- "Popular press" redirects here; note that the University of Wisconsin Press
publishes under the imprint "The Popular Press".
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
[2933] ; 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:
- Broadcasting, in the narrow sense,
for radio and television.
- Various types of disc or tapes. In the 20th century, these were mainly
used for music. Video and
computer uses followed.
- Film, most often used for entertainment,
but also for documentaries.
- Internet, which has many uses and
presents both opportunities and challenges. Blogs and podcasts (such as
news, music, pre-recorded
speech, and video)
- 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
- Publishing, including electronic publishing
- Video games, which have developed
into a mass form of media since cutting-edge devices such as the
PlayStation 3, XBox 360, and Wii broadened
their use.
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 encompasses motion pictures as individual
projects, as well as the field in general. The name comes from the
photographic film (also called
filmstock), historically 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
URL. 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
[2934] 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 work,
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:
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
References
- http://freepress.net/node/41272
Further Reading
External links