Concept
mass media
Print, electronic and digital channels that carry the same message at the same time to large numbers of people who do not know one another and are scattered.
When we say “mass media” we tend to picture a machine; but for this course the interesting thing is not the machine, it is three relationships: who is able to speak (production), how many people the message reaches (distribution), and whether receivers know one another and can answer back (reception). Printing, newspapers, the telegraph, photography, film, radio, television and digital networks changed these three relationships in different ways.
The definition is deliberately wide: there is no history of a single “mass medium”, only the history of tools that complement one another and often do not abolish the old. Even today about a quarter of American adults at least sometimes get news from print . Throughout the course we treat the “medium” not as a lone cause but as an environment that works together with politics, economics and habits .
Example
(Hypothetical example.) A newspaper page, a radio broadcast and a social media feed set up production, distribution and reception in three different ways.