The Mass Media

The Mass Media

Practices and values

The Mass Media - Practice and Values

In essence, the mass media are the tools or technologies that facilitate dissemination of information and entertainment to a vast number of consumers. They are the tools of large-scale manufacture & distribution of information and related messages. These tools ‘mediate ‘the messages; they are not the messages themselves. However, Marsall McLuhan , the media prophet, liked to proclaim that “the medium is the message,” though the title of on of his Book suggests rather then that ‘the medium is the messages.’ The media are technologies; they are also messages and massages’. They can also be looked at as industries, as cultural or entertainment industries.

While cinema, radio, television, cable, and the Press can easily mass be recognized as ‘mass media’ , it requires some stretching of the established meaning of the term to include recent  technologies (sometimes termed the ‘new media’)such as pagers, cellular phones, satellites, computers, electronic mail and the Internet as ‘mass media’. More correctly, these new media may be termed ‘interactive media’ for they are not as much transmission technologies from one source to many receivers, as interactive technologies, which involve feedback, exchange and participation.

‘A mass medium’ says Wilbur Schramm, ‘is essentially a working group organized round some device for circulating the same message, at about to same time to large number of people’.; Such a definition excludes the folk media, group media, and interpersonal communication such as rumor, education and preaching where communication is not ‘mediated’ by a ‘device’. Further, the pejorative term ‘mass’(a way of looking down at people as masses’)suggests that the modern media are ‘exeperienced’ not by individuals and group in terms of their own cultures but as the part of the ‘mass’ and as ‘mass culture’ The term mass also suggest that people’s interaction with media is homogeneous, inactive and unquestioning. In communication studies today ,however the term “mass media” has come to be a useful collective phrase through it slurs over the distinctions among the various media.

As generally interpreted the “mass media” are the Press, cinemas. radio and television. But books ,magazines, pamphlets and direct mail literature and posters also need to be included in the label. They are so termed because their reach extends to vast heterogeneous masses of population living in the wide and extensive area of a country. The means they employ to communicate message to the masses are technological printing machines, records, cameras, cables, modems, computers and satellites. Their communications are thus interposed and mediated; they are not as direct or face to face as interpersonal exchanges.

The organs of the mass media are technological means of transmitting message to large numbers of people. Indeed they are very much more than that. As they are very expensive media. they have to be run by the institutions govt or well financed pvt commercial bodies They require a group of people to organize and administer , to produce , distribute and constantly maintain in working order the whole set up of, say a studio, a transmitting  centre or a publishing house.

Yet another feature of the mass media is that they are founded on the idea of the mass production and mass distribution – the marks of an industrial society. Copies of Newspapers and magazines, for instance, are printed in thousands and are circulated over a vast area. But to enjoy a mass audience, the media have to cater to a taste that is not very cultured or sophisticated. What the mass media, therefore, reflect and propagate is a popular culture. The culture made popular by Hindi films in our Cities is a case in point. With the rapid expansion of television and video in cities and towns, popular culture is likely to take on new forms; the myths of our culture will find expressions in ever new ways.

But the mass media in India are in fact a minority media as access to them is still restricted because of poverty, low literacy levels, and familiarity with Hindi and English, the major languages used in the various media; moreover, reach is limited to populations living in metros and large cities. The folk medias in contrast, have a wide audience ; they are media close to hearts and minds of the people, suited to a poor country, and help facilate identification and participation.

See Also :

Print Media and Communication	Freedom of Press - The right to Publish and Privacy
Communication and Print media	Council Guides to Journalistic Ethics
Introduction to Print Media	Censorship in the Press and Media
Developments in Print Media	Media Laws
Contribution of News Papers	Press Ownership and Monopoly
Contribution of Magazines	Media Organisations and News Agencies
Press Commissions and Councils	The Mass Media
The Power of Press	Functions of Mass Media
History of Indian Journalism	Theories of the Press or Media
Press Censorship under the Emergency	Code of Ethics for Journalists
News Values in Journalism	Readership and Popularity of Magazine
Magazine genres-Types of Magazine