Mass media denotes a section of the
media specifically designed to reach a
very large audience such as the population of a
nation state. The term was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation
newspapers and
magazines. However, some forms of mass media such as
books and
manuscripts had already been in use centuries. The term
public media has a similar meaning: it is the sum of the public mass distributors of news and entertainment across media such as newspapers,
television,
radio,
broadcasting, which may require union membership in some large markets such as Newspaper Guild, AFTRA, and
text publishers.
Mass media includes Internet media (like
blogs,
message boards,
podcasts, and
video sharing) because individuals now have a means to exposure that is comparable in scale to that previously restricted to a select group of mass media producers. The communications audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a
mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as
advertising and
propaganda. The term "MSM" or "mainstream media" has been widely used in the
blogosphere in discussion of the mass media and
media bias.
History
Types of
drama in numerous cultures were probably the first mass-media, going back into the Ancient World. The first dated printed book known is the "
Diamond Sutra", printed in China in 868 AD, although it is clear that books were printed earlier. Movable clay type was invented in 1041 in China. However, due to the slow spread of literacy to the masses in China, and the relatively high cost of paper there, the earliest printed mass-medium was probably European
popular prints from about 1400. Although these were produced in huge numbers, very few early examples survive, and even most known to be printed before about 1600 have not survived.
Johannes Gutenberg printed the first book on a
printing press with
movable type in 1453. This invention transformed the way the world received printed materials, although books remained too expensive really to be called a mass-medium for at least a century after that.
Newspapers developed around from 1612, with the first example in English in 1620 ; but they took until the nineteenth century to reach a mass-audience directly.
During the 20th century, the growth of mass media was driven by
technology that allowed the massive duplication of material. Physical duplication technologies such as
printing, record pressing and film duplication allowed the duplication of books, newspapers and movies at low prices to huge audiences.
Radio and
television allowed the electronic duplication of information for the first time.
Mass media had the economics of linear replication: a single work could make money An example of Riel and Neil's theory.
proportional to the number of copies sold, and as volumes went up, unit costs went down, increasing profit margins further. Vast fortunes were to be made in mass media.
In a democratic society, independent media serve electorate about issues regarding government and corporate entities (see
Media influence). Some consider the
concentration of media ownership to be a grave threat to democracy.
Purposes
Mass media can be used for various purposes:
Negative characteristics of mass media
Another description of Mass Media is
central media which implies:
- An inability to transmit tacit knowledge (or perhaps it can only transfer bad tacit).
- The manipulation of large groups of people through media outlets, for the benefit of a particular political party and/or group of people.
- Marshall McLuhan, one of the biggest critics in media's history, brought up the idea that "the medium is the message."
- Bias, political or otherwise, towards favoring a certain individual, outcome or resolution of an event.
- "The corporate media is not a watchdog protecting us from the powerful, it is a lapdog begging for scraps."
This view of central media can be contrasted with
lateral media, such as email networks, where messages are all slightly different and spread by a process of
lateral diffusion.
Journalism
Journalism is the discipline of collecting, analyzing, verifying and presenting
information regarding
current events,
trends, issues and
people. Those who practice journalism are known as
journalists.
News-oriented journalism is sometimes described as the "first rough draft of history" (attributed to
Phil Graham), because journalists often record important events, producing news articles on short deadlines. While under pressure to be first with their stories,
news media organizations usually
edit and
proofread their reports prior to publication, adhering to each organization's standards of accuracy, quality and style. Many news organizations claim proud traditions of holding government officials and institutions accountable to the public, while media critics have raised questions about holding the press itself accountable.
Public relations
Public relations is the art and science of managing communication between an organization and its key publics to build, manage and sustain its positive image. Examples include:
- Corporations use marketing public relations (MPR) to convey information about the products they manufacture or services they provide to potential customers to support their direct sales efforts. Typically, they support sales in the short and long term, establishing and burnishing the corporation's branding for a strong, ongoing market.
- Corporations also use public-relations as a vehicle to reach legislators and other politicians, seeking favorable tax, regulatory, and other treatment, and they may use public relations to portray themselves as enlightened employers, in support of human-resources recruiting programs.
- Non-profit organizations, including schools and universities, hospitals, and human and social service agencies, use public relations in support of awareness programs, fund-raising programs, staff recruiting, and to increase patronage of their services.
- Politicians use public relations to attract votes and raise money, and, when successful at the ballot box, to promote and defend their service in office, with an eye to the next election or, at career’s end, to their legacy.
Forms
Electronic media and print media include:
- Mobile phones, often called the 7th Mass Media, used for rapid breaking news, short clips of entertainment like jokes, horoscopes, alerts, games, music, and advertising
Audio recording and reproduction
Sound recording and reproduction is the
electrical or mechanical re-creation and/or amplification of
sound, often as
music. This involves the use of
audio equipment such as microphones, recording devices and loudspeakers. From early beginnings with the invention of the
phonograph using purely mechanical techniques, the field has advanced with the invention of electrical recording, the mass production of the
78 record, the
magnetic wire recorder followed by the
tape recorder, the vinyl
LP record. The invention of the
compact cassette in the 1960s, followed by Sony's
Walkman, gave a major boost to the mass distribution of music recordings, and the invention of
digital recording and the
compact disc in 1983 brought massive improvements in ruggedness and quality. The most recent developments have been in
digital audio players.
An album is a collection of related audio recordings, released together to the public, usually commercially.
The term
record album originated from the fact that 78
RPM Phonograph disc records were kept together in a book resembling a photo album. The first collection of records to be called an "album" was
Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, release in April 1909 as a four-disc set by
Odeon records.
It retailed for 16
shillings — about
£15 in modern currency.
A
music video (also promo) is a
short film or
video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a
song. Modern music videos were primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came into their own in the 1980s, when
Music Television's format was based around them. In the 1980s, the term "rock video" was often used to describe this form of entertainment, although the term has fallen into disuse.
Music videos can accommodate all styles of filmmaking, including
animation,
live action films,
documentaries, and non-narrative,
abstract film.
The sequencing of content in a broadcast is called a
schedule. With all technological endeavours a number of technical terms and slang are developed please see the
list of broadcasting terms for a glossary of terms used.
Television and
radio programs are distributed through radio broadcasting over frequency bands that are highly regulated by the
Federal Communications Commission. Such regulation includes determination of the width of the bands, range, licencing, types of receivers and transmitters used, and acceptable content.
Cable programs are often broadcast simultaneously with radio and television programs, but have a more limited audience. By coding signals and having
decoding equipment in
homes, cable also enables
subscription-based channels and
pay-per-view services.
A broadcasting
organisation may broadcast several programs at the same time, through several channels (
frequencies), for example
BBC One and
Two. On the other hand, two or more organisations may share a channel and each use it during a fixed part of the day.
Digital radio and
digital television may also transmit
multiplexed programming, with several channels
compressed into one
ensemble.
When broadcasting is done via the Internet the term
webcasting is often used. In 2004 a new phenomenon occurred when a number of technologies combined to produce
podcasting. Podcasting is an asynchronous broadcast/narrowcast medium, with one of the main proponents being
Adam Curry and his associates the
Podshow.
Film
Film is a term that encompasses motion pictures as individual projects, as well as the field in general. The origin of the name comes from the fact that
photographic film (also called
filmstock) has historically been the primary
medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist —
motion pictures (or just
pictures and "picture"),
the silver screen,
photoplays,
the cinema,
picture shows,
flicks — and commonly
movies.
Films are produced by
recording people and objects with
cameras, or by creating them using
animation techniques and/or
special effects. They comprise a series of individual frames, but when these images are shown rapidly in succession, the illusion of motion is given to the viewer. Flickering between frames is not seen due to an effect known as
persistence of vision — whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Also of relevance is what causes the perception of motion; a psychological effect identified as
beta movement.
Film is considered by many to be an important
art form; films entertain, educate, enlighten and inspire audiences. Any film can become a worldwide attraction, especially with the addition of
dubbing or
subtitles that translate the film message. Films are also artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them.
Internet
The
Internet (also known simply as "the Net" or "the Web") is a more interactive medium of mass media, and can be briefly described as "a network of networks". Specifically, it is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected
computer networks that transmit
data by
packet switching using the standard
Internet Protocol (IP). It consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and governmental networks, which together carry various
information and services, such as
electronic mail,
online chat,
file transfer, and the interlinked
Web pages and other documents of the
World Wide Web.
Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the
World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is the system of interconnected
computer networks, linked by
copper wires,
fiber-optic cables,
wireless connections etc.; the Web is the contents, or the interconnected
documents, linked by
hyperlinks and
URLs. The World Wide Web is accessible through the Internet, along with many other services including
e-mail,
file sharing and others described below.
Toward the end of the 20th century, the advent of the
World Wide Web marked the first era in which any individual could have a means of exposure on a scale comparable to that of mass media. For the first time, anyone with a
web site can address a global audience, although serving to high levels of
web traffic is still relatively expensive. It is possible that the rise of
peer-to-peer technologies may have begun the process of making the cost of bandwidth manageable. Although a vast amount of information, imagery, and commentary (i.e. "content") has been made available, it is often difficult to determine the authenticity and reliability of information contained in web pages (in many cases, self-published). The invention of the Internet has also allowed breaking news stories to reach around the globe within minutes. This rapid growth of instantaneous, decentralized communication is often deemed likely to change mass media and its relationship to society.
"Cross-media" means the idea of distributing the same message through different media channels. A similar idea is expressed in the news industry as "convergence". Many authors understand cross-media publishing to be the ability to publish in both
print and on the
web without manual conversion effort. An increasing number of
wireless devices with mutually incompatible data and screen formats make it even more difficult to achieve the objective “create once, publish many”.
The internet is quickly becoming the center of mass media. Everything is becoming accessible via the internet. Instead of picking up a newspaper, or watching the 10 o'clock news, people will log onto the internet to get the news they want, when they want it. Many workers listen to the radio through the internet while sitting at their desk. Games are played through the internet.
The Internet and Education: Findings of the Pew Internet & American Life Project Even the
education system relies on the internet.Teachers can contact the entire class by sending one e-mail. They have web pages where students can get another copy of the class outline or assignments. Some classes even have class blogs where students must post weekly, and are graded on their contributions. The internet thus far has become an extremely dominant form of media.
Blogs (Web Logs)
Blogging has become a huge form of media, popular through the internet. A blog is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging which consists of blogs with very short posts.
RSS feeds
RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like
Wired, news-oriented community sites like
Slashdot, and personal
blogs. It is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts. An RSS document (which is called a "feed" or "web feed" or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.
Podcast
A
podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
Mobile
Mobile phones were introduced in
Japan in 1979 but became a mass media only in 1998 when the first downloadable ringing tones were introduced in Finland. Soon most forms of media content were introduced on mobile phones, and today the total value of media consumed on mobile towers over that of internet content, and was worth over 31 billion dollars in 2007 (source Informa). The mobile media content includes over 8 billion dollars worth of mobile music (ringing tones, ringback tones, truetones, MP3 files, karaoke, music videos, music streaming services etc); over 5 billion dollars worth of mobile gaming; and various news, entertainment and advertising services. In Japan mobile phone books are so popular that five of the ten best-selling printed books were originally released as mobile phone books.
Similar to the internet, mobile is also an interactive media, but has far wider reach, with 3.3 billion mobile phone users at the end of 2007 to 1.3 billion internet users (source ITU). Like email on the internet, the top application on mobile is also a personal messaging service, but SMS text messaging is used by over 2.4 billion people. Practically all internet services and applications exist or have similar cousins on mobile, from search to multiplayer games to virtual worlds to blogs. Mobile has several unique benefits which many mobile media pundits claim make mobile a more powerful media than either TV or the internet, starting with mobile being permanently carried and always connected. Mobile has the best audience accuracy and is the only mass media with a built-in payment channel available to every user without any credit cards or paypal accounts or even an age limit. Mobile is often called the
7th Mass Medium and either the fourth screen (if counting cinema, TV and PC screens) or the third screen (counting only TV and PC).
Publishing
Publishing is the industry concerned with the production of
literature or
information – the activity of making information available for public view. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers.
Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed works such as
books and
newspapers. With the advent of digital information systems and the
Internet, the scope of publishing has expanded to include
websites,
blogs, and the like.
As a
business, publishing includes the development,
marketing,
production, and
distribution of newspapers, magazines, books,
literary works,
musical works,
software, other works dealing with information.
Publication is also important as a
legal concept; (1) as the process of giving formal notice to the world of a significant intention, for example, to marry or enter bankruptcy, and; (2) as the essential precondition of being able to claim
defamation; that is, the alleged
libel must have been published.
Book
A
book is a collection of sheets of
paper,
parchment or other material with a piece of text written on them, bound together along one edge within covers. A book is also a literary work or a main division of such a work. A book produced in electronic format is known as an
e-book.
In
library and information science, a book is called a
monograph to distinguish it from serial
publications such as
magazines,
journals or
newspapers.
Publishers may produce low-cost, pre-proof editions known as
galleys or 'bound proofs' for promotional purposes, such as generating reviews in advance of publication. Galleys are usually made as cheaply as possible, since they are not intended for sale.
Magazine
A
magazine is a periodical
publication containing a variety of articles, generally financed by
advertising and/or purchase by readers.
Magazines are typically published
weekly,
biweekly,
monthly,
bimonthly or
quarterly, with a
date on the cover that is in advance of the date it is actually published. They are often printed in color on coated paper, and are bound with a
soft cover.
Magazines fall into two broad categories: consumer magazines and business magazines. In practice, magazines are a subset of
periodicals, distinct from those periodicals produced by scientific, artistic, academic or special interest publishers which are subscription-only, more expensive, narrowly limited in circulation, and often have little or no advertising.
Magazines can be classified as:
- Special interest magazines (women's, sports, business, scuba diving, etc)
Newspaper
A
newspaper is a
publication containing news and information and advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called
newsprint. It may be general or special interest, most often published daily or weekly. The first printed newspaper was published in 1605, and the form has thrived even in the face of competition from technologies such as radio and television. Recent developments on the Internet are posing major threats to its business model, however. Paid circulation is declining in most countries, and advertising revenue, which makes up the bulk of a newspaper's income, is shifting from print to online; some commentators, nevertheless, point out that historically new media such as radio and television did not entirely supplant existing.
Software publishing
A
software publisher is a
publishing company in the
software industry between the
developer and the
distributor. In some companies, two or all three of these roles may be combined (and indeed, may reside in a single person, especially in the case of
shareware).
Software publishers often license software from developers with specific limitations, such as a time limit or geographical region. The terms of licensing vary enormously, and are typically secret.
Developers may use publishers to reach larger or foreign markets, or to avoid focussing on marketing. Or publishers may use developers to create software to meet a market need that the publisher has identified.
Mass wire media
Mass wire media is a new frontier of news reporting in the high-tech age. A few decades ago news reporting was through
newspapers and
radio and
television. The radio broadcasts that were made famous by
Franklin D. Roosevelt during
World War II changed the way radio was looked at. These fireside chats made the radio news and news radio. Things are different now as we are witnessing a revolution of people-oriented reporting in real time and other times. This element of intimate knowledge of the event or story being reported has dramatically changed the way we all view news stories.
This is called by some the Social Media Revolution. This revolution has intrinsically altered the way news is reported almost the way it happens. The trend of people-oriented reporting is only on the rise as reporting news becomes more personal and more accurate - although also more subjective.
Video games
A video game is a
computer-controlled game where a video display such as a
monitor or
television is the primary feedback device. The term "computer game" also includes games which display only text (and which can therefore theoretically be played on a
teletypewriter) or which use other methods, such as sound or vibration, as their primary feedback device, but there are very few new games in these categories. There always must also be some sort of
input device, usually in the form of
button/joystick combinations (on arcade games), a
keyboard &
mouse/
trackball combination (computer games), or a
controller (
console games), or a combination of any of the above. Also, more esoteric devices have been used for input. Usually there are rules and goals, but in more open-ended games the player may be free to do whatever they like within the confines of the virtual universe.
In common usage, a "computer game" or a "
PC game" refers to a game that is played on a
personal computer. "
Console game" refers to one that is played on a device specifically designed for the use of such, while interfacing with a standard
television set. "
Arcade game" refers to a game designed to be played in an establishment in which patrons pay to play on a per-use basis. "Video game" (or "videogame") has evolved into a catchall phrase that encompasses the aforementioned along with any game made for any other device, including, but not limited to,
mobile phones,
PDAs, advanced
calculators, etc.
Personal media
Non-mass or "personal" media (point-to-point and person-to-person communication) include:
See also
