End of mass communications?

So are we witnessing the end of mass communications as the set of institutions as social problems and or as an academic discipline (Chafee and Metzger)?

Let’s answer this drawing from various theories and concepts, and we will also provide a few examples to illustrate the problems.

Our stand is that Emerging technologies is hastening the end of mass communications as a set of institutions, and as a social problem.

Traditionally, mass communication has enabled the communication of information, news, messages to reach a wide audience, and more importantly, over geographically dispersed audience.

Over the years, it became a powerful tool to disseminate information. While many believed in its power, there are some who believed that mass communication is an oxymoron, because communication on a large scale would really not have been possible without adequate technology, which has been made available only recently. And that is where a growing number of people now feel that the word mass in mass communication should be replaced with media (Turrow, 1992).

Mass communication as a set of media institutions

Mass communication as a set of media institutions is the view that mass communication refers to the industries such as newspapers, magazines, televisions, radio that have the infrastructure and manpower in place to transmit news, messages and information through the various channels on a big scale.

The advantage of these industries is their capacity to mass produce messages due to the number of people they employ, and also because of their capacity to mass distribute messages to the audience.

One can imagine that the infrastructure required for such a setup would be huge and it was indeed the case. This deterred the smaller players from getting into media production, and over time, only a few large companies dominated the industry (Schramm, 1957). And over time, these firms became too big and powerful and gradually became the tool of the elite and started furthering capitalist causes. Another obvious disadvantage of this approach is that it kept much of the public away from media production.

Mass communication as a societal problem

Decades back, the idea that mass production could result in mass persuasion was seen as a good thing. Many were convinced about its positives. However, after World War II, where people could see media being used for propaganda, and also to further the causes of a few, people started becoming wary of the power of the media.

They could see that only a few players were dominating mass media, only a handful of them were involved in the production of mass media and got to decide what gets to reach the public. A big portion of the society are unable to get themselves involved in the production process, thus giving these companies symbolic power. The common man had very few or no opportunity for personal expression to reach a mass audience due to the financial barriers.

Also, it was possible to pass content that would not be appropriate for certain people in the audience. For example, violent and sexual content to the audience, including children. Over time though, guidelines were laid to filter out such content.

Mass Communication as an academic field

Mass communication as an academic discipline started emerging in the 1950s. Earlier, media workers would acquire vocational skills such as writing, reporting, editing, design and production at broadcast, journalist, and film schools and get employed in the media industries.

However, after World War II, many universities shifted their alliance towards empirical research rather than vocation training in communication (Delia, 1987). Several topics like effects of media, effectiveness of campaigns, legal and policy issues have been researched. However, in recent years, researchers have been taking up topics such as domination of the media industries by the elite, and need for democratizing access to the mass media, especially for the oppressed groups.

So, the main characteristics that defined the traditional mass communication were Mass production, Lack of individual control and Finite number of available channels.

Digitization has changed the way how industries operate

However, things have changed a lot in recent years, and much of it is due to the emergence of technology and how people and businesses use it to communicate.

The proliferation of mobile phones to communicate, the increasing dependence on the internet, and the digitization of all things, have change the way industries operate; several practices that were the norm in the traditional world are no longer applicable (or have a lesser impact) in the digital world.

In today’s world, the mobile phone, the internet, e-mail, social media play a critical role in people’s lives, and these things are “de-massifying” mass media.

Here are a few observations as to how things are changing, or have already changed.

In recent years the number of channels available to reach out to the audience have increased. One can observe shrinking size of media for particular channels, where the audiences are not comparatively smaller, have discrete tastes, and are eager to engage. Communication is no longer only one-way; it is two-way, much more interactive and reveals a gradual shift in control form the senders to the end-users.

The emerging technologies are providing people with the tools to easily produce content, thus allowing more number of people to become content producer. The cost of media production has reduce substantially allowing many more players to enter the media market and provide a different perspective of things.

There are a lot of people who no longer subscribe to newspapers, but have apps installed on their phones that lets them know about the latest news updates. And in that too, most of the news is fed based on the interests of the person. So, they are no longer interested in a one size fits all approach, for most things. On Facebook and Whatsapp, people are more interested in opinions from others on various matters.

Google also gives people the option to find information about what they are interested in, and not really what newspaper editors feel you should be reading.

People today have the opportunity to be a part of media, and as a result, tight control over access to media by the elite is seeing a gradual decline. And most of these developments have received an impetus due to digitization.

Lot of people are convinced that the quality journalism will prosper with increased focus on “relationship” built around communities and shared interests. The challenge for the media creators will be to generate revenue and how to fund journalism because the mass will no longer pay for it. However, with more realistic expectations about revenues, more focus on the community, and closely looking at the digital medium can reveal more opportunities.

So, to summarize, access to several emerging and useful technologies have made it easier for people to communicate. From here on, the mass-ness of the media will continue to see a downward trend. More importantly, social control of these tools by the elite groups in the society will become more difficult and more individuals will be empowered.

References

Delia, J (1987), Communication research: A history. In C.R.Berger & S.H. Chaffee (Eds.), Handbook of communication science (pp. 20-98). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Turrow J, (1992). On reconceptualizing “mass communication”. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 36, 105-110.