Appendix B: Understanding Mass and Mediated Communication

Defining Mass and Mediated Communication

DO THESE LOOK familiar? “Share icons,” a common feature of many Web pages, enable the viewer to post and share the page to social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. iStock Vectors/Getty Images

As we learned in Chapter 1 and have discussed throughout this book, mediated communication occurs when there is some technology that is used to deliver messages between sources and receivers. Media may be print (such as newspapers or magazines) or electronic (such as television, radio, or the Internet). But just having our messages mediated does not make communication “mass,” as we use many forms of media (phone, e-mail, Facebook, blogs) to communicate in interpersonal, small group, organizational, public, and intercultural contexts. When mediated communication occurs on a very broad scale, we refer to it as mass communication. Before the advent of the Internet and social networking, mass communication was characterized by several factors:

First, the types of media that we considered to be mass media had extremely large audiences, typically described in millions (of viewers, readers, listeners, and so on).
Second, the sources of messages tended to be professional communicators. These were people whose livelihoods depended on the success of communication—publishers, actors, writers, reporters, advertising executives, or even the guard at the studio gate.
Third, traditional mass media outlets had less interactivity and opportunity for feedback than other forms of communication, which made it more difficult for sources to know their audience.

Traditional mass media tended to operate along the lines of the linear model of communication presented in Chapter 1. Messages were sent out and there wasn’t much feedback, if any. But emerging technologies provide audiences with increased opportunity for interaction—in fact, many messages depend on audience interaction to become “mass media” messages. Every time you forward a link—or choose not to—you are playing a role in that transaction.

These features still apply to many traditional mass media rooted in the publishing, broadcasting, and entertainment industries—but they’ve also been challenged over the past decade by the increasingly participatory nature of digital communication.

In addition, although traditional mass media are distinct in many ways from the more clearly interpersonal uses of media (such as telephone and e-mail), the changing digital media environment has increasingly blurred the difference between these types of communication. For example, when Abigail posts a status update on Facebook for her friends or forwards a joke over e-mail, her message could potentially wind up being seen by thousands of people—thereby adding a “mass” element to communication that is otherwise mainly interpersonal. Similarly, individual audience members may provide immediate feedback to professional news organizations and TV show creators by posting comments on political and fan blogs—adding interactivity and feedback to what was once a linear form of mass communication.

This merging of traditional mass communication with digital computing and telecommunication technologies is called media convergence. Convergence is a critical part of living in a digital media environment, and it affects how mass media content is shaped as well as how mass media messages can influence audiences (Pavlik & McIntosh, 2013).