioning motive and agenda? Someone selects, arranges, interprets, edits, and critiques the information used in the media. If you ask anyone who works for a major reality TV show if what we see is a fair representation of what really happens, the person would probably tell you no.

Sensationalization

There is an old saying in the news industry, “If it bleeds, it leads,” which highlights the idea of sensationalization, which is when the media puts forward the most sensational messages to titillate consumers . Elliot observes, “Media managers think in terms of consumers rather than citizens. Good journalism sells, but unfortunately, bad journalism sells as well. And, bad journalism—stories that simply repeat government claims or that reinforce what the public wants to hear instead of offering independent reporting—is cheaper and easier to produce.”

Entertainment

Media outlets such as People magazine, TMZ, and entertainment blogs such as Perez Hilton keep us up to date on the daily comings and goings of our favorite celebrities. We use technology to watch sports, go to the movies, play video games, watch YouTube videos, and stream music on a daily basis. Most mass communication simultaneously entertains and informs. We often turn to media during our leisure time to provide an escape from boredom and relief from the predictability of our everyday lives . We rely on media to take us places we could not afford to go or imagine, acquaint us with bits of culture, and make us laugh, think, or cry. Entertainment can have the secondary effect of providing companionship and/or catharsis through the media we consume .

Transmission

Mass media is a vehicle to transmit cultural norms, values, rules, and habits . Consider how you learned about what’s fashionable in clothes or music. Mass media plays a significant role in the socialization process. We look for role models to display appropriate cultural norms, but all too often, not recognizing their inappropriate or stereotypical behavior. Mainstream society starts shopping, dressing, smelling, walking, and talking like the person in the music video, commercial, or movies. Why would soft drink companies pay Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift millions of dollars to sell their products? Have you ever bought a pair of shoes or changed your hairstyle because of something you encountered in the media? Obviously, culture, age, type of media, and other cultural variables factor into how mass communication influences how we learn and perceive our culture.

Mobilization

Mass communication functions to mobilize people during times of crisis (McQuail). Think back to the Boston Marathon bombing. Regardless of your association to the incident, Americans felt the attack as a nation, and people followed the news until they found the perpetrators. With instant access to media and information, we can collectively witness the same events taking place in real time somewhere else, thus mobilizing a large population of people around a particular event . The online community Reddit.com is a key example of the internet’s proactivity. While the FBI was investigating the bombing, the Reddit community was posting witness photos and trying to help identify the culprits. People felt they were making a difference.

Mass communication functions to validate the status and norms of particular individuals, movements, organizations, or products. The validation of particular people or groups serves to enforce social norms (Lazarsfeld and Merton). If you think about most television dramas and sitcoms, who are the primary characters? What gender and ethnicity are the majority of the stars? What gender and ethnicity are those that play criminals or those considered abnormal? The media validates particular cultural norms while diminishing differences and variations from those norms. A great deal of criticism focuses on how certain groups are promoted and others marginalized by how they are portrayed in mass media.

Functions of media that include surveillance, correlation, sensationalization, entertainment, transmission, mobilization, and validation.

Figure 13.5: Functions of media Image Spaynton is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Given the power of the various functions of mass communication, we need to be reflective about its presence in our lives (McLuhan and Fiore). We will now turn our attention to the study of mass communication by looking at what mass communication scholars study and how they study it.

The public transfer of messages through media or technology-driven channels to a large number of recipients from an entity, usually involving some type of cost or fee (advertising) for the user.

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8.1: A Definition and Brief History of Mass Communication

Learning Objectives

Define mass communication.
Identify events that impacted the adaptation of mass media.
Explain how different technological transitions have shaped media industries.
Identify four roles the media perform in society.

A Brief History of Mass Media/Communication

“Well, how did I get here?” a baffled David Byrne sings in the Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime.” The contemporary media landscape is so rich, deep, and multifaceted that it’s easy to imagine American media consumers asking themselves the same question. People can turn on their television and find 24-hour news channels, sports channels, as well as music videos, nature documentaries, and reality shows about everything from hoarders to fashion models. That’s not to mention movies available on-demand from cable providers. We watch television, film, and video available online for streaming or downloading from creators like Netflix and Hulu, curators like Tubi and Crunchyroll, or Network-specific like Disney+, CBS All Access, HBOmax, or NBC Peacock. The estimated total U.S. daily newspaper circulation (print and digital combined) in 2020 was 24.3 million for weekdays and 25.8 million for Sunday, each down 6% from the previous year.

Books and Newspapers

The printing press is a device that allows for the mass production of uniform printed matter, mainly text in the form of books, pamphlets and newspapers. It was created in China sometime during the first millennium with the oldest surviving document being The Diamond Sutra from 868 A. D. The printing press revolutionized society in China before being further developed in Europe 600 years later by German Johannes Gutenberg when he created the Gutenberg press.

As Europeans colonized the land that would come to be called the United States of America, the newspaper was an essential medium. At first, newspapers helped the Europeans stay connected with events in their respective countries. But as a more common way of life started throughout the states newspapers helped give expression to a burgeoning “American” culture. Political scientist Benedict Anderson has argued that newspapers helped forge this sense of national identity by treating readers across the country as part of one unified group with common goals and values. Newspapers, he said, helped create an “imagined community.”

In the 1830s, the major daily newspapers faced a new threat with the rise of the penny press—newspapers that were low-priced broadsheets. These papers served as a cheaper, more sensational daily news source and privileged news of murder and adventure over the dry political news of the day. While earlier newspapers catered to a wealthier, more educated audience, the penny press attempted to reach a wide swath of readers through cheap prices and entertaining (often scandalous) stories. The penny press is the forerunner to today’s gossip tabloids.

Radio, Television, Film

In the early decades of the 20th century, the first major non-print forms of mass media—film and radio—exploded in popularity. Radios, which were less expensive than telephones and widely available by the 1920s, especially had the unprecedented ability to allow huge numbers of people to listen to the same event at the same time. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge’s pre-election speech reached more than 20 million people. Radio was a boon for advertisers, who now had access to a large and captive audience. An early advertising consultant claimed that the early days of radio were “a glorious opportunity for the advertising man to spread his sales propaganda” thanks to “a countless audience, sympathetic, pleasure-seeking, enthusiastic, curious, interested, approachable in the privacy of their homes (Briggs & Burke, 2005).

The reach of radio also further helped forge an American culture. The medium was able to downplay regional differences and encourage a unified sense of the American lifestyle—a lifestyle that was increasingly driven and defined by consumer purchases. “Americans in the 1920s were the first to wear ready-made, exact-size clothing…to play electric phonographs, to use electric vacuum cleaners, to listen to commercial radio broadcasts, and to drink fresh orange juice year-round.

The post-World War II era in the United States was marked by prosperity, and by the introduction of a seductive new form of mass communication: Television. In 1946, there were about 17,000 televisions in the entire United States. Within seven years, two-thirds of American households owned at least one set. As the United States’ gross national product (GNP) doubled in the 1950s, and again in the 1960s, the American home became firmly ensconced as a consumer unit.

Broadcast television was the dominant form of mass media. From the ’60s to ’90s there were just three major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS), and they controlled over 90 percent of the news programs, live events, and sitcoms viewed by Americans. On some nights, close to half the nation watched the same show! Some social critics argued that television was fostering a homogenous, conformist culture by reinforcing ideas about what “normal” American life looked like. But television also contributed to the counterculture of the 1960s. The Vietnam War was the nation’s first televised military conflict, and nightly images of war footage and war protestors helped intensify the nation’s internal conflicts.

Broadcast technology, including radio and television, had such a hold of the American imagination that newspapers and other print media found themselves having to adapt to the new media landscape. Print media was more durable and easily archived, and allowed users more flexibility in terms of time—once a person had purchased a magazine, they could read it whenever and wherever they’d like. Broadcast media, in contrast, usually aired programs on a fixed schedule, which allowed it to both provide a sense of immediacy but also impermanence—until the advent of digital video recorders (DVRs) in the 21st century, it was impossible to pause and rewind a television broadcast.

The media world faced drastic changes once again in the 1980s and 1990s with the spread of cable television. During the early decades of television, viewers had a limited number of channels from which to choose. In 1975, the three major networks accounted for 93 percent of all television viewing. By 2004, however, this share had dropped to 28.4 percent of total viewing, thanks to the spread of cable television. Cable providers allowed viewers a wide menu of choices, including channels specifically tailored to people who wanted to watch only golf, weather, classic films, sermons, or videos of sharks. Still, until the mid-1990s, television was dominated by the three large networks. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, an attempt to foster competition by deregulating the industry, actually resulted in many mergers and buyouts of small companies by large companies. The broadcast spectrum in many places was in the hands of a few large corporations. In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loosened regulation even further, allowing a single company to own 45 percent of a single market (up from 25 percent in 1982).

Technological Transitions Shape Media Industries

New media technologies both spring from and cause cultural change. For this reason, it can be difficult to neatly sort the evolution of media into clear causes and effects. Technological innovations such as the steam engine, electricity, wireless communication, and the Internet have all had lasting and significant effects on American culture. Electricity altered the way people thought about time, since work and play were no longer dependent on the daily rhythms of sunrise and sunset. Wireless communication collapsed distance. The Internet revolutionized the way we store and retrieve information.

The contemporary media age can trace its origins back to the electrical telegraph, patented in the United States by Samuel Morse in 1837. Thanks to the telegraph, communication was no longer linked to the physical transportation of messages. Suddenly, it didn’t matter whether a message needed to travel five or five hundred miles. Telegraph lines began to stretch across the globe, making their own kind of worldwide web.

Not long after the telegraph, wireless communication (which eventually led to the development of radio, television, and other broadcast media) emerged as an extension of telegraph technology. Although many 19th-century inventors, including Nikola Tesla, had a hand in early wireless experiments, it was Italian-born Guglielmo Marconi who is recognized as the developer of the first practical wireless radio system. This mysterious invention, where sounds seemed to magically travel through the air, captured the world’s imagination. Early radio was used for military communication, but soon the technology entered the home.

The 19th-century development of photographic technologies would lead to the later innovations of cinema and television. As with wireless technology, several inventors independently came up with photography at the same time, among them, the French inventors, Joseph Niepce and Louis Daguerre, and British scientist William Henry Fox Talbot. In the United States, George Eastman developed the Kodak camera in 1888. Moving pictures were first seen around the turn of the century, with the first U.S. projection hall opening in Pittsburgh in 1905. By the end of the 1930s, Americans were watching color films with full sound, including Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz .

Television existed before World War II but really began to take off in the 1950s. In 1947, there were 178,000 television sets made in the United States; five years later, there were 15 million. Radio, cinema, and live theater all saw a decline in the face of this new medium that allowed viewers to be entertained with sound and moving pictures without having to leave their homes.

For the last stage in this fast history of media technology, how’s this for a prediction? In 1969, management consultant Peter Drucker predicted that the next major technological innovation after television would be an “electronic appliance” that would be “capable of being plugged in wherever there is electricity and giving immediate access to all the information needed for schoolwork from first grade through college.” He said it would be the equivalent of Edison’s light bulb in its ability to revolutionize how we live. He had, in effect, predicted the computer. He was prescient about the effect that computers and the Internet would have on education, social relationships, and the culture at large. The inventions of random access memory (RAM) chips and microprocessors in the 1970s were important steps along the way to the Internet age. As Briggs and Burke (2005) note, these advances meant that “hundreds of thousands of components could be carried on a microprocessor.” The reduction of many different kinds of content to digitally stored information meant that “print, film, recording, radio and television and all forms of telecommunications [were] now being thought of increasingly as part of one complex.”

Mass Communication – A Definition

Now that we understand the history of mass communication, let’s circle back to defining what mass communication and why it is important in society. We define communication as the process of generating meaning by sending and receiving verbal and nonverbal symbols and signs that are influenced by multiple contexts. Mass Communication does that on a grander scale as it imparts or exchanges information to a wide range of people. Even a brief history of media and mass communication can leave one breathless. The speed, reach, and power of the technology are humbling. Evolution can seem almost natural and inevitable, but it is important to stop and ask a basic question: Why? Why do media and mass communication play such an important role in our lives and culture ? According to the website Chron.com we see that the four functions of mass communications are: surveillance, correlation, cultural transmission, and entertainment:

Media provide entertainment acting as a springboard for our imaginations, a source of fantasy, and an outlet for escapism.
Media provide information and education . Information can come in many forms and often blurs the line with entertainment.
Media provide public forums for the discussion of important issues.
Media provide watchdog services to monitor government, business, and other institutions . Online journalists today try to uphold this role.

Thinking more deeply, we can recognize that certain media are better at certain roles. Media have characteristics that influence how we use them. While some forms of mass media are better suited to entertainment, others make more sense as a venue for spreading information. The 1960s media theorist Marshall McLuhan took these ideas one step further with the phrase “the medium is the message.” McLuhan emphasized that each medium delivers information in a different way and that content is fundamentally shaped by that medium. For example, although television news has the advantage of offering video and live coverage, making a story come vividly alive, it is also a faster-paced medium. That means stories get reported in different ways than print. A story told on television will often be more visual, have less information, and be able to offer less history and context than the same story covered in a monthly magazine. This feature of media technology leads to interesting arguments. For example, some people claim that television presents “dumbed down” information. Others disagree. In an essay about television’s effects on contemporary fiction, writer David Foster Wallace (1997) scoffed at the “reactionaries who regard TV as some malignancy visited on an innocent populace, sapping IQs and compromising SAT scores while we all sit there on ever fatter bottoms with little mesmerized spirals revolving in our eyes…Treating television as evil is just as reductive and silly as treating it like a toaster with pictures.”

We do not have to cast value judgments but can affirm: People who get the majority of their news from a particular medium will have a particular view of the world shaped not just by the content of what they watch but also by its medium . Or, as computer scientist Alan Kay (1994) put it, “Each medium has a special way of representing ideas that emphasize particular ways of thinking and de-emphasize others.” The Internet has made this discussion even richer because it seems to hold all other media within it—print, radio, film, television, and more. If indeed the medium is the message, the Internet provides us with an extremely interesting message to consider.

Key Terms & Concepts

mass communication
public forums

Briggs, A., & Burke, P. (2005). A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet . Polity Press.

Kay, A. (1994, May). The Infobahn is Not the Answer. Wired .

Wallace, D. F. (1997). A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again . Little Brown.

Licensing and Attribution: Content in this section is a combination of:

9.1: Mass Communication – A Definition and 9.2: Quick Look – Mass Communication and Media in Competent Communication (2nd edition) by Lisa Coleman, Thomas King, & William Turner. It is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

1.4: How Did We Get Here? The Evolution of Media in Mass Communication, Media, and Culture by Anonymous on LibreTexts. It is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Mass Communication

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Definitions, Concepts, and Models
Journalists and Other Sources of Information
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Recipients and Audience
Media Effects and Consequences

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Mass Communication by Hans-Bernd Brosius , Veronika Karnowski LAST REVIEWED: 23 February 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 23 February 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0022

Mass communication can be best described by its counterparts. With regard to the number of people involved, mass communication has many participants, whereas interpersonal communication has few. With regard to visibility, mass communication is highly visible and public; private communication is hidden from others. Mass-communication messages are mostly provided by media professionals who collect, process, structure, and distribute information. It is a one-to-many communication with little feedback possibilities. In mass societies, mass communication is probably the most effective way of finding, discussing, and resolving issues that are relevant for the existence of a given society. Accordingly, research in mass communication is mainly concerned with its effects. Scholars have developed many theories—such as agenda setting—that are focusing on the beneficial and detrimental effects of the mass media. Many other topics are indirectly related to the effects of mass communication, such as freedom of the press, journalism, or media systems, but also entertainment. The internet and its diverse communication modes serve as a challenge to this role of mass communication. Mass communication is often framed within a normative point of view: Mass media, particularly radio, television, and other instances of audiovisual communication, enable a mass society to exchange views effectively on important problems and issues, thus helping democracies to come to the right decisions. In terms of usage, however, audiovisual mass media mostly carry entertainment content. Entertainment, however, might not be without political and societal consequences (e.g., cultivation theory). Although mass-communication content includes many genres and modalities and appears across all media, this entry focuses more on processes and intellectual arcs that transcend any single type of content.

There are only a few textbooks explicitly dedicated to mass communication; most of them address communication science in general or special topics in mass communication such as mass-communication effects. McQuail 2010 and Baran 2008 are probably the most prominent exceptions to this. Easy to read but rather old is the “milestones” project, Lowery and DeFleur 1995 . Besides these textbooks addressing undergraduate students, there are readers such as McQuail 2002 and Katz, et al. 2002 assembling texts by different authors in various topics in mass communication. Additionally, some books on communication science in general are considered textbooks as they are relevant to the smaller field of mass communication. These include Berger, et al. 2010 and Schulz 2010 , which give excellent overviews of various topics in mass communication.

Baran, Stanley J. 2008. Mass communication theory: Foundations, ferment, and future . 5th ed. Boston: Wadsworth.

This volume is a timely and highly accessible review of research and theory in mass communication. An essential reading for undergraduate students in mass communication.

Berger, Charles R., Michael E. Roloff, and David R. Roskos-Ewoldsen, eds. 2010. The handbook of communication science . 2d ed. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Despite being devoted to the more general field of communication science, the second edition of this handbook is also helpful to advanced students and academics seeking overviews on mass-communication-related themes.

Katz, Elihu, John Durham Peters, Tamar Liebes, and Avril Orloff, eds. 2002. Canonic texts in media research: Are there any? Should there be? How about these? Cambridge, UK: Polity.

This edited volume is a first attempt to establish canonic texts in the field. Despite being heavily criticized for this undertaking, the editors produced a book equally valuable to advanced students and academics in the field.

Lowery, Shearon A., and Melvin L. DeFleur, 1995. Milestones in mass communication research: Media effects . 3d ed. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Dedicated to seminal work in the field of media effects. In short articles, the authors explain circumstances, theoretical background, methods, results, and effects of the most prominent academic work in media effects.

McQuail, Denis. 2010. McQuail’s mass communication theory . 6th ed. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Denis McQuail’s textbook on mass communication theory can already be considered a classic. Highly accessible, it is especially useful to undergraduate students in the field.

McQuail, Denis, ed. 2002. McQuail’s reader in mass communication research . London: SAGE.

This reader offers a selection of original articles on various topics in mass communication. It therefore presents a good choice of primary literature for undergraduate students.

Schulz, Peter J., ed. 2010. Communication theory . 4 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

This book provides a broad range of essays on all kinds of topics in communication studies. This timely summary of the field is a key reading both for students and academics in the field.

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mass communication

Quick reference.

‘One-to-many’ messages technologically mediated through the mass media, making this a distinctively modern form of communication. As a form of long-distance communication it has particular affordances ( see distance communication). In terms of communicative functions, its defenders tend to stress information and education functions, while its detractors dwell on entertainment and persuasion functions. The dramatic difference of scale from interpersonal communication highlights the issue of potential influence, leading initially to fears about mass manipulation which later proved to involve an overestimation of media power ( see also Frankfurt school; hypodermic model; manipulative model). From a sociological perspective a key difference is its framing within institutions ( see mass media). To be characterized as mass communication, widespread distribution and access are necessary conditions. Issues of power relations are more significant than in other forms of communication. As a form of long-distance communication it has particular affordances ( see distance communication). There is no necessary association with the pejorative concept of a mass audience: although the audience is anonymous and widely dispersed, it is also vastly heterogeneous. While it may be live or recorded, it is primarily asynchronous communication—live two-way communication through a mass medium occurs only in such special cases as radio or television phone-ins (which involve broadcast interpersonal communication). Feedback is thus very limited and indirect: it is basically a one-way process. For Mills in 1956, this was one of the two key sociological characteristics of mass communication: the other was that relatively few people could be mass communicators. However, none of these ‘limitations’ renders audiences passive ( see active audience theory; uses and gratifications). Technologically, mass communication is conducted through verbal text, graphics, and/or audio-visual media (e.g. film, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.). The diversity of these means (and the need for very different communicative techniques) limits the usefulness of the term mass communication to a broad umbrella concept.

From: mass communication in A Dictionary of Media and Communication »

Subjects: Media studies

Mass Communication: Functions, Characteristics, Types

Mass communication is our everyday experience. Watching television, listening to the radio, or reading a magazine or newspaper are the various types of mass communication we encounter daily. Let’s understand mass communication.

What is Mass Communication?

Mass communication is set apart due to the complexity of the process: the rules and conventions involved in understanding the communication product, the way shared experiences are created for a mass audience, and the interpretation of meanings in a system virtually devoid of feedback.

The concept of Mass Communication entails transmitting messages anonymously to a large number of assorted, heterogeneous people using technological tools called mass media. The recipients or receivers of the messages delivered through the process of Mass communication are also called the Audience.

The word ‘Mass’ in this context of Mass Communication studies would mean a large number of people who are heterogeneous, assorted, and anonymous in nature.

‘Large’ here would mean a relatively big audience or people who are many in number. However, it does not include everyone. People have their own choices when it comes to the consumption of mass-mediated messages.

‘Assorted’ here would mean a varied lot. Mass Media Channels have a huge audience, but they are often assorted and spread out.

They need not always be accumulated in the same place. The audience for a particular Media channel can differ not just from place to place but even within the confines of a house.

For instance, the children in the house may prefer to watch cartoons on a particular channel, while the parents may want to watch news, sports, or any other tele-serial. The audience is scattered. Children in different homes from all across India may be watching a particular cartoon.

Due to satellite technology, this serial could even have an audience across countries. They may or may not be from a particular geographical context. They are assorted and from different places.

However, for a Mass Media channel like a Community Radio, the audience is normally a particular community of people to whom the channel caters.

‘Heterogeneous’ here would mean that the audience includes different types of people. A Mass Media channel may have viewers from rich or poor backgrounds, educated or uneducated based on the content, it could be youth or adults, bureaucrats or ordinary middle-class family members.

‘Anonymous’ would mean that the audience is nameless and unspecified. While analysis can predict the number of hits a channel gets or the popularity a particular serial or book garners, one cannot identify the specific characteristics of every individual audience member.

ou may identify the place in which your audience exists but you will not be able to identify the person by his or her name. The Audience is Anonymous.

Rowland Lorimer, in his article titled Mass Communication – Redefinitional Notes, writes a very apt definition for Mass Communication. He does not confine Mass Communication to a single definition. Rather, he explains and includes the old and new forms of Mass Mediums in his concept of Mass Communication. He says:

Mass Communication is state- and interstate-organised transmission of intelligence, including;

Centralized Mass information or entertainment dissemination (encompassing radio, television, newspapers, film magazines, books, recorded and performed Music and Advertising) (Lorimer)
Decentralized information or entertainment dissemination: On the World Wide Web by individuals or organizations either through ready access to or wide distribution of information or entertainment products through sometimes state-regulated, publicly accessible channels like the web or email. (Lorimer)
Public Mass Communication: Wherein the exchange of intelligence at the societal level among individuals or small or large groups is by means of publicly accessible, sometimes state-regulated channels. (Lorimer)

Mass Communication thus includes:

Print Media – Newspapers, books, Magazines, Journals, Brochures, Pamphlets, Newsletters, documents, etc.
Electronic Media – Radio, Television, Fax, Movies/Cinema, Audio-visuals, etc.
New Media – Cell phones, Smart Phones, World Wide Web, Internet, Social Networking Forums, OTT (Over the Top Content), etc.

Definitions of Mass Communication

Mass communication is a special kind of social communication involving distinctive characteristics of the audience, the communication experience, and the communicator.

According to Wright, in mass communication, the audience is relatively large, heterogeneous, and anonymous to the source. The experience is public, rapid, and fleeting. The source works through a complex organization rather than in isolation, and the message may represent the efforts of many different people (Wright, 1086:5-8).

Judy C. Pearson and Paul E. Nelson (1997:345) define; “Mass communication as the process of understanding and sharing meaning through mediated messages to a broad audience.”

Keval Kumar: The process of delivering information, ideas, and attitudes to a sizable, diversified audience through the use of media designed for that purpose is called Mass Communication.

C.V Nasimha Reddi: Mass Communication can be defined as ‘a process whereby mass-produced messages are transmitted to large, anonymous, and heterogeneous masses of receivers’. By ‘mass-produced,’ we mean putting the content or message of mass communication in a form suitable to be distributed to large masses of people.

Littlejohn and Foss: The process whereby media organizations produce and transmit messages to large publics and the process by which those messages are sought, used, understood, and influenced by the audience.

McQuail: The only one of the processes of communication operating at the society-wide level, readily identified by its institutional characteristics.

Berger: Mass communication is the public transfer of messages through media or technology-driven channels to a large number of recipients from an entity, usually involving some cost or fee (advertising) for the user. The sender is often a person in some large media organization; the messages are public, and the audience tends to be large and varied.

Tim O Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, and Fiske (1983): Mass Communication is the practice and product of providing leisure entertainment and information to an unknown audience by means of corporately financed, industrially produced, stage-regulated, high-technology, privately consumed commodities in the modern print, screen, audio, and broadcast media.

Thompson (1995): Mass communication is the “institutionalized production and generalized diffusion of symbolic goods via the fixation and transmission of information or symbolic content.”

Please note that some of these definitions were written before new media and digital technology were developed. So, they do not include the concept of mass communication that has arisen post-arrival of the internet, cell phones, CD-ROM games, and other social networking forums and OTT platforms.

10 Characteristics of Mass Communication

Mass communication can be identified by the following characteristics:

Mass communication is a special kind of social communication. It requires a social orientation and techniques to communicate with the public.
Mass communication deals with an audience that is relatively large, heterogeneous, and anonymous to the speaker or source.
Mass communication involves a public, rapid, and fleeting experience. It is intended for rapid consumption by a great number of people, and the communication experience is short and temporary.
Mass communication is a process of understanding and sharing information with a large audience.
Mass communication involves a mediated message. Every aspect of mass communication is mediated, and mediated encounters differ from personal encounters. Firstly, the sensory input potential for receivers is more limited. Secondly, receivers of a mediated message have little or no control over its sources; feedback is extremely limited. Finally, the sources of mediated messages are either known in a limited way or not known at all, only imagined.
Mass communication works through a complex organization. It operates in collaboration with the audience, not in isolation.
Mass communication lacks feedback. The feedback in mass communication is almost nonexistent or very limited.
Mass communication represents the efforts of many different people. No single person can engage in mass communication independently. It requires the involvement of many people with various skills to transmit mass communication to the audience.

10 Importance of Mass Communication in Business

Business produces goods and services to satisfy human needs and wants. A market is a set of actual and potential buyers of a product.

Therefore, businesses must convey product information to the market so that customers can make informed buying decisions. Mass communication plays a vital role in establishing a relationship with the market.

Mass Attraction

Wide coverage, greater sales, international trade, sales promotion, creating new markets, image development, recruitment, announcing changes, mobilizing public opinion.

Mass communication is a powerful tool for attracting a large number of people to a product. Attractive and interesting messages are communicated to the masses through various media channels. Electronic media, in particular, provide both visual and auditory elements that make product information more appealing to people.

Mass communication reaches a wide geographical area in a short amount of time. It can disseminate product information across a large part of the country and the world. No other communication medium can compete with mass media in terms of coverage.

Mass communication helps organizations achieve higher sales volumes by reaching a larger market through widespread product information dissemination, both domestically and internationally.

Mass communication is essential for creating foreign markets for products, and enabling international trade. In the world of free-market economies, mass communication spreads product messages globally, allowing domestic companies to expand internationally.

Mass communication is an effective tool for creating a large market within a short time frame, which is crucial for successful sales promotion efforts. It allows organizations to generate temporary market expansion, which can potentially become permanent with other promotional measures.

Mass communication assists in creating markets for new products. It uses mass media to convey information about new products, including brand names, quality, uses, pricing, authenticity, certifications, and availability. This helps build consumer confidence and faith in the new product.

Mass media helps organizations develop a positive public image in the community or country. It conveys information about the organization’s mission, social activities, educational initiatives, and community development efforts, ultimately enhancing its reputation and market presence.

Mass communication allows organizations to publicize job openings through various channels, encouraging qualified candidates to apply for positions. This process helps organizations select the most suitable candidates, ensuring their sustainability.

Mass communication effectively conveys messages about changes in an organization, such as changes in address, identity, trademarks, trade names, or quality specifications. This helps protect the organization’s market presence.

Businesses often require public support to exert pressure on governments or legislative bodies to prevent unfavorable regulations or alleviate burdensome ones.

Mass communication enables organizations to inform the public and shape public opinion in their favor, influencing government decisions that affect their operations.

5 Functions of Mass Communication

Mass communication is more than just a means of communication; it contributes to our economy, influences social conventions, and shapes our political debates.

In fact, mass communication is like any other mass production industry; it produces a product that contributes to the national economy.

The following is a description of the functions of mass communication from various dimensions:

Economic Role

Social arbitrator role, political role, marketing role, recruiting role.

Mass communication is carried out by mass media. The media industries have become among the largest corporations, both domestically and internationally.

Media corporations in the USA, such as Time-Warner, Disney, and Viacom, generated over $10 billion in revenue in 1994 (Broadcasting and Cable, 1995:6-7).

Another report shows that consumers spent $16.7 billion on mass-distributed books, $9 billion on prerecorded music, and almost $5 billion on movie tickets in 1992 (Standard and Poor Survey, USA). Other economic factors like employment, rent payments, income tax, etc., also benefit significantly from mass media enterprises.

Mass communication acts as a social arbitrator between the cultural phenomena of a society. The role of mass communication in social arbitration suggests that it decides what is important for us.

The virtues of working hard, getting an education, advocating for education for all, family planning, and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps have been repeated in radio and television programs, dramas, novels, and magazine stories until they have become a part of our social fabric.

The significance of mass media as a cultural industries becomes apparent from two important consequences:

First, the media become a debating ground for our system of values and beliefs.
Second, media effects are not simple or direct but have wider societal impacts. It affects a large part of the cultural fabric. The media propose which issues are worthy of our thoughts and even suggest how we should think about them.

Mass communication is also active in the arena of ideological debate within a nation. Journalists attempt to serve as watchdogs of the political process.

Political and social agendas are both challenged and validated through information and entertainment media. Mass media influences the political process through a complex array of conditions that include the way news is presented, the use of advertising, and the organization of political campaigns.

Radio and television now affect not only those who have access to political power but also those who can get elected. The mass media set the agenda for more than just political campaigns.

They often serve as the voice of the government. There has always been an adversarial relationship between journalists and the government, but with changing phenomena, the members of the process increasingly find themselves dependent on the government for access to information.

Mass media is widely used for marketing promotion of goods and services to create, maintain, and increase the market for a product.

Mass media makes national and global market promotion campaigns possible. Market surveys to estimate customer response, choice, preference, demand, etc., for a particular product are also conducted through mass media.

Mass communication plays a vital role in attracting qualified candidates for job openings within an organization.

Advertising in mass media provides ample scope for human resource management to convey, attract, and convince potential human resources to apply and fill positions with the right persons. In this open market and technologically homogeneous global economy, human resources are the only resource that can make a difference and provide a competitive edge for a firm.

Mass media plays a strong facilitating role in searching for and placing the right person in the right place.

26 Methods of Modes of Mass Communication

In today’s technologically advanced world, mass communication has evolved beyond traditional mediums to encompass a vast array of digital and interactive platforms. This essay delves into the multifaceted landscape of mass communication, exploring both time-honored and contemporary methods.

In the modern world, characterized by technological advancements, the internet, and blockchain, the modes/methods of mass communication have expanded and evolved. Here’s a comprehensive list that includes both traditional and contemporary methods:

Motion Pictures

Social media platforms, video sharing platforms, webinars & live streams, mobile apps, instant messaging, online forums & communities, virtual reality (vr) & augmented reality (ar), chatbots & virtual assistants, instant messaging platforms, billboards & posters, transit media, digital signage, newsletters, direct emails.

Satellite Radio & TV

Cable Television

Books are an important mass medium in every society worldwide.

With increased literacy rates and greater affordability, books have become an enduring mass medium for people around the world. Textbooks, novels, dramas, comics, autobiographies, history books, and more serve as informational and entertaining books used for mass communication.

Even in our digital age, books remain a cornerstone of knowledge dissemination. From classic literature to modern non-fiction, books offer depth and nuance that few other mediums can match.

For instance, J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series not only entertained millions but also sparked global discussions about themes like friendship, bravery, and morality.

Newspapers are widely used mass media that provide information about almost every event affecting people worldwide. Daily newspapers have become a necessity in modern life, containing product information, advertisements, socio-political and economic events, comments, analyses, and more for the benefit of millions.

Newspapers have been the bedrock of daily information for centuries. The New York Times, for example, has been informing readers since 1851, covering everything from global politics to local events. While print circulation may have declined, many newspapers have successfully transitioned online, reaching even broader audiences.

Magazines are specialized printed mass media containing thoughtful analyses of socio-economic and political issues that impact human life. They promote an understanding of various complex matters related to science, politics, society, family, medicine, business, or industry.

Magazines cater to niche interests, providing in-depth analyses and specialized content. “National Geographic,” for instance, has been enlightening readers about the world’s wonders for over a century, using captivating photography and detailed articles.

Radio is a potent mass media medium operating under government and commercial entrepreneurship. Radio broadcasting, the transmission of sound via airwaves, began in the 1920s, introducing a set of communication challenges not previously encountered.

Estimating the audience size is difficult. Public radio primarily engages in broadcasting propaganda, news, educational dramas, stories, music, advertisements, analyses, and other public utility services.

Commercial radios broadcast music, talk shows, dramas, children’s radio programs, commercial content, advertisements, news, and analyses of various current events of public interest. Radio offers a more personalized medium.

Radio has a storied history, from FDR’s fireside chats, which provided solace during the Great Depression, to modern podcasts like “Serial,” which redefined narrative journalism for the digital age.

Television stands out as the most captivating mass medium today, operating under both commercial and public ownership. Commercial television networks either produce their own programs or acquire them from other sources, including companies that provide programming through various syndication deals.

In recent years, alternative sources of television programming, such as cable television, have emerged. Cable television delivers specialized channels often aimed at specific audiences. Public television is mandated to educate rather than profit, addressing viewers as citizens living in communities rather than consumers in a marketplace.

Television, regardless of ownership, offers news, entertainment, and educational content. It informs viewers about places, people, animals, politics, crime, and science. While these aspects are common, the differences between commercial and instructional television are evident.

Commercial television seeks to capture a large audience, relying on the desire to relax and be entertained. In contrast, instructional television appeals to the instinct to work, build, learn, and improve, asking viewers to take on responsibilities in exchange for later rewards.

Public television covers all matters of human interest and importance that are not presently suitable or available for support through advertising and are not intended for formal instruction.

Television remains a dominant force in mass communication. Shows like “Breaking Bad” or “The Office” don’t just entertain; they shape cultural conversations. News programs, from CNN to local broadcasts, play a crucial role in informing the public about current events.

Motion pictures are a highly attractive mass medium capable of conveying messages through written statements, sound, visuals, and moving images. They wield significant influence over the audience and can be in black and white or color.

Motion pictures include picturized versions of written or oral communication, some of which may involve human actors. Today, motion pictures include animated cartoons that convey a variety of socio-cultural messages to children and young people.

Additionally, motion pictures are now used for educational purposes, with distance education and virtual universities employing them to offer degrees in various academic fields.

Films have the power to transport audiences to different worlds, influence societal norms, and spark change. Movies like “Black Panther” not only entertain but also drive discussions about representation and cultural identity.

Websites serve as the digital storefronts and information hubs of the 21st century. From news portals like BBC and CNN to e-commerce giants like Amazon and eBay, websites have become the primary source of information, commerce, and entertainment for billions.

Personal or professional blogs offer a platform for individuals and organizations to share their perspectives, expertise, and stories. Influential bloggers, like Seth Godin, have utilized this medium to shape opinions and trends in various industries.

Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have not only transformed personal communication but have also reshaped global events. Movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter gained momentum and global recognition through social media, highlighting its power in mobilizing societal change.

YouTube, Vimeo, and TikTok have democratized video content creation. Independent creators can now reach global audiences, bypassing traditional media gatekeepers. For instance, YouTuber PewDiePie has garnered millions of subscribers, rivaling the viewership of many traditional TV shows.

This audio format has seen a resurgence in the digital age, with shows on topics ranging from true crime to educational content. “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “Stuff You Should Know” are examples of podcasts that have amassed vast audiences, rivaling traditional radio shows in popularity.

Platforms like Zoom and Twitch have made real-time broadcasting accessible to all. Educators, businesses, and entertainers utilize these platforms for everything from academic lectures to live gaming sessions.

With the proliferation of smartphones, mobile apps like Snapchat, Reddit, and Clubhouse have become primary communication channels for many, offering tailored experiences that range from news consumption to social networking.

Apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Messenger have transformed personal and professional communication, offering instant, encrypted messaging services that have become integral to daily interactions.

Platforms like Reddit, Quora, and niche forums provide spaces for communities to gather, discuss, and share knowledge on specific topics, fostering deep engagement and peer-to-peer learning.

These immersive technologies are redefining the boundaries of user experience. From gaming to education, VR and AR offer a level of engagement previously thought impossible.

For instance, medical students can now use VR to “walk through” 3D models of the human body, providing a hands-on learning experience without the need for real cadavers.

Beyond its association with cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology promises a new era of secure, decentralized communication and content distribution.

Platforms like Steemit, a blockchain-based blogging platform, exemplify the potential of blockchain in ensuring content authenticity and rewarding creators directly.

These AI-driven tools are revolutionizing customer service and personal assistance. Companies like Amazon with their “Alexa” or Apple’s “Siri” offer users instant answers, reminders, and even entertainment, streamlining daily tasks and providing information on demand.

Platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal have become integral to personal and professional communication.

Their end-to-end encryption, like in the case of Signal, ensures user privacy, while features like group chats and media sharing facilitate seamless interactions. Businesses are also leveraging these platforms for customer support, marketing, and internal communication.

These large-format advertisements are hard to miss. From the iconic Hollywood billboards promoting the latest movies to local posters advertising community events, they are a testament to the enduring power of visual advertising.

Apple’s “Think Different” campaign, for instance, utilized billboards to make a bold statement, becoming an emblematic representation of the brand’s ethos.

Advertisements on public transportation vehicles and infrastructure, such as buses, subways, and train stations, offer daily engagement opportunities for urban audiences.

For instance, Spotify’s humorous subway ads in New York City playfully highlighted users’ listening habits, creating a buzz and fostering engagement.

A modern evolution of traditional signage, digital signs offer dynamic content that can be updated in real-time. Found in various locations, from shopping malls to airports, they provide interactive information, advertisements, and entertainment.

For example, airports utilize digital signage to display flight information, while retail stores showcase promotions or product information, enhancing the consumer experience.

Modern newsletters, such as “TheSkimm,” have redefined the way we consume daily news. By offering curated content directly to subscribers’ inboxes, they provide a concise and efficient means of staying informed about the world.

Direct emails serve as targeted communication tools, often used for promotional or informational purposes. For instance, businesses frequently use direct emails to inform subscribers about sales, product launches, or company updates.

On a personal level, direct emails can be used for networking, job applications, or simply staying in touch with acquaintances. Their direct nature ensures that the message reaches the intended recipient without the distractions commonly found on social media or other platforms.

Satellite Radio & TV:

Platforms like SiriusXM offer specialized radio content, from Howard Stern’s interviews to in-depth sports coverage.

Networks like HBO have produced cultural touchstones, with shows like “Game of Thrones” becoming global phenomena.

The modes of mass communication are diverse and ever-evolving. From the tactile pages of books to the immersive realms of VR, each method offers unique strengths and reaches distinct audiences. As technology continues to advance, it’s certain that the landscape of mass communication will undergo even more transformative changes.

These modes/methods showcase the diverse ways in which information, entertainment, and educational content can be disseminated to audiences in today’s interconnected world. The integration of technology and the internet has significantly expanded the avenues for mass communication, allowing for real-time, interactive, and personalized content delivery.

10 Purpose of Mass Communication

Mass communication serves public messages quickly to a large number of people who are far away from the source of information.

The scope of mass communication is very extensive, and it deals with a variety of objectives. The purpose of using mass communication is that mass communication is very extensive and serves public messages quickly to a large number of people.

Mass communication’s 10 significant purposes are;

Inform People.
Build Public Opinion.
Circulate Government Policies.
Disseminate Health and Education Programs.
Provide Pleasure and Entertainment.
Establish Social Contact and Linkage.
Help in Facing Disaster And Calamity.
Highlight the Diplomatic Role.
Promote Political Ideologies.

Inform People

The most fundamental objective of mass communication is to provide information to mass people.

Information on mass communication may be related to education, weather, sports, products and services, public holidays, festivals, recreation, and entertainment.

Build Public Opinion

Another important objective of mass communication is to create public opinion on any national or international issue.

Mass media attempts to create public opinion by providing their audiences with a realistic picture of the world, the activities of the leaders, governmental policies, etc. Mass media also tries to build public opinion through special articles, editorials, and commentaries.

Mass communication aims to persuade people to bring about changes in their beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and thinking on issues like smoking, voting, religious convictions, donations, dowry culture, etc.

Moreover, business enterprises design various advertisements to persuade potential customers.

Circulate Government Policies

Another objective of mass communication is to announce and circulate government programs and policies. Mass media can bring such policies to the public notice very quickly.

Disseminate Health and Education Programs

The government takes various health and educational programs like vaccination, sanitation, birth control, open education, mass education, etc.

These health and education programs are disseminated and implemented through mass media like radio, television, films, newspapers, etc.

Provide Pleasure and Entertainment

The mass media are wonderful sources of pleasure and amusement. Almost all mass media have an entertainment component. Television and radio arrange various programs for the pleasure and amusement of mass people.

Newspapers and magazines publish articles on literary and cultural events, sports, stories, etc., that also provide entertainment to the readers.

Establish Social Contact and Linkage

Mass communication also tries to establish and maintain social contact and linkage among various races, tribes, or communities. Mass media creates social contact and linkage by sending messages of shared knowledge and experience.

For example,

a campaign to raise funds for the treatment of certain diseases or for performing certain social activities promotes social bondage and sympathy.

Help in Facing Disaster And Calamity

Mass communication also aims at creating public awareness to face natural and man-made disasters like floods, earthquakes, war, riots, etc., with due courage and energy.

Through mass media, necessary instructions, strategies, & programs are circulated so that people can take proactive preparation.

Highlight Diplomatic Role

In this uni-global world, every country wants to highlight its diplomatic role in global peacekeeping and development activities. Such a diplomatic role can conveniently be disseminated and highlighted through mass media.

Promote Political Ideologies

Political parties rely on mass media to promote their ideologies, plans, programs, and manifestos. With the help of mass media, they try to create public opinion in their favor.

From the above discussion, we can conclude that mass communication has diversified objectives. Different messages have different aims.

However, mass communication is mainly dedicated to ensuring the well-being of all classes of people in society.

Mass Communication is possible only in the presence of Technology. In many remote corners of India or in the world at large where there is no permeation of electricity, let alone technology, Mass Communication cannot happen.

Even in the case of Mass Communication, many countries have bans on certain channels, and only certain state-permitted content can be shown or shown.

However, for those who have access to it, Mass communication has made communication easier and simpler for ordinary individuals, in spite of a complex organization behind the scenes.

Mass communication refers to the process of disseminating information, thoughts, opinions, news, and messages to a large, dispersed population using mass media like broadcast media, digital media, social media, internet, and print media.

How is mass communication different from interpersonal communication?

Mass communication is different from interpersonal communication because the sender and receiver are separated in space and time. It is a mediated communication where an organization produces a message and is transmitted to an unknown and diverse audience, either electronically or mechanically.

What are some characteristics of mass communication?

Characteristics of mass communication include having a specific objective, public transmission of the message, delivering a common message to a vast and diverse audience, originating from a known source, being low cost, having limited knowledge about the audience, using various mass mediums, reaching a vast and heterogeneous audience, and having delayed feedback.

What are the primary functions of mass communication?

The main functions of mass communication are to inform, entertain, and educate people. This includes providing information to a large population, developing public opinion, persuading people to change their mindset, circulating information about government policies, offering entertainment, and promoting political ideologies.

The Essential Guide to Mass Communication: History, Methods, Ethics, and the Future

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Many things are said to make the world go around. It is not something often said about mass communication. Still, it is so integral to our lives - and always has been - that it is easy to take the dissemination of information and its associated methods and tools for granted.

Today, we use many information sources to see what is happening around us, locally, nationally, and globally, with more emerging all the time. As technology advances, we require up-to-the-minute information quickly and efficiently. Mass communication aims to meet these needs. However, it is not just a transmitter of messages to a passive audience; it also impacts and is impacted by the audience's culture and shifts of perception within that culture.

Main Topics Quick Links

What is Mass Communication?

Types of mass communication.

History of Mass Communication

Mass Communication Theories

Ethical issues for mass communications, what does the future of mass communications look like.

It is defined as broadcasting a message or messages simultaneously to a large audience, typically to people who do not have immediate access to the source (like a government, multinational organization, or a large business with a vast number of people to disseminate a message). It includes the person communicating, the method(s) they use to communicate, the content of the message, and the audience receiving the message.

Mass communication is a subarea of communications studies in the US and social science with some physical science elements - especially when designing systems and technology to transmit messages.

Typically, it is synonymous with broadcast and print media: radio, TV, film (small and large screen), print media, and advertising. However, with the advent of the internet in the 1990s, this perception of large organizations communicating to mass audiences has shifted. Through new media, smaller organizations have more access to mass communication, which is much cheaper than previously.

As these new channels and pathways grow, they bring new paradigms. So far, we've seen the development of targeted advertising, extensive data collection, analytics, and other digital tracking methods for more efficient marketing and information dissemination (called Big Data), all of which have potentially sinister and positive uses.

Further details, including information on other types and new media, are in the section on types of mass communication.

Generally, if a communication system fills these five functions, it is mass media:

Information : to feed or satisfy curiosity on behalf of an audience who wants to know more about an issue, to provide clarity where there may be confusion, and to help the receiving audience understand how they fit into society. This is most news media
Interpretation : To interpret information in ways that suit the audience - whether social bias in presentation, comparison to regional or personal experiences, or communicating complex ideas in layman's terms. This includes op-eds and talk radio
Instruction : This comes in two forms. It covers things like public broadcasting services: National Public Radio, and Public Broadcasting Service. These seek to provide educational content. It can also include Discovery Channel, The History Channel, and National Geographic
Bonding: This is everything from group chats with the family online during the COVID-19 pandemic, shared experiences of sporting events, or the coming together of people following a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina. The media can unite us, as exemplified in the days after 9/11
Diversion: Provided almost exclusively by entertainment media (television, movies, music, games), the diversion element helps us wind down, escape from our daily lives, and relax. They distract us from all the chores and stresses though they might also fill some of the other items on this list

For those interested in learning more about a graduate program, please consider our complete list of online master’s in mass communication programs .

Now that we have defined what mass communication is, it's essential to break down the types that we currently have. Some types of mass media fit into multiple categories with the addition of new technologies in the digital age. They are classified thus:

Printed Media

The history of mass communications below states the written word emerged around 35,000 years ago. The printing press emerged around 600 years ago, but printed media technically existed for thousands of years. Way before newspapers, the Romans and Greeks used scrolls, Egyptians used papyrus, and ancient China used paper to distribute information, even if that information was limited to an inner circle of elites or an educated few.

Today, printed media includes newspapers, magazines, professional publications, academic journals, comic books, graphic novels (photographic and illustrated communication is also printed media), and even local newsletters put through doors about upcoming events in printed media.

Outdoor and Transit Media

Although this has many similarities with printed media, it is considered a type of mass communication requiring its category. Outdoor and transmitted media typically tend to be advertising material (but not always). Billboards, commercial posters, banners, and advertising vehicles with billboards and posters that drive around a small area help to spread the word about an event.

They differ from printed media on several grounds:

Exposure is passive, encountered by chance when moving around. With printed media, the audience actively seeks a publication and engages with it
They use the environment to broadcast a message
Printed media may print thousands of items to send to one person or group. Outdoor and transit print a much smaller number, each of which will be viewable by many people

The critical difference is direct vs indirect exposure.

Broadcast Media

Anything that requires broadcasting a signal to send it, like a transmitter, and a receiving device to decrypt it and show it in a format that people can view, is considered broadcast media. This includes the big screen (movie theatres), the small screen, and radio broadcasts. There is no physical medium as with printing newspapers to distribute to vendors who then sell them. There is an invisible element that must be interpreted before the audience may engage with it.

In the US, TV & radio still command the largest audiences while print media continues to decline. Naturally, this includes cable, satellite, and traditional analog signal broadcasts where television is concerned.

Giant wall of screens and multimedia sources.

Digital Media

The most recent form of digital media is anything that exists in a digital world - requiring a computer to decode and process. The Internet is the most obvious form of digital media. All the above forms of media have either migrated or opened outlets on the internet but remain classed in those older forms because they remain their primary outlet, or that is where their traditions lie. Therefore podcasts (a form of radio), eBooks (a form of print media), and video platforms (a digital form of small-screen broadcasting) are considered part of this new medium – however, some straddle more than one type of mass communication. Websites and digital television are technically broadcast media at the same time.

Digital media also includes interactive digital elements, including online and offline gaming (traditional console gaming). It also includes mobile gaming, social media, and the web.

A History of Mass Communication

From cave art (which leaves physical signs of communication) and oral traditions (which do not) through the development of the written word to direct text-based messaging over the internet - almost everything humans have ever done has been to broadcast a message to an audience.

Mass communication is about sending one message to reach more than one person - whether travelers on the road encountering a land boundary or watching television. Civilization is a history of broadcasting messages within and outside the peer group to express cultural identity and convey unity, military might, glory, and other social messages.

Mass Communication in the Ancient World

We don't know when humans developed the ability to talk, but recent evidence suggests it did not start with anatomically modern humans (1). After the biological development of spoken language and before written language, any alphabet, or formal pictorial communication, mass communication almost certainly existed in a single form - word of mouth. This leaves nothing in the archaeological record, so we don't know how those ancient societies communicated outside the immediate groups. Still, monuments and art likely played a part in sending such messages.

If the main objective of mass communication is to inform as many people as possible about something originating from a single source, then in theory, that message may appear in any form. It may be difficult initially to see the building of substantial public works like the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Parthenon in Athens. Rome's Pantheon and the Great Wall of China are forms of mass communication, but they can have enormous reach and fulfill the same function as billboards today. Technically, ancient monument buildings are "outdoor and transit media," as listed in the last section, even if they primarily had cultural, religious, or practical functions (like defense).

These monuments were designed as messages to the world. The traveler carries those messages to their lands and other lands and the people they might talk to about the wonders they had seen.

Written Language - The Start of True Mass Communications

Written language almost certainly started with anatomically modern humans. The earliest surviving example is dated to the 35 th century BC. Around this time, most written material was not for mass consumption. They tended to be religious or governmental, with religion and ritual far more likely in these earliest phases. It wasn't long before these small pictures were used to form written words.

The earliest examples of written documents identified as such are the Kish Tablets. We don't know what they say as they represent a transition between early pictorial writing and the cuneiform that succeeded them (2). If not religious, it could be a written form of word-of-mouth storytelling, as many early pictorial depictions tended to be.

Cave art the world over is believed to be the recounting of stories of events - either actual or embellished for the sake of what we today call "artistic license." Ancient Egypt was the first society known to have a large tradition of prose and poetry, though most of it was religious and ritualistic (3). It is not known whether such creative works were disseminated widely as it is unclear how literate non-elite Egyptians were. Even if limited to society's wealthiest people, then the audience would have been relatively small: Ancient Egypt had a 5% literacy rate (4).

China is credited with starting the world's first newspaper. If claims are to be believed, this original newspaper ran for nearly 2,000 years, undergoing multiple technological changes, including a shift from starting as a government report towards a mass appeal. The essence of the publication in 200 BC was to inform people of what was going on in China at the time, unlike newspapers later.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Greek and Roman societies highly developed written communications to communicate messages across their respective societies. Rome's enormous scope meant that communicating between the far borders of modern northern England, across North Africa, the Levant, and modern Germany required a highly sophisticated system of communication. Rome is credited with creating the world's first formal postal service called Cursus Publicus (5), which was used to communicate messages out of Rome from the imperial authorities and to the masses via their governors. It was like a cross between a postal service and a public address network.

Invention of the Printing Press

Nothing changed until the 15 th century when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. In the decades that followed, the printing press revolutionized mass communications. It made written communication open to the masses and would eventually lead to affordable books and cheaper production of printed material.

Gutenberg's earliest printers were used to print information leaflets from the church summarizing the sins that would lead to purgatory. Gutenberg invented it, but as he was penniless, he invited Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer to invest in his idea. The three worked together for some time, so the Gutenberg Press was born (6). Their first significant print run was The Bible.

However, their relationship soured when Fust asked for his money back - feeling that Gutenberg had squandered the money instead of using it to develop technology. Gutenberg didn't have the money, so after using the other two men and losing, Fust and Schöffer were granted ownership of the device and the technology.

The impact of the printing press cannot be overstated. Books and other literature were mass-produced faster and quicker than ever before, and with printed Bibles, more people had access to religious texts. The printing press was believed to have a strong hand in causing the Reformation. In truth, powers critical of the Catholic Church had been there for hundreds of years but now had the chance to organize and use the emerging technology to their advantage. The printing press provided cheap access to printed Bibles and to those critics who could spread their information faster than the church authorities could counter it (7).

William Caxton was the following early major player in the early history of the printing press. The Englishman was the first person to take the invention to England. He is also understood to be the world's first book retailer whose business model was to sell books to the public. This was a key difference from Gutenberg as Caxton was selling religious texts and secular works of fiction. His first printed book was William Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (8).

Modern Newspapers & Journalism

As discussed in a previous section, newspapers were technically invented in China around 200 BC. Such information sheets continued; there was evidence of private ownership over such products in China in the 16th century. The modern newspaper as a mass-produced, mass-appeal printed document began in 1605 in Antwerp (then part of the Holy Roman Empire and now in modern Belgium). Called Relation and printed by Carolus, it was a weekly summary of events. The previous belief that the first newspaper began in Germany four years later was recently overturned and accepted by the World Association of News Publishers (9).

Britain abolished press licenses in 1695, opening mass communication to ordinary people - at least, to those able to afford the equipment and the ability to distribute it. In 1766, Sweden was the first country to enshrine freedom of the press in law (10). This is seen as the birth of journalism at a time when many other European powers were determined to keep a tight grip on information, treating the press as a line for government propaganda. When the US formalized its secession from the British Empire and became an independent republic, it too sought to ensure press freedom - with newspapers credited with helping spread information during the Revolutionary War. This came to be part of The First Amendment (11).

In truth, such steps had been coming for a century when John Milton criticized the English for requiring government approval to publish any book. This was in 1644, It is important to note that England was then in the grip of a civil war, with both sides using information leaflets as propaganda against the other. A landmark case in New York saw a newspaper publisher acquitted of seditious libel by a jury after the court found that his critique of the governor was accurate (10).

Niépce and Daguerre Develop True Photography

It is said that a single picture is worth a thousand words. Think of some of the most iconic photographs of all time, and you'll understand that many cannot be summed up quickly in just a few words. Earthrise from the Moon taken by the Apollo 11 crew, the Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympics, the student in Tiananmen Square standing in front of a line of tanks - the list goes on. Photography is a powerful medium that can say so much while saying so little. With the power to distribute widely, photography is a form of mass communication, even without accompanying words.

Precursor technologies to photographic imaging have existed since antiquity, with simultaneous developments in China and Greece. However, what we understand today as photographic technology goes back to around 1800 when a British inventor tried to capture images from a camera obscura using light-sensitive paper and silver nitrate. It was not successful, but technology progressed relatively rapidly through the century. In 1825, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce exposed an engraving to sunlight and copied it photographically (12), creating the first photocopy.

Niépce repeated his experiments, but Louis Daguerre took up the mantle after his death. In the 1830s, he created the first authentic photograph. His method was so successful that they named an entire type of photography after him - the daguerreotype (13). This was the first type of photographic image to include people. Previous versions in this century took so long to capture an image that they could not capture moving people. But the daguerreotype was fast enough to capture a man getting his shoes cleaned on a street scene in Paris. No other people are captured because they are moving too quickly.

Film photography emerged later that century; this would rule the industry for over a century until digital photography entered the early 21st century. Film photography is based on the same premise that led to the development of moving pictures.

Audio Recordings - From Wax Tablets to Digital Music

Music is one of the world's oldest forms of entertainment, going back to 40,000 BCE when the first bone flute is dated. It's likely such early music "performances" were limited to small groups, at least until urban civilization and the likely arrival of the theaters of the ancient world and their equivalents. Most temples in the ancient world would likely have had music performances. Even where we don't have physical remains of music devices, we have the songs in evidence.

For most of its history in the civilized world, music was limited to these small premises - food and drink establishments (taverns, pubs, bars), places of worship, theaters, and music halls. In the late 19 th century, the first devices to take music out of these small spaces and make it available to the masses were developed. The history of audio recording is broken into four eras (14):

Acoustic era: marked by speaking horns, which would cause a sensitive membrane to react. Typical examples include wax cylinders in the early era and phonographs using flat discs later, operating on the same principles and technology.
The electrical era is the age of the first electric microphones, amplifiers, and electronic recordings. This is the era of vinyl discs and - arguably - the mass music market industry developed in the early-to-mid 19 th century.
Magnetic era: The era of magnetic tape (including audio cassettes), hi-fi, and most importantly, sound engineering - the use of multitrack recording, which allowed for sound manipulation and better editing
Digital era: Beginning in 1975, nothing can compare to the rapid technological development that happened within the first two decades of the computing age (15). It allowed for no distortion, multiple sound layers, and quicker and cheaper editing, democratizing music production

Marconi, Braun, and the Development of Radio

The next major date in the advance of mass communications was 1895. That year, Italian electrical engineer Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi invented the "wireless telegraph" (16). Along with Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1909, the pair were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Braun is further credited with developing technology that led to the invention of television (17), although full credit for the visual medium goes to John Logie Baird in 1925.

It all began for Marconi when he was just a young man - aged 20. He built his own devices based on Hertz's experiments and decided to conduct his experiments during a thunderstorm. His device picked up radio waves from lightning, and he set out to recreate the effect, successfully doing so in the same year (1894). It was a simple experiment in which he made a bell ring on the other side of the room.

That was only the start. Marconi developed more devices to work over longer and longer distances, creating a workable system of long-distance communication. At about the same time, Karl Ferdinand Braun worked on similar systems but most notably developed the cathode ray tube, which would later form an integral part of television. Marconi later admitted to borrowing some of Braun's work, but their technologies went slightly different directions and essentially complemented each other. Braun invented the three-way antenna, allowing the sender to send a direct signal. This is later credited with inspiring radar and intelligent antennas.

Soon, these inventions led to widespread radio broadcasting, including the first radio stations, entertainment, and news. Radio has many more uses today. For example, it also forms the basis of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), transmitting data wirelessly.

Television and the Movies

Moving pictures or "flicker movies" have existed since the 19 th century. However, early moving pictures and later television and film were not the same - they operated through the rapid movement of still images too fast for the human eye to process as individual stills. The most common form of this was the kinetoscope. These were not technically mass communications, as though they were designed to be viewed by many people - but just one at a time could view them through the scope (18).

It didn't take long before the first cinemas appeared in Europe. The USA was not a big player in the early years of filmmaking; the heyday of the US would come in the 20th century. The main difference between the old kinetoscope technology and what came next was the use of film strips rather than rapid-spinning stills. This formed the basis of most movie theatres worldwide until relatively recently. Now, digital technology is the primary way we view movies in a theatre though the film is still used in some cases. Most movies now are shot digitally, while some still prefer film (19).

Cinemas are not always accessible to everyone. By the 1920s, everyone could bring small cinemas into their homes via television. John Logie Baird experimented with several devices and methods, declaring in 1924 that transmitting a moving image of silhouettes was possible. This success formed the basis of his later experiments.

In October 1925, he transmitted the first TV signal on grayscale - a ventriloquist’s dummy head. It would take moments for the first TV transmission of a human face nicknamed when Baird asked an office worker to join him.

Television is now one of the most accessible methods of mass communication in the world. Sets are relatively cheap, and it is estimated that 96.7% of households in the US owned at least one television set in 2011. Those who do not often choose not to own them - either because they do not consume TV media or prefer web streaming - rather than for economic reasons, though there are certainly those homes that do not have them purely due to poverty (20). The ownership of so-called "smart" televisions - those with internet connectivity and streaming services - was around 80% in 2021 (21).

Charles Francis Jenkins working on his early motion picture device later known as the television.

Internet and Digital Media

The Internet, or the World Wide Web, began in 1989 and was invented by Tim Berners Lee (22). Then, it was a scientific tool designed to facilitate the ease of rapid communication between researchers worldwide. Today, it is a global network of servers, interconnected computing networks using an internet protocol suite to communicate between networks and allow us to connect our devices wherever we are.

However, its history as a theory and a fledging technology goes back to 1960 when the US government researched packet switching as a military application. These technologies often start as military research, which will then filter through to academia, and finally into civilian use. Through the 1970s, the internet's precursor ARPANET acted to communicate between military and academic centers (23). When funding was granted for the National Science Foundation Network in 1980, along with private investment, the internet, as it was then, became a global scientific endeavor.

Soon, many private networks merged, commercial servers were linked in, and enterprise-level technology hooked up, setting up the path for the internet as we know it today. Growth was exponential, and it soon incorporated other technologies, such as telecommunications, to facilitate Internet access. The first websites for commercial use, direct communication, and soon online shopping arrived on the scene.

Social media is seen as a relative latecomer. However, it also originated in the 1960s (24), developed through so-called bulletin boards, right through to the multimedia platforms we all use today to post videos, short messages, and images.

The internet allows not just mass communication but a form of democratic access. Individuals and not just businesses can broadcast a message to potentially millions of people at once with little or no capital, a far cry from the investment needed in the early days of the printing press. It has facilitated the rise of independent magazines, small press publications, and self-published literature for little to no cost - making reaching huge audiences relatively easy.

As noted above, the history of mass communication goes back to prehistoric art, through the development of writing and early literature (including non-fiction), and through to the World Wide Web.

As it is an important development in human civilization and uses multiple technologies to help us achieve mass appeal, it has naturally become an academic study. As such, there are many theoretical models around which new forms and analyzing mass communication are framed. Mass communication academia studies how message sources develop a framework for a message, compose the message, send it, and how receiving audiences use their agency in receiving, interpreting, and processing it.

In the modern world, where we generally all have access to the same media, many mass communication theories have arisen to explain all this.

Hypodermic Needle Theory

The first theory was developed in the 1920s - purely from an objective viewpoint and based purely on social science principles.

Also, many of these early scientific theories were based on anecdotal evidence of media messages relaying a predictable and knowable framework. The theory was known as the "hypodermic needle theory" and sometimes "the bullet theory" (25). In brief, this is the idea that the sender strategically places meaning into a message and injects it directly into the recipient(s).

It wasn't new; the Hypodermic Needle Theory was little more than a modern repackaging of Aristotle's communication model that described three linear elements: a communicator, a message, and the audience, with the latter being a passive receiver rather than an active agent. The model fell flat during the much-hyped radio broadcast of War of the Worlds when theorists could study a real example. They found it lacking (26).

The following decades were an explosion of mass communications theories, largely driven by the technology behind it (though not solely) and adapting to new ways of doing things.

Circular Theoretical Models

Moving away from the linear approach to mass communication, three theories propose media communication is a circular process. The Shannon & Weaver model was the first to work on the assumption that communication is two-way while adding something called "noise" that would distort the message - acting like a filter (27). The Westley & Maclean model describes the (for the first time) idea of linear feedback - that the audience is capable of and communicates right back to the source. It also introduces an exciting paradigm where no communication has happened until the receiver responds to the message they are being sent (28).

The third, the De Fleur model, combines previous models and adds a third element - understanding the target audience (29). The model sees the recipient as an essential node in the communication process, not just a passive recipient blindly reacting to the message.

Agenda Setting Theory

This is a form by which the media essentially acts as a gatekeeper or polices the narrative or message. Agenda-setting theory is the idea that the media decides what issues are important (30) and focuses on those issues accordingly, often to the detriment of other issues. How much they focus on it raises the issue’s importance in the audience’s mind.

Agenda Setting Theory examines issues such as what goes on the front page of a newspaper or web news outlet and how much the media covers an issue. There are many reasons why they might focus on an issue - it may be important that as many people know as possible, or it may have a huge public interest even if not immediately concerning.

For its part, the media focuses on crafting a message to determine how the recipient ought to feel about the issue being presented. There are potentially sinister reasons for doing this. Is this a trivial matter being used to hide other issues that may be more important? On September 11th, 2001, a British MP said, "This is a good day to bury bad news," as the world focused on the 9/11 attacks. She commented on the UK budget, knowing it would contain elements the electorate would not like.

Since then, news media and politicians have used this philosophy to hide lousy news on days when something much worse has happened.

However, agenda-setting is not just about what we see in the news media and how politicians might manipulate the messages that we see. Entertainment may also use this to raise issues through storylines - TV dramas and movies about social issues can raise questions across media formats to accompany real-world events. So, it remains in the public perception.

Catharsis Theory

Almost exclusively associated with entertainment media, this concerns the well-being of a group receiving the message. It measures the relief of concern, stress, and rage while imparting a sense of calm and relaxation. There is also a sense of catharsis to see characters going through personal trauma - usually by seeing the acting part suffer. In essence, healthy outlets for violence and anger imbue the recipient with a sense of calm. Those who dispute that violent video games make people violent point to the masses of evidence that such violent games in which killing and blowing things up are common provide this catharsis (31).

Entertainment Education Theory

Developed in the 1960s, it began in South America following the success of a drama series about a rural Peruvian woman who moved to the big city and took up a sewing class. She subsequently developed her fashion brand and became a successful businesswoman. This fictional account, designed as a form of entertainment, had a massive impact on viewers. A considerable spike in sewing classes followed. In the wake of this, mass communication academia began looking at the concept of entertainment as a form of education.

Soap operas are now a global phenomenon that regularly portrays everyday issues on screen, educating on social issues and raising awareness of things like health. Drama television has been credited for encouraging people to look out for signs of cancer, and domestic abuse, raising awareness of disability (32), and encouraging responsible action. This differs slightly from Agenda Setting Theory as it is more general, while Agenda Setting is part of a coordinated campaign focusing on an issue for a short time.

Knowledge Gap Theory

Positing that there is a class knowledge gap, it looks at the relative consumption of information from a medium based on prior access to information. Those with higher education and social status will acquire information much faster. It assumes that wealthier people and those in wealthier countries do not struggle to acquire information based on cost. They also benefit from access to prior information and do not have such a steep upward learning curve. In comparison, there remains a definite wealth gap that filters into other areas and translates socially into a knowledge gap based on ongoing access to outlets (33).

With this, mass communication becomes a social justice issue to be aware of and account for, and another issue where there is a need to level the playing field. Closing that knowledge gap is as important as other socioeconomic gaps so those with less access are better informed and improve their situation.

Libertarian Theory & Authoritarian Theory

The idea behind libertarian communication theory is that ordinary people have the mental nous to determine good information from bad and to judge new ideas on individual merit. It presumes rationality of thought, thought processes, and a willingness to change a mind when presented with new evidence. Therefore, there should be no restrictions on the press as they will live and die by the quality of their information and interpretation. Also, the press should not withhold or limit information to ensure maximum availability for the best possible informed decision.

The authoritarian theory is the opposite - people do not know what is good and bad information, so they cannot ascertain the difference. They will be led astray by bad thoughts and insidious messages. It includes censorship which can be political, religious, or moral. Still, it can also exist within a democratic society and be selective when media elements criticize the military or corporate entities.

Social Responsibility Theory

Social responsibility theory is philosophically somewhere between libertarian and authoritarian theory. It permits a free press as it does in most Western nations, without formal censorship. However, it makes provisions for scrutiny of the press in public discourse - giving room for both unspoken regulation and encouraging best professional practice. Further, the media should accept obligations requested by external bodies through regulatory bodies, professional licensing, and other checks and balances.

Ball point pen with chain and lock representing free press restriction.

Limited Effects Theory

How much impact does media have? Can it change enough minds to force change? Or does it tap into a mentality or general perception already there? This is the idea behind the Limited Effects Theory. Media does not change minds; it simply appeals to those who already hold that view of an issue. While some minds may be changed, the effects of this are limited either by a number or by scope - appealing to outliers and never impacting the view of those with altogether the opposite perspective. In this case, the media acts as a "reinforcer or endorser" of perception (34).

Meaning Theory of Media Portrayal

This concept proposes that mass media is not solely about propagating information to receivers to receive, process, and learn facts. Humans are social creatures with vivid imaginations. We seek meaning from mass media as we absorb it (35). Examples include:

Extracting meaning from literary works
Use of language and meaning drift/evolution
Substitution or addition of language (in the US, the symbol # has always been called the pound, but the UK name "hash" has taken hold through internet culture "hashtag")

Media Dependency Theory

One person's life experience is limited based on factors including but not limited to socioeconomic background and income, geographic limitations, and fewer physical limits such as personal experience and perception of the other. According to this theory, such limits can only be broken or exceeded through the consumption of mass media communications (36). This exacerbates a pre-existing dependency. It also presents the idea that media outlets create dependent relationships with their audience through targeted messaging wielding the power the audience gives it. An example of this is the so-called echo chamber effect in news reporting.

Media Malaise Theory

This perceives and presents mass media as purveyors of doom. How news media, in particular, covers events can negatively impact society. A preoccupation with insults traded between public figures (especially politicians), declining public trust, fueling cynicism, and encouraging political apathy (37). To some, it is a tool of those in power to induce cynicism channeled for the deliberate prevention of meaningful change.

Recently, media malaise has led to something called "doom scrolling," where an audience spends time on an electronic device consuming negative news article after article (or headline after headline). Negative portrayal presentation and sensationalism create malaise in the audience, fueling dependency and habitual watching for updates. Fair coverage is not given, nor is the plethora of pleasant and heartwarming events that happen worldwide with just as much regularity.

Media Richness Theory

This is the concept and study of a media's richness, examining the leanness of a single message - even over multiple channels – style vs substance. Media is as much about presentation as it is about content. Developed from corporate communications, it soon applied to mass media and the public (38). There are two ways to approach media richness. The first is information from multiple sources to one person at a time for personal support or groups to communicate a single point.

Medium Theory

Researchers in this theoretical framework look at communication efficiency through the lens of each medium to determine the successful transmission or otherwise of the message.

Taking mass communication beyond the audience is at the heart of most other theories; medium theory examines different channels for broadcasting a message. Here, the media origin is merely a conduit from which a message is sent. The actual channels they use - whether printed material, audio, or video- are used based on the audience’s needs. The receiver demonstrates their reception to engaging with the message based almost entirely on the channel or channels used in its distribution. Which channels work depends on social or demographic preferences, and they determine the efficiency.

Mood Management Theory

Linked to earlier concepts of Meaning Theory and Malaise Theory, this posits that an audience will consume or ignore a media outlet and its message depending on the mood at the time of consumption. This puts active choice into the hands of the audience while many others do not while acknowledging how personal mood can impact one's choice of media at any given time - a plethora of choices allows the audience to change or reinforce their existing mood. This theory studies such psychological concepts as cognitive dissonance - the idea that it is possible to believe two contradictory viewpoints simultaneously (39).

Play Theory

It is one of the first theories to use psychology and subjectivity in a framework that previously treated mass communications theory in terms of objective social science. Play theory treats media consumption as a form of play or leisure rather than one to educate and inform - primarily used for personal satisfaction. Entertainment media may educate us - but games, music, TV, movies, and other forms of leisure are methods of play and are not, by definition, designed for information acquisition.

One example where news and entertainment cross over is when the media follows the lives of celebrities - reporting on who they're dating/married to, where they went, and their upcoming appearances either on or off-screen. Our lives are not particularly enriched or otherwise made better through such media. Yet, we may learn something (40) even though we might consider that information low value or secondary to the play aspect.

Reception Theory

While most theories examine the relationship (including transmission, vectors, and outlets), this theory looks at how a broadcast message is or may be perceived by the audience. This is one of a few theories to focus exclusively on the reaction of the intended audience to the message. It includes how the perception of work changes over time, from one generation to the next, or which each social attitude changes (41). It is less concerned with individuals and more concerned with group perception.

Therefore, it determines the ability of the media to examine the tone of external feedback and adjust its future message accordingly for better reception.

Technological Determinism

Almost the opposite of reception theory, this reduces mass communications success or otherwise, and its impact on society, purely to the technology used to deliver it. Thus, new forms of technology with greater reach will automatically be more successful than those without. Gutenberg's Printing Press is an excellent example of how the spread of ideas from printed material created a new market; printed books are now open to the masses and have opened society to accepting new ideas. It creates unpredictable social change with massive permanent consequences (42).

The Spiral of Silence Theory

In many cases, media may provide an outlet for broad discussions, especially with easy access to technology used to broadcast messages. However, there is a negative impact. When audience members feel part of a minority voice, they tend to slip away from the media environment (43). This can be religious or political or concern messages about demographic identifiers such as sexuality and gender identity, but it can also be philosophies and movements. It can also include single issues and personal issues. For example, an age group in a workplace might feel one company policy benefits another age group and actively disadvantages them. They may express their views, but then the weight of the majority voices essentially silences them from continuing to express their frustrations.

Two-Step Flow Theory

Developed during a US presidential campaign in the 1940s, it was found that media reports are much less impactful than personal and informal reports on a campaign or voting behavior. This flew in the face of the stated convention at a time when mass media was opening up through radio, television, and broader access to mass communications. This is why media outlets employ opinion leaders (for example, on-site reporters on television) to relay the message of the media outlet (44). It gives the media a personal front, a face, and an individual voice, even from a large corporate entity.

Uses and Gratification Theory

The opposite of the hypodermic needle theory, this theoretical framework presents the idea that people use media to fuel their own needs until they have reached personal satisfaction and maximum consumption - and then actively reject any further information. It is about what people do with the messages in mass media communications rather than how media will impact them and their lives. Here, an audience will refer to media for external evidence or ways of highlighting or proving points in a message they are trying to broadcast (45).

As we all receive messages from many mass media outlets virtually every minute of every day, it has led to the rise of multiple ethical issues. Regulatory frameworks and laws control some, while others do not or simply cannot be regulated by the industry or by the government.

False Advertising

Advertising exists to sell products and services. Therefore, they portray the company and what it sells in the best possible light to get the audience to buy it. However, this often oversteps the mark of misleading claims or outright lying. Many countries have a code of conduct - some can order the removal of ads from television, radio, and billboards, impose fines on the advertisers for making those false claims, and then publish a public retraction.

Code of conduct tiers representing the masses.

Sexual Objectification

It is well known in advertising media that "sex sells." The problem, as many campaigners feel, is that sex and sexuality are often used to sell products and services that have absolutely nothing to do with either of those subjects. Whether that is bikini-clad, women used to sell cars or vacations, and even soap or couples positioned in suggestive ways are used to sell clothing, perfume, and aftershave. The most common use of sexual objectification as a sales technique is in travel, beauty, clothing, and medicine (46).

Media Influence Overreach

The concern about modern media, especially in news reporting, is that they no longer report the facts. Investigative journalism has given way to sensationalism. Quality content is passed over for the attention-grabbing headline. Op-eds have passed investigative journalism. These things almost inevitably lead to sensationalism to keep a captive audience trapped in an echo chamber of information. This issue sometimes creates further ethical issues listed in this section.

There is some concern that the media influences the agenda too much - stories that go viral don't always have merit and are not always entirely accurate. Politically, pro or anti-government media can either distract the electorate from something a government is doing, hyper-focus on something trivial that would make the government (or public figure) look worse than it is (47), or outright mislead the public.

Related to the agenda-setting issue, "churnalism" is a portmanteau of "churn" and "journalism." There are two main problems with churnalism. The first is misreporting news items based on the desired speed of delivery. This means incidents are often reported by one outlet and copied by the others - even among high-quality outlets usually known for accuracy - without checking their veracity. This has happened to multiple celebrities where a fake death report has been widely reported as news outlets pick up trending hashtags on Twitter and other social media and report it instantly.

Second, so much churnalism is mass-produced, low-quality news, and non-stories filler material based on press releases. This is an issue for print media and the demand for up-to-the-minute online articles. These articles often distort or add details to allure the intended audience (48). One Daily Mail article in 2009 headlined "How using Facebook could give you cancer" based on a press release stating how social isolation (and relying too much on social media) increases the risk of heart disease and cancer (49).

False Balance

Various forms of the Fairness Doctrine exist in most Western countries. Such a government step requires balance and equal treatment of all sides - particularly regarding issues of society and politics. However, it has led to something called "false balance" or "false equivalence" that has given fringe voices airtime and freedom of expression on media outlets. This concept of "ideas democracy" is a form of misleading information, creating the idea in the general population that some things are up for debate. While many voices are valid in political discourse, this idea of fairness and freedom of expression has extended to non-experts on complex subjects often covered in science (50).

Edutainment Blurring the Bounds of Reality

While so-called "edutainment" - the blending of education and entertainment is largely seen as a good thing and encourages debate and information retention, this is not always the case. For example, Hollywood movies rewrite or reinterpret history to make something more exciting or less unpalatable, which can mislead the public about actual events.

While some are innocuous, such as in Braveheart, where William Wallace and Edward I die at the exact moment (in real life, they died years apart), and where William Wallace has an affair with the wife of soon-to-be King Edward II (at the time she was a child still living in France) this is not always the case. The Patriot, also starring Mel Gibson stated that Benjamin Martin did not own slaves when he had.

Communication Conglomerates

Many news media outlets worldwide are run by a few powerful, influential international figures who control a large percentage of the media in many countries. Critics feel this is too much power in the hands of the unelected and that the media can sway governments in favor of its interests while spreading propaganda and misinformation to the electorate, encouraging them to vote against politicians that could ultimately benefit them. The mantra "those who control the information control the world" is often repeated. Democracy and political clarity campaigners feel this negatively impacts positive social change and campaigns for true equality.

Big Data Misuse

It is said that data is the new currency - sold and traded often for massive amounts of money; there is some concern from individuals about how much information companies hold on us and what they are doing with it. Big data has many great uses, not least in academic studies, to help us understand public health and disease more. However, it is also used to send us targeted advertising with potentially multiple issues - encouraging overspending and accumulating data on something we might be considering buying before we even know we need it.

Such data is held secretively, although some authorities have introduced legislation to force openness, making some shadier types of data harvesting illegal. The European Union's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) intends to do this. The US and other governments are interested in determining whether this would work in their countries. In 2016, the Cambridge Analytica Scandal at Facebook brought all these issues to a head.

Children Accessing Adult Content Online

Easy access to adult material such as pornography and violent media has been a matter of some debate since the internet arrived in the late 1990s. Various regulatory frameworks have been proposed. However, minors can still access adult material without oversight from parents or guardians. Current guidelines include encouraging parents to use parental locks such as passwords and pin codes. Still, often children have a better understanding of technology than their parents and know ways of getting around such locks. Self-certifying "Yes, I am over 18" is considered insufficient yet remains the primary access method on many websites.

Normalizing Antisocial Behavior

Data on whether video games make people violent is mixed. There is solid evidence that engaging regularly with such violence increases overall average violent thoughts and activities for many people (28). However, there is an equal amount of evidence to suggest that such violence provides relief and catharsis from anxiety and stress. Children engaging with such content that promotes and normalizes antisocial behavior face many of the same criticisms and technological measures as accessing adult content. However, for adults, this is a little difficult.

Visually Misleading Images

Photo manipulation is almost as old as visual art itself. In days gone by, portraits were painted to present the subject in the best light - whether that is a landscape or a person, and to present them as more visually striking than they are in real life. As photography has become more accessible since the 1970s, so has the prevalence of photo manipulation. There are several issues of concern here:

Unrealistic body images of idealized appearances of models. This process is known as "Photoshopping," and it creates unattainable body shapes and weights that mainly young people will develop eating disorders trying to attain them
Manipulation of real estate properties making rooms and outdoor spaces seem larger than they are (achieved easily with the appropriate lens) to increase interest
Manipulating vacation destinations to make them seem more appealing such as removing buildings near the Great Pyramids of Giza at National Geographic (51).

In the first instance, mental health charities have campaigned for beauty product manufacturers and retailers to do more to help these mental health and eating disorders.

Trial By Media

There are countless cases where media has pre-supposed guilt or innocence or news outlets have influenced public perception of an individual's guilt or innocence. From pointing out an alleged rape victim's attire during criminal attire on the night of the attack while speaking extensively about the good family background of the accused, it can be challenging to find juries who have no opinion on the matter or who have not encountered such information. Presumption of guilt or innocence (and it is usually guilt more often than not) can risk a mistrial (52).

We also see this in how children are treated regarding crime. A perpetrator is a "15-year-old youth," while if the victim was the same age, they become a "15-year-old child." Scapegoating of groups and individuals often sets the narrative and leads to the presumption of not just individual but group guilt or innocence.

Courtroom gavel next to a Facebook icon on a mobile phone.

Lack of Diversity & Representation

Diversity is not just a problem for businesses with a disturbing lack of LGBT, non-white, and non-male faces. It impacts all corners of life in white-majority countries like the USA. Internet culture and the communities that use social media to coordinate campaigns for more diversity have so far been hugely successful in forcing change. However, more must be done to present subgroups within those groups - trans, and non-binary characters, for example.

Representation also means ending stereotypes and the presentation of underrepresented groups in complex lights rather than ticking a box or fitting a narrative. Several tests exist to determine whether a piece of fictional media attempts to promote such groups away from their stereotypes and social expectations:

The Bechdel Test examines female representation - if two named female characters have a conversation without a man present, and they discuss something other than men, it breaks a stereotype of women in media
The Vitto-Russo Test similarly examines LGBTQ+ representation. Does the media have a character who is unambiguously LGBTQ+? Does their sexuality define them, and would their removal fundamentally alter the story?
Nikesh Shukla devised a test where two named POC should have a conversation in which their race(s) are not part of the discussion

There are others, but sexuality, race, and gender are the three most discussed under-representation in the media.

Online Safety and Abuse

There are laws in most jurisdictions to deal with street abuse and harassment. However, online abuse comes with a specific set of problems and ethical concerns. First, social media and online gaming communities where this type of abuse is mostly centered don't do enough to tackle it (53). Trolls hide their identity and attack from behind anonymous accounts - often multiple at the same time to give the impression multiple people are piling in to attack the victim of the abuse. They often reappear with new accounts, circumventing any bans.

Secondly, social media companies often have unclear guidelines on what is or is not abuse, often not applied equally among all moderators or those employed to act against those who abuse. Facebook, especially, has been accused of not doing enough to tackle online abuse. At the same time, Instagram has, in the past, been associated with higher levels of depression and poor body image due to the types of content it promotes.

Thirdly, there are scams - the vacation competition entry is usually apparent. What is less obvious are those that ask questions such as "How old will your oldest child be this year?" "What was the name of your first school?" and "What was your first car?" Seemingly innocuous, scammers collect this data and can hack social media accounts and even bank details.

Stereotypes & Prescribed Roles

In many elements of US media - television, movies, video games, and books- specific demographics are stereotyped into several prescribed roles. For example, drug dealers are nearly always Hispanic or Black; middle-aged White women are generally homely and motherly. At the same time, the children are portrayed as emotionally stunted and afraid of commitment. Older Black men are stereotyped as wise uncles, while older Black women are portrayed as brash and loud.

LGBTQ+ characters are often outrageous and hypersexualized, while committed LGBT couples are portrayed as having no sexual desires. Physically disabled people are either portrayed as constantly miserable or as inspiring larger-than-life figures. Mentally ill people are portrayed as generally violent and prone to fits of rage. In contrast, those with OCD are portrayed as cleanliness-obsessed when this is just one potential manifestation of their illness.

Critics feel this is a form of social control or conditioning that translates into harmful stereotypes of those groups in real life.

Current Trends

News consumption : The internet has led to a slow decline in print media. For years, analysts have predicted its death. This may or may not be alarmist, but most areas of print publication have seen a severe decline in the last twenty years - though this is slower than predicted. Between 2005 and 2021, over 2,200 newspapers closed in the US alone (54), while demand for newspaper journalists has dropped by 50%. However, the demand for journalism continues to grow at the average rate (55) as people increasingly get their news from the internet (56).

Entertainment : arguably the most impacted with DVD and Blu-ray sales giving way to streaming services in TV & movies; music physical media like CDs have also given way to streaming and other digital formats - CD sales have dropped 97% since the year 2000 (57), though vinyl has made several comebacks. Even video gaming - a medium that predates the internet for several decades - has been impacted by online environments. Physical media is just 17% of sales in the US (58).

Social media : This is one of many major growth areas for mass communications on the internet. When social arrived, it was little more than a communications platform. Now, businesses use them to market products and services. There are even specialist social media communications marketers. It's also an excellent tool for distributing news and other digital forms of traditional media: mainly broadcast and printed.

Blogging and vlogging : have also democratized information sharing, as cheap access to video and photography has created many small businesses. Now, no matter where we are, we can upload media to the internet to an audience of millions. This has democratized news media and content once limited to magazines.

Sole creative entrepreneurship : The COVID-19 pandemic put many people out of work, leading to sole proprietor businesses working from home (59). Most turned to creative expression in mass communications and other media, fulfilling long-held dreams about becoming an artist, author, photographer, vlogger, or video game creator. Tip jar sites are not new, but they did undergo mass expansion during the pandemic, allowing individuals to accept small fee transactions for their creative efforts and even paid membership for regular support.

Paid subscription model : Some areas of mass communication media have seen great success. Music is on Amazon and Spotify, and TV and movies are through Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, and Hulu. Video gaming platforms like Xbox Live Gold have operated on this model since around 2010. Now, news media are considering operating this way - the end of free news (or a limited number of online views) may be the way forward to combat declining print media sales.

What these environments will look like in five years is unclear. They are not always driven by technology, but it does seem these widespread changes to the mass communications environment, the ability to buy high-quality equipment much cheaper than before, is not the only impact we can expect to see. We may also see considerable social change, paradigm shifts, and new theories as access to information increases.

Emerging Concepts and Technologies for Mass Communications

Automated news media.

Also known as robot journalism or automated journalism, this applies artificial intelligence concepts and technology to news reporting (60). So far, this area of mass communication hasn't adopted AI meaningfully. If it does adopt this tech, one potential use is to apply it to news stories - find out what is trending and generate items based on what the analysis discovers. It could also be used to update news items in real-time and test what headlines work. The NYT is currently testing such a system.

Drone Reporting

Conflict is an inevitable part of human civilization. News reports from conflict zones come with a high price - severe injury or even death to the news team. Numerous deaths have been reported as on-site journalists are caught in the crossfire or hit with rocket strikes or IEDs. Drones can be launched safely and get closer to any action. As well as warzones, drone reporting will be more accessible from disaster zones - allowing news teams to get closer to epicenters and problem areas even easier than helicopters.

Fighting Fake News

Misreporting news incidents, bias in presentation, and outright false data are not the sole preserve of large companies. We can fight fake news in many ways - often funded by large and well-organized backers. Fact-checking charities have arisen in response to this, and some governments are drafting legislation for both regular media and social media to do more to combat misinformation. New technologies are already in development; many social media sites are looking for keywords to which they will attach a "potential misinformation" tag developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality

Already used in digital media, its uses are currently limited to entertainment (video games) and education, and they are particularly useful as a fitness tool. Augmented Reality may have uses beyond leisure in the future, and research is ongoing into uses in advertising and marketing over digital platforms. In 2015, Amnesty International invited London residents to use VR headsets to walk around a virtual Aleppo to look at the damage during the ongoing war there.

Sources/References

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https://www.archaeology.org/issues/213-1605/features/4326-cuneiform-the-world-s-oldest-writing
https://www.worldhistory.org/Egyptian_Literature/
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Defining Mass Communication

Remember our definition of communication study: “who says what, through what channels (media) of communication, to whom, [and] what will be the results” (Smith, Lasswell & Casey 121)? When examining mass communication, we are interested in who has control over what content, for what audience, using what medium, and what are the results? Media critic Robert McChesney said we should be worried about the increasingly concentrated control of mass communication that results when just a handful of large organizations control most mass communication. Both McChesney and Ben Bagdikian warn about the implications of having so few organizations controlling the majority of our information and communication. Perhaps this is the reason new media outlets like Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Facebook have consistently grown in popularity as they offer alternative voices to the large corporations that control most mass communication.

Mass communication continues to become more integrated into our lives at an increasingly rapid pace. This “metamorphosis” is representative by the convergence occurring (Fidler) between ourselves and technology, where we are not as distanced from mass communication as in the past. Increasingly, we have more opportunities to use mediated communication to fulfill interpersonal and social needs. O’Sullivan refers to this new use of mass communication to foster our personal lives as “masspersonal communication” where (a) traditional mass communication channels are used for interpersonal communication, (b) traditionally interpersonal communication channels are used for mass communication, and (c) traditional mass communication and traditional interpersonal communication occur simultaneously.” Over time, more and more overlap occurs. “Innovations in communication technologies have begun to make the barriers between mass and interpersonal communication theory more permeable than ever” (O’Sullivan). Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are great examples of new mass communication platforms we use to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships.

As more mass communication mediums develop, Marshall McLuhan states that we can understand media as either hot or cold depending on the amount of information available to the user, as well as the degree of participation. A hot medium “extends one single sense in high definition” (McCluhan 22). Examples of hot media include photographs or music (Spotify, radio, etc.) because the message is mostly interpreted using one sense and requires little participation by participants. An audience is more passive with hot media because there is less to filter. Television is considered a cold medium because of the large amount of multisensory information. Berg Nellis states “Virtual reality, the simulation of actual environment complete with tactile sensory input, might be the extreme in cold media…This and other cutting edge technologies seem to point to increasingly cold media as we move into the digital communication future” (256). Think about online video games, such as the military sci-fi game, Halo. Games like this can be played in teams but the players do not necessarily have to be in close proximity. Simply by logging onto the server gamers can connect, interact, communicate through microphones and play as a team. These games have become so involved and realistic that they represent cold mediums because of the vast amount of sensory input and participation they require.

Defining Mass Communication Copyright © by Enyonam Osei-Hwere and Patrick Osei-Hwere is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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9: Mass Communication and Social Media

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Lisa Coleman, Thomas King, & William Turner

Lisa Coleman, Thomas King, & William Turner
Southwest Tennessee Community College

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Littlejohn and Foss define mass communication as “the process whereby media organizations produce and transmit messages to large public and the process by which those messages are sought, used, understood, and influenced by the audience” (333). McQuail states that mass communication is, “only one of the processes of communication operating at the society-wide level, readily identified by its institutional characteristics” (7). Simply put, mass communication is the public transfer of messages through media or technology-driven channels to a large number of recipients from an entity, usually involving some type of cost or fee (advertising) for the user. In this chapter, we will define mass communication and discuss mass media, social media, globalization, and the ethics required. Images throughout this chapter are licensed by Pexels .

9.1: Mass Communication - A definition Introduction to Mass Communication and Social Media and the effect on society and culture. We define communication as the process of generating meaning by sending and receiving verbal and nonverbal symbols and signs that are influenced by multiple contexts.
9.2: Quick Look- Mass Communication and Media “Well, how did I get here?” a baffled David Byrne sings in the Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime.” The contemporary media landscape is so rich, deep, and multifaceted that it’s easy to imagine American media consumers asking themselves the same question.
9.3: Social Media and Web 2.0 There are many different types of social media available today, from social networking sites like Facebook to video-sharing like YouTube and TikTok to blogging services and microbloggers like WordPress.com and Twitter. All these sites bring something different to the table, and a few of them even try to bring just about everything to the table at once.
9.4: The Effects of the Internet and Globalization on Popular Culture and Interpersonal Communication It’s in the name: World Wide Web. The Internet has broken down communication barriers between cultures in a way that could only be dreamed of in earlier generations. Now, almost any news service across the globe can be accessed on the Internet and, with the various translation services available (like Babelfish and Google Translate), be relatively understandable. In addition to the spread of American culture throughout the world, smaller countries are now able to cheaply export culture, news, en
9.5.1: Ethical Issues in Mass Media
9.5.2: How Newspapers Control the Public’s Access to Information and Impact American Pop Culture
Littlejohn, Stephen W., and Karen A. Foss. Theories of Human Communication . 10th ed. Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland, 2011. Print.
McQuail, Denis. (1994). Mass Communication: An Introduction (2nd). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Print.

Introductory Guide to the Study of Mass Communication

The fabric of modern society is so intricately woven with the fibers of Mass Communication, it is impossible to comprehend our lives without it. Indeed, Mass Communication so fully saturates our everyday lives, we often forget its presence – and its influence. Moreover, the technologies that make modern Mass Communication possible serve to only reify its omnipresence and power.

The technologies – often referred to by scholars and pundits as the “mass media” – can be described as the vehicles through which communication can reach the masses. In conceptualizing the mass media, many often think of the Internet – and for good reason. Some scholars estimate that upwards of four billion people are regularly connected to the Internet and that Internet traffic will be 95 times greater in 2020 than it was in 2005.

The mass media, however, is more than just the Internet. Indeed, television, radio, and even newspapers and magazines are considered part of the mass media. In this article, the evolution of the mass media – and thus, the evolution of the scholarly study of Mass Communication – is traced, and some key theories and concepts are discussed, in an effort to provide future master’s students with a foundational understanding of this area of communication that permeates almost every industry and aspect of consumer life.

Defining Mass Communication

Before tracing the evolution of mass media and Mass Communication as an academic field, it is important to first define some key terms. By and large, Mass Communication can be defined as the communication conveyed to a large audience via media. Media, in this sense, is the channel that carries this communication to the masses through electronic or printable means. While electronic forms of media – the Internet, television, and radio – certainly altered connotations of “mass” in Mass Communication, its print predecessors – magazines, newspapers, and books – laid the foundation for communication to reach larger numbers of people.

Mass Communication scholars generally employ definitions of communication similar to their colleagues studying other realms of communication. Even with its larger scope and reach, communication in Mass Communication is still thought of as the symbolic process through which meaning and, therefore reality, is constructed, shared, altered, and reified. Perhaps more so than others, Mass Communication scholars highlight the everyday-ness of media and its embedded place in our culture.

Given mass media’s unique position as a conduit, regulator, and even manipulator of communication, many Mass Communication scholars urge students – and, ideally, citizens – to become media literate. Media literacy is the ability to critically evaluate media and its contents by asking questions like: Who benefits from this form of media or type of content? What is the underlying message in this content? How does this particular form of media reinforce existing power structures? Or, conversely, does this media provide a voice to the marginalized and oppressed?

There is a persistent, if not nagging, myth (which contemporary Mass Communication scholars continually seek to dispel) that due to mass media’s omnipresence and capability to manipulate, human beings have been reduced to automatons, essentially drones controlled by corporations or governments. While there is certainly an enduring danger embedded within mass media, scholars continue to highlight that human beings – both individually and collectively – possess incredible critical thinking and reasoning skills, helping to combat this dystopian fear.

Though this myth is certainly grounded in honest fear and anxiety, the confluence of emerging media technology and an increase in education continues to enhance our critical perspective in consuming media. Indeed, each generation seems to further add to the concept of media literacy, providing valuable insight to scholars studying Mass Communication.

The Evolution of Mass Media

Well before the Internet and instant communication, mass media occupied a different realm – that of print and paper. Some scholars trace humanity’s use of written symbols in books back at least 5,000 years, but the modern conception of the book is a relatively recent phenomenon. Indeed, the first true instance of “mass” communication came in the wake of the printing press.

Contrary to common belief, Johannes Gutenberg did not invent the printing press, nor did he invent the crucial component of the printing press – moveable type. Gutenberg, did, however, create a more efficient, streamlined system of printing that made printing significantly faster, easier, and, more importantly, cheaper. The “Gutenberg Revolution” that followed was consequential to 15th Century Europe in that knowledge was no longer confined to families and small, local communities, books and pamphlets started becoming more common, and the incentive to become literate grew. However, the ramifications of this technology did not stay in Europe. Indeed, ideas and news spread much faster and, in a sense, the world grew smaller.

Several centuries later in Colonial America, mass media further evolved. Revolutionary ideas spread rapidly throughout the colonies – Thomas Paine’s Common Sense , for example, sold about 120,000 copies in the first three months after its publication, rivaling the number of copies of the Bible printed at that time throughout the colonies.

In 19th Century America, the rise of the “penny press,” or newspapers that were sold for a penny, coincided with higher literacy rates and a (slight) democratization of American politics. Building upon that and aided by the continual development of a national postal service, magazine circulation rose astronomically and reached larger and larger audiences. Juxtaposed to local newspapers, a magazine’s audience could become national, yet again altering the connotation of “mass” in Mass Communication.

The rapid development of electronic technology in the 20th Century propelled mass media to its current place of import in modernity. Pioneering this path, radio’s role cannot be overstated. Indeed, as the first electronic medium for mass communication, radio reshaped social, economic, political, and cultural structures across the world. In the 1930s, for example, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” helped assuage American anxieties about the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s radio broadcasts to the nation became a staple in American life for a time, with many Americans stating that some of their first memories were set around the fireplace listening to the president’s voice.

Furthermore, radio’s quick ascendancy in the United States led to the creation of the first broadcast networks, laying the foundation for future electronic mass mediums and instilling the “trustee principle,” or the need for government regulation of the burgeoning broadcast industry. The establishment of broadcast networks helped aid in television’s swift rise a few decades later in the 1950’s as the infrastructure was, essentially, already in place.

A Brief History of the Study of Mass Communication

Today’s Mass Communication scholars can, to some degree, trace their academic lineage to Walter Lippman and John Dewey, particularly through the famed “Lippman-Dewey” debate(s) of the 1920s and 30s that considered the role of journalism as a form of mass communication and its impact on their preferred version of democracy. At least initially, Lippman favored a journalistic approach that placed intellectual elites as the true – and better equipped – stewards of democracy, so news reporting ought to be written for these intellectuals. While Lippman saw experts as more capable of maintaining the promise of democracy, Dewey, on the other hand, advocated for journalists to write for common, everyday citizens as these citizens are democracy’s foundation.

While Lippman later wrote of the dangers of his approach, Dewey did agree that mass media and culture were becoming too much for the average citizen to comprehend. Instead of looking to experts to sift through the mess of mass culture, Dewey hoped that through communication Americans could band together to form a “Great Community,” an inclusive group comprised of various local and co-publics that were educated and civically engaged.

Almost a century has passed since Lippman and Dewey discussed and debated the nature of democracy and mass media’s impact, and even with the passage of time and the profound advancement in telecommunication technology, the core tenets of their philosophies continue to influence our perspectives on mass media and communication. Indeed, building off Lippman and Dewey, the study of Mass Communication took further shape following the Second World War. Like with the developing study of Persuasion in Communication Studies, Mass Communication researchers began to study propaganda, its effects, and the uses of mass media in spreading and combatting propaganda.

Mass Communication Theories & Concepts

In the study of Mass Communication theories and concepts, it is important to first articulate that there is no singular Mass Communication theory that encapsulates the discipline, or to which every scholar subscribes. Instead, Mass Communication scholars tend to focus on the degree to which media impacts communication, culture, and society. With the introduction of new mediums that changed the way we communicate, the nature of Mass Communication Theory also changed. Indeed, many of the theories listed below reflect the evolution of our understanding of Mass Communication with the introduction of new technology.

Additionally, many of the concepts articulated below have been repurposed in other realms of Communication Studies. For example, agenda-setting, framing, and priming continue to be analyzed by both Mass Communication and Political Communication scholars, while Social Cognitive Theory has been, and continues to be, employed by Health Communication scholars.

Agenda-Setting, Framing, and Priming : Now considered to be fundamental in the study of Mass Communication, the concepts of agenda-setting, framing, and priming all originated in the context of Communication research. Agenda-setting, or the idea that media tells us not what to think, but what to think about, helped scholars begin to articulate mass media’s impact potential and is now invariably discussed in graduate seminars in Mass Communication. Likewise, framing, or the ways in which events, people, and ideas are characterized through media depictions continues to be a tool for scholars in examining a litany of media. Finally, priming is considered to be the effect of agenda-setting and framing, as audiences are cognitively conditioned to adopt attitudes that are set by the media’s agenda and framing of particular issues or objects.

For more information on agenda-setting, framing, and priming, see our article on Political Communication Research .

Mass Society Theory : The aforementioned myth regarding mass media’s overwhelmingly negative impact on society was once a generally accepted scholarly perspective. Mass Society Theory suggests that mass media undermines the social order and human beings are vulnerable, if not entirely defenseless, to its power. Also known as the “magic bullet” theory or the “hypodermic needle” theory, Mass Society Theory is built upon the premise that human beings are simple receivers and mass media just injects ideas into our brains.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, many asked how citizens in democracies like Germany and Italy could suddenly embrace fascism. At the time, Mass Society Theory offered a relatively easy answer – and a sort of scapegoat – to how a people could turn to the horrors of fascist rule and the accompanying atrocities committed in its name. While these two examples extended credibility to the theory, we now know, of course, that mass media was not the singular culprit in the lead up to the Second World War – that a confluence of socio-economic issues helped to rapidly tear at the political seams of these countries through appeals to racism and authoritarianism.

Limited Effects Theory : Generally speaking, research on the Limited Effects of media produced several important concepts that are widely accepted today, namely that human beings are not passive consumers of media and that we actively use media for a variety of purposes and goals. Additionally, Limited Effects research helped articulate concepts like agenda-setting, framing, and priming.

Many consider Limited Effects Theory to be the natural and direct successor to Mass Society Theory. Realistically, however, Limited Effects Theory came to be simultaneously through the testing of Mass Society Theory. In examining Mass Society Theory, researchers determined that media influence can and usually is limited by individual differences, social categories, personal relationships, and level of education, thus constructing Limited Effects Theory.

More specifically, there are several other theories that help comprise Limited Effects Theory and add to its explanatory powers. Social Cognitive Theory, for example, suggests that media impacts people in a variety of ways and that people employ a learning process in consuming media. As highlighted in our Health Communication article, we may imitate what we see and hear in media, or if we do not exactly replicate what we consume, we may identify with something produced and engage in behavior that is sympathetic to its spirit. In other words, we learn from others – and media aids in this process.

Cultural Theory : Cultural Theory employs a critical, macro-level approach in examining media and its impact on society. In short, this theory argues that the meaning conveyed and debated between media and various audiences as they interact can have larger cultural impacts.

Because of its focus, Cultural Theory is inherently political, is concerned with big picture/largescale media effects, examines power and how the media is used to help those in power stay in power and oppress the marginalized, and operates to reveal the capitalistic forces at work within media. Cultural Theory, for example, has been used to some degree in studying media conglomerations here in the United States. In wielding this theory, scholars are able to highlight Disney (and other’s) cultural impact and power.

Meaning-Making Theory : This perspective suggests that as media consumers, we use media to create meaning and label experiences for ourselves. In other words, we use media as a catalyst in shaping meaning for our lives.

An enduring concept that comes from Meaning-Making Theory is cultivation analysis, or the idea that media cultivates a belief that the world they create/portray is real. This is not to say that we think the events of Game of Thrones are necessarily real, but that its portrayal of human interaction is close to reality. In other words, Meaning-Making Theory argues that the media’s depiction of human behavior, human relationships, social hierarchies, and worldviews is relatively close to reality.

As a force for good, for example, this can be used over time to alter attitudes regarding same-sex relationships, or the larger LGBTQIA Community. Indeed, shows like Modern Family , Queer Eye for the Straight Guy , and Grace & Frankie portray same-sex relationships or members of the LBGTQIA Community positively, and over time and repetition, this cultivates a positive association.

Studying Mass Communication Today

Today, Mass Communication continues to grow. As evidenced by the number of Mass Communication programs offered by universities across the country and around the world, as well as the increasing number of employers needing skilled professionals in this realm of research and practice, Mass Communication is as every bit part of our society as the technologies that make it possible. The field of Mass Communication, it seems, is synonymous with progress and modernity.

Within Communication Studies, Mass Communication is perhaps more important than ever. An example of its import is in the study of “fake news.” The recent onslaught of fake news and its socio-political consequences here in America and around the world is a communicative phenomenon ripe for Mass Communication scholars to examine. Indeed, studying fake news is not only relevant as it is occurring at this moment in time, it is crucial, as some scholars contend, to the survival of Western liberal democracy. Here, the echoes of Dewey and Lippman reverberate.

As new mass media technologies continue to develop, so too will our conceptions of Mass Communication. If the 21st Century has taught us anything thus far, it is that Mass Communication is indeed woven into the fabric of modern society, its presence, for better or for worse, integral to our survival and well-being.

Sources and Additional Resources

To learn more about the study of Mass Communication, its theoretical foundations, and societal applications, check out the following publications:

Baran, S. J. (2018). Introduction to Mass Communication (10th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Baran, S. J., & Davis, D. K. (2020). Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future . Oxford University Press.
Bryant, J., Thompson, S., & Finklea, B. W. (2012). Fundamentals of Media Effects: Second Edition . Waveland Press.
Jeffres, L. W. (2015). Mass Communication Theories in a Time of Changing Technologies. Mass Communication & Society , 18(5), 523–530. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15205436.2015.1065652
UC Santa Barbara. (n.d.). A Citizen’s Guide to Fake News | Center for Information Technology and Society. Retrieved October 14, 2019, from https://www.cits.ucsb.edu/fake-news

*Note: Christopher Wernecke teaches an undergraduate course on Media, Culture, and Society at Georgia State University. The content in this article was drawn from the research he conducted for his course curriculum.

Understanding Mass Media and Mass Communication

Writing Essays
Writing Research Papers
English Grammar
M.A., Anthropology, University of Iowa
B.Ed., Illinois State University

Mass media refers to the technologies used as channels for a small group of people to communicate with a larger number of people. The concept was first addressed during the Progressive Era of the 1920s, as a response to new opportunities for elites to reach large audiences via the mass media of the time: newspapers , radio, and film. Indeed, the three forms of traditional mass media today are still the same: print (newspapers, books, magazines) , broadcast (television, radio ), and cinema (movies and documentaries).

But in the 1920s, mass media referred not just to the number of people such communication reached, but rather to the uniform consumption and anonymity of the audiences. Uniformity and anonymity are characteristics which no longer fit the way people seek out, consume, and manipulate information into their daily lives. Those new media are called "alternative media" or "mass self-communication."

Key Takeaways: Mass Media

Mass media as an idea was created in the 1920s.
There are three major forms of traditional mass media: print, broadcast, and cinema. New forms are being created constantly.
The internet has changed the nature of mass media by creating consumers who control and even create media of their own, and producers who can more easily track consumer responses.
Being a smart consumer of media means exposing yourself to a variety of points of view, so that you can become more adept at recognizing subtle and not subtle forms of propaganda and bias .

Mass Communication

Mass media are the transport forms of mass communication, which can be defined as the dissemination of messages widely, rapidly, and continuously to large and diverse audiences in an attempt to influence them in some way.

Five distinct stages of mass communication exist, according to American communication scholars Melvin DeFleur and Everette Dennis:

Professional communicators create various types of "messages" for presentation to individuals.
The messages are disseminated in a "quick and continuous" manner through some form of mechanical media.
The messages are received by a vast and diverse audience.
The audience interprets these messages and gives them meaning.
The audience is influenced or changed in some manner.

There are six widely acknowledged intended effects for mass media. The two best known are commercial advertising and political campaigns. Public service announcements have been developed to influence people on health issues such as smoking cessation or HIV testing. Mass media has been used (by the Nazi party in Germany in the 1920s, for example) to indoctrinate people in terms of government ideology. And mass media use sporting events such as the World Series, the World Cup Soccer, Wimbledon, and the Super Bowl, to act as a ritual event that users participate in.

Measuring the Effects of Mass Media

Research on the impacts of mass media began in the 1920s and 1930s, with the rise of muckraking journalism—elites became concerned about the effects of investigative reporting in magazines such as McClure's on political decision-making. Mass media became a prominent focus of study in the 1950s after television became widely available, and academic departments dedicated to communication studies were created. These early studies investigated the cognitive, emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral effects of media on both children and adults; in the 1990s, researchers began to use those earlier studies to draw up theories concerning the use of media today.

In the 1970s theorists such as Marshall McLuhan and Irving J. Rein warned that media critics needed to watch how media affects people. Today, this remains a key concern; much attention has been paid, for example, to the impact on the 2016 election of false messaging distributed on social media. But the myriad forms of mass communication available today have also encouraged some researchers to begin to investigate "what people do with media."

The Move to Mass Self-Communication

Traditional mass media are "push technologies:" that is to say, producers create the objects and distribute them (push it) to consumers who are largely anonymous to the producer. The only input consumers have in traditional mass media is to decide whether to consume it—if they should buy the book or go to the movie: undoubtedly those decisions have always been significant to what got published or aired.

However, in the 1980s, consumers began to transition to "pull technology:" while the content may still be created by (elite) producers, users are now free to select what they wish to consume. Further, users can now repackage and create new content (such as mashups on YouTube or reviews on personal blog sites). The users are often explicitly identified in the process, and their choices may have immediate, if not necessarily conscious, impact on what information and advertising they are presented with going forward.

With the widespread availability of the internet and the development of social media, communication consumption has a decidedly personal character, which the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells calls mass self-communication. Mass self-communication means that the content is still created by the producers, and the distribution is made available to a large number of people, those who choose to read or consume the information. Today, users pick and choose media content to suit their needs, whether those needs were the intent of the producers or not.

Computer-Mediated Communication

The study of mass media is a fast-moving target. People have studied computer-mediated communication since the technology first became available in the 1970s. Early studies focused on teleconferencing, and how interactions between large groups of strangers differ from interactions with known partners. Other studies were concerned with whether communication methods lacking nonverbal cues could influence the meaning and quality of social interactions. Today, people have access to both text-based and visual information, so those studies are no longer useful.

The immense growth in social applications since the start of Web 2.0 (also known as Participatory or Social Web) has made huge changes. Information is now distributed in many directions and methods, and audiences can vary from one person to many thousands. In addition, everyone with an internet connection can be a content creator and media source.

Blurring the Lines Between Producers and Consumers

Mass self-communication can potentially reach a global audience, but it is self-generated in content, self-directed in its mission, and typically focuses on self-related information. Sociologist Alvin Toffler created the now-obsolete term of "prosumers" to describe users who are almost simultaneously consumers and producers—for example, reading and commenting on online content, or reading and replying to Twitter posts. The increases in the number of transactions that now occur between consumer and producer create what some have called an "expression effect."

Interactions also now cross-media streams, such as "Social TV," where people use hashtags while watching a sports game or a television program in order to simultaneously read and converse with hundreds of other viewers on social media.

Politics and the Media

One focus of mass communication research has been on the role that media plays in the democratic process. On the one hand, media provides a way for predominantly rational voters to obtain information about their political choices. That likely introduces some systematic biases, in that not every voter is interested in social media, and politicians may choose to work on the wrong issues and perhaps pander to an active set of users who may not be in their constituencies. But by and large, the fact that voters can learn about candidates independently is predominantly positive.

On the other hand, media can be leveraged for propaganda, which exploits cognitive errors that people are prone to make. By using the techniques of agenda-setting, priming, and framing, the producers of media can manipulate voters to act against their own best interests.

Propaganda Techniques in Mass Media

Some types of propaganda that have been recognized in mass media include:

Agenda-Setting: Aggressive media coverage of an issue can make people believe an insignificant issue is important. Similarly, media coverage may underplay an important issue.
Priming : People evaluate politicians based on the issues covered in the press.
Framing : How an issue is characterized in news reports can influence how it is understood by the receivers; involves the selective inclusion or omission of facts ("bias").
DeFleur, Melvin L., and Everette E. Dennis. "Understanding Mass Communication." (Fifth Edition, 1991). Houghton Mifflin: New York.
Donnerstein, Edward. "Mass Media, General View." Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Second Edition). Ed. Kurtz, Lester. Oxford: Academic Press, 2008. 1184-92. Print.
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Pennington, Robert. "Mass Media Content as Cultural Theory." The Social Science Journal 49.1 (2012): 98-107. Print.
Pinto, Sebastián, Pablo Balenzuela, and Claudio O. Dorso. " Setting the Agenda: Different Strategies of a Mass Media in a Model of Cultural Dissemination. " Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 458 (2016): 378-90. Print.
Rosenberry, J., Vicker, L. A. (2017). "Applied Mass Communication Theory." New York: Routledge.
Strömberg, David. " Media and Politics. " Annual Review of Economics 7.1 (2015): 173-205. Print.
Valkenburg, Patti M., Jochen Peter, and Joseph B. Walther. " Media Effects: Theory and Research. " Annual Review of Psychology 67.1 (2016): 315-38. Print.
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58 Mass Communication Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best mass communication topic ideas & essay examples, 🔍 most interesting mass communication topics to write about, 🔎 simple & easy mass communication essay titles.

Movies as a Medium of Mass Communication Over the decades of its development, the phenomenon of a movie has changed significantly, especially with the introduction of new genres and the discovery of new ways of conveying a particular idea visually.
India Movie Industry as a Medium of Mass Communication India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is therefore charged with the development and regulation of the broadcasting, print, film and other media on behalf of the state.
Telegraph and Its Impacts in Mass Communication The invention of electricity was very instrumental as it led to the discovery of electric telegraphy by William and Charles in the 19th century.
Ethical Issues in Mass Communication and Advertising The following are some of the primary ethical issues that mass communication and advertising need to observe in modern society where media plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion.
Larry King: The Pioneer of Mass Communication The ‘Numbers Guy,’ as he was referred to by callers while hosting the Larry King Show, makes one of the greatest broadcasters in media history despite not having taken a course in mass communication. Larry […]
Social Media as a Component of Mass Communication The reasons for such a claim are justified and refer to different opportunities that social media and the Internet give their users. During that time, social media helped me to stay aware of the current […]
E-Media Fast: Mass Communication Theory The level of my media usage had risen to a point that I could not spend a day without the use of any of the media sources.
Mass Communication Law and Ethics As the hotel employee did not clean up the water out of a fish tank that resulted in an accident, the hotel was to be responsible for that situation.
The Study of Mass Communication and Popular Culture The contributions of the French sociologist emile Durkheim to the formation of sociology are rather sufficient, as the scientist has studied the ways in which societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in the present […]
Global Mass Communication: Web Television The Web TV and IPTV are a powerful enabling force that enables the use of similar ideas in different corners of the world.
Mass Communication Impact on Modern language Within the frames of another tradition, the impact of mass communication and mass culture on language and mass consciousness is analyzed in a different critical way.
The History of Mass Communication: New Opportunities and Challenges for Society In the history of mass communication, it is possible to distinguish three main stages: ethic-legal paradoxes, techno-legal time-gap, and surveillance society, The new media is characterized by technological changes and changes in ideas and ideals […]
Mass Media Communication: Personal Analysis Finally, when I do the same in the kitchen in the morning, I am occupied with preparing and eating my breakfast; therefore, television serves as a background and I cannot be focused on the information […]
Global Music: Mass Communication The era of globalization had a dramatic impact not only on the economic development of the countries but also implied cultural exchange while distributing national music around the world.
Mass Communication and Public Policy One example of the websites that help to exchange ideas but negatively is the In the real sense, there several public interests in conflict when the information about the funding of a politician is disclosed […]
What is “Two-step Flow”? What Implications Does It Have for Our Understanding of Mass Communication? It should be known that there has been an implication of our understanding of mass communication as a result of this theory based on the fact that it has redefined our predictions on the influence […]
The Implication of Chaffee and Metzger’s Article “The End of Mass Communication” With the development of computer-based communication technologies, the university should focus on this issue in determining the impact of technological changes on mass communication and the need to change the courses offered at the Lindenwood […]
Americans: Global Awareness and Mass Communication
How Technology and Convergence Has Changed the Face of Mass Communication
Basic Ideas and Theories of Mass Communication
Bringing Cultural Change Through Mass Communication
Criteria for Professional Journalism and Mass Communication Programs
The Uses and Impacts of Mass Communication
Celebrity Phenomenon in an Era of Mass Communication
Debating Mass Communication During the Rise and Fall of Broadcasting
Demystifying Mass Communication Majors Into the Magazine Industry
Digital History: Leading the Rise of Mass Communication
How Mass Communication Approach Can Change Into Perspective
Improving Physical Fitness Through Methods of Mass Communication
Incorporating Mass Communication, Philosophy, and Sociology in the Education of an Athlete
Internet Addiction Between Mass Communication and Nursing Students of Segi University
Language and Mass Communication: Omnivore’s Dilemma
Mass Communication and Its Effects on the Audience
Linking Mass Communication and Academic Art
The Relations Between Mass Communication and Culture
Mass Communication Between People and Communities
Relations Between Mass Communication and Social Policies
The Parallels Between Mass Communication and Graphic Design
Historical Analysis of Mass Communication During World War II
The Link Between Mass Communication, Media, and Culture
Mass Communication, Propaganda, and Persuasion Controlling America
Relationship With Smartphones: Mass Communication
Mass Communication Theory and Practice: An Overview
Social Learning Theory: Are Children Being Corrupted by the Mass Communication Industry?
Experience in Using Social Media for Mass Communication
Sustainable Consumption and Mass Communication: A German Experiment
The African Americans Throughout the History of Mass Communication
The History and Evolution of Technology and Mass Communication
Theories, Concepts, and Models in Mass Communication Theory Foundations and Future
The Uses and Gratifications of Research of Mass Communication
Understanding and Evaluating Mass Communication Theory
The Role and Impact of Mass Communication on Sexuality in TV Programs
Review of the Origin and Evolution of Mass Communication and Technology
Mass Communication and Technological Advancement in “How Are Media Born”
Synopsis of Dynamics of Mass Communication
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Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication

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15.2 Functions and Theories of Mass Communication

Functions of Mass Media

The Media as Gatekeeper

“Getting Critical”

Theories of Mass Communication

Hypodermic Needle and Beyond

Media Effects

Cultivation Theory

“Getting Competent”

Key Takeaways

Mass Communication

11.1 Defining Mass Communication

Evolution of Mass Communication

Functions of Mass Communication

Surveillance

Correlation

Sensationalization

Entertainment

Transmission

Mobilization

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Mass Communication by Hans-Bernd Brosius , Veronika Karnowski LAST REVIEWED: 23 February 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 23 February 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0022

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