Reconsidering the Process of Mass Communication

One essential element of media literacy is having an understanding of the process of mass communication.

Traditionally, the content producer, the source, in the mass communication process is a large, hierarchically structured organization—for example, Pixar Studios, the Philadelphia Enquirer, CBS Television. And as we saw, the typical consequence of this organizational structure is scant room for individual vision or experimentation. But in the age of the Internet, with its proliferation of blogs (regularly updated online journals that comment on just about everything), social-networking sites such as Facebook where users post all variety of free, personal content, and other websites, the distinction between content consumer and content provider disappears. Now, Interpreter A can be an independent musician self-releasing her music online, a lone blogger, a solitary online scrapbooker, or two pals who create digital video. The message in the traditional mass communication process is typically many identical messages, mechanically produced, simultaneously sent, inflexible, and unalterable. RSS, for really simple syndication, feeds are aggregators that allow Web users to create their own content assembled from the Internet’s limitless supply of mate-rial. Some of the most popular are MyTimes, Blogline, Newsgator, and My Yahoo. Users tell the aggregator what sites to collect, or their issues of interest, or even their favorite writers. As soon as any new content in their preselected categories appears on the Net, it is automatically brought to their RSS fi le. In this way, according to journalist Robert Kuttner (2007), users can “pre-assemble an all-star Webpaper [or Webcast or Webmaga-zine] that no single newspaper [or radio station, cable network, television station, or magazine] can possibly duplicate” (p. 26). In other words, each RSS “message” is infinitely alterable, completely unique, and thoroughly idiosyncratic. Alternate-ending DVDs per-mitting viewers to “re-edit” an existing movie at home are old hat by now. But what do you think of director Steven Soderbergh’s vision for a digital movie future? He said that in 5 or 10 years, when theaters convert more fully from fi lm to digital projection (Chapter 6), he plans to exhibit multiple, different versions of the same fi lm. “I think it would be very interesting to have a movie out in release,” he said, “and then, just a few weeks later say, ‘Here’s version 2.0, recut, rescored.’ Th e other version is still out there—people can see either or both” (in Jardin, 2005b, p. 257). What will be the impact on the mass communication process when content producers no longer have to amass as large an audience as possible with a single, simultaneously distributed piece of content? When a producer can sell very specific, very idiosyncratic, constantly changing content to very specific, very idiosyncratic, constantly changing consumers, will profitability and popularity no longer be so closely linked? What will “popular” and “profitable” messages really mean when audience members can create infinitely “alter-able” messages? What will happen when the mass communication process, long dependent on appointment consumption (audiences consume content at a time predetermined by the producer and distributor; for example, a movie time at a theater, your favorite television show at 9:00 on Tuesdays, news at the top of the hour), evolves more completely to consumption-on-demand (the ability to consume any content, anytime, anywhere)?

FEEDBACK AND INTERPRETER – The AUDIENCE

In the traditional model of the mass communication process, feedback is inferential and delayed—what is a newspaper’s circulation, what were this weekend’s box office numbers for that movie, what are that program’s ratings? Likewise, the audience is typically seen as large and heterogeneous, known to content producers and distributors in a relatively rudimentary way, little more than basic demographics. But digital media have changed what content creators and distributors know about their audiences (Interpreter B) because they have changed how audiences talk back to those sources (feedback). Silicon Valley marketing consultant Richard Yanowitch explains, “The Internet is the most ubiquitous experimental lab in history, built on two-way, real-time interactions with millions of consumers whose individual consumption patterns can for the first time be infinitesimally measured, monitored, and molded.” Adds Google advertising executive Tim Armstrong, “Traditionally, the focus has been on the outbound message. But we think the information coming back in is as important or more important than the messages going out. For years, demographics has been a religion among advertisers because it was the only information they had” (both in Streisand & Newman, 2005, p. 60). In today’s mass communication, every visit to a specific Web address (and every click of a mouse once there), every download of a piece of content, and every product bought online provide feedback to someone. But it isn’t just the Internet—every selection of a channel on cable or satellite, every rental or purchase by credit card of a CD, DVD, video game, or movie ticket, and every consumer product scanned at the checkout counter is recorded and stored in order to better identify us to Interpreter A, whoever that might be. But this raises the question, Who is that? It might be content providers who want to serve us more effectively because they know us so much more thoroughly than they once did when relying solely on demographics. Or it could be those who would make less honor-able use of the feedback we so willingly provide—for example, identity thieves or insurance companies that would deny us coverage because of our eating and viewing habits.

The Result

How will we use the new communication technologies? What will be our role in the new, emerging mass communication process? The world of content creators and distributors is now more democratic. Audiences, even though they may be fragmented into groups as small as one person or as large as 100 million, are better known to those who produce and distribute content and they can talk back more directly and with more immediacy. Content, the message, is now more flexible, infinitely alterable, unbound by time and space. Clearly, for content producers there is more room for experimentation in content creation and consumption. There is less risk, and possibly even great reward, in challenging audiences. The evolving mass communication process promises not only efficiency but great joy, boundless choice, and limitless access to information for all its partners.

 

KEY TERMS

1. Day-and-date release - is when a film becomes available in theaters, DVD etc.

2. Formats - the way in which something is arranged or set out.

3. Platform - a method of communication or entertainment, for example television, radio, or the internet

4. Media multitasking – is the simultaneous access to different types of content, such as listening to music on a smartphone while watching a ball game on television or browsing the web on a computer and talking on your phone while scrolling through a social media newsfeed.

5. Convergence – the fact that two or more things, ideas, etc. become similar or come together.

6. Concentration of ownership - is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.

7. Conglomeration - describes the process by which a conglomerate is created, as when a parent company begins to acquire subsidiaries.

8. Economies of scale - are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation (typically measured by the amount of output produced), with cost per unit of output decreasing with increasing scale.

9. Oligopoly - is a market structure with a small number of firms, none of which can keep the others from having significant influence.

10. Globalization - is the word used to describe the growing interdependence of the world's economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information.

11. Audience fragmentation - division of audiences into small groups due to the wide spectrum of media outlets. This is a situation that becomes increasingly baffling to advertisers as the specialization of publications and broadcast opportunities becomes even more diverse.

12. Narrowcasting - has traditionally been understood as the dissemination of information to a narrow audience; not to the broader public at-large.

13. Niche market - is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused.

14. Targeting - is to make a thing or group of things a target, to select it or them to be acted upon.

15. Addressable technologies — technologies permit-ting the transmission of very specific content to equally specific audience members

16. Taste publics — groups of people bound by little more than an interest in a given form of media content.

17. Hypercommercialism - t he excessive use of mercantilism in media to obtain success and profit; Extreme emphasis on commerce.

18. Product placement - also known as embedded marketing, is a marketing technique where references to specific brands or products are incorporated into another work, such as a film or television program, with specific promotional intent.

19. Brand entertainment — when brands are, in fact, part of and essential to the program.

20. Payola - in the music industry, is the illegal practice of payment or other inducement by record companies for the broadcast of recordings on commercial radio in which the song is presented as being part of the normal day's broadcast, without announcing that there has been consideration paid in cash or in kind for its airplay adjacent to the recording's broadcast.

21. Webisode - is an episode of a series that is distributed as web television. It is available as either for download or in streaming, as opposed to first airing on broadcast or cable television.

22. Wi-Fi -  is a family of wireless networking technologies,, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and internet access.

23. Synergy - it is the driving force behind several recent mergers and acquisitions in the media and telecommuni-cations industries.

24. Platform agnostic - is a a concept that refers to the design attributes and philosophies of software products.

25. Blog -is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts).

26. Cost of entry - he cost of beginning to trade in a particular market for the first time.

27. RSS - is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format.

28. Appointment consumption - audiences consume content at a time predetermined by the producer and distributor; for example, a movie time at a theater, your favorite television show at 9:00 on Tuesdays, news at the top of the hour.

29. Consumption-on-demand - the ability to consume any content, anytime, anywhere.

30. Fraction of selection -a formula for determining which form of mass media an individual would select.

Questions for review:

1. Convergence – the fact that two or more things, ideas, etc. become similar or come together.

2. Media multitasking – is the simultaneous access to different types of content, such as listening to music on a smartphone while watching a ball game on television or browsing the web on a computer and talking on your phone while scrolling through a social media newsfeed.

3. The main difference between conglomeration and concentration is that a media conglomerate may own newspapers, television stations, music outlets, and radio stations – and many do. One of the results of conglomeration is integration within these corporations. Integration has two forms, horizontal and vertical.

4. Globalization - is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide/

5. Hypercommercialism - t he excessive use of mercantilism in media to obtain success and profit; Extreme emphasis on commerce.

6. Audience fragmentation - division of audiences into small groups due to the wide spectrum of media outlets. This is a situation that becomes increasingly baffling to advertisers as the specialization of publications and broadcast opportunities becomes even more diverse.

7. One concern is when companies that are conglomerate use their power to change media content in order to fit their own preferences. Another concern is the respect companies have for values and cultures of that they work in.

8. Three elements that fuel today's rampant media convergence include narrowcasting, niche marketing, and targeting.

9. Differentiate between notions of content producers, audiences, messages, and feedback in the traditional view of the mass communication process and more contemporary understandings of these elements of the process. Content producers are people who have been helped by low cost of entry. Messages come in many unique forms. Not only that but it can also help producers shorten time consumed. Feedback can happen directly and on the spot. Because of this, the audience changes and content producers actually pay attention to their audience.

10. The significance of low cost of entry is that it can assist those who provide content by helping them become creators.

Questions for critical thinking and discussion:

1) I agree. I think that nowadays the media is overflown with content, there are tons of movies, videogames, music etc. and the internet made them very accessible. THIS, is why people get turned off, because they have all this content at their fingertips easily accessible, which makes this content less valuable, to the point when you just don’t want to consume it. I still experience this turn off to this day. For example, I don’t play modern videogames anymore, because there are tons of them and most of them are so meaningless and stupid, that it feels like it’s not a videogame but a money-making project. It is annoying.

2) The biggest concern of the critics of conglomerates who own too many mediums of media is that they will be able to proliferate any belief through their domination of the media market. I think this is a fair concern - especially to those conglomerates who seek to own television stations and networks. News television is, for most Americans, a primary source of news information and judgement formation on that information. Yes, there are other ways which Americans can access the news, such as through the internet or through social networking, but the primary source for news is still the television. If one television broadcast conglomerate with any kind of agenda were to take too much control over the market, they would have the power to influence people's judgement of news information in a very powerful way. This does take a toll on democracy in an indirect way - as people's perspectives on news/ political events will be skewed towards the agenda promoted by the conglomerate, affecting their opinion and their (potential) vote regarding that matter.

3) Interpersonal communication targets a single audience while the mass communication targets a group of target audience so as to communicate the message. From theoretical point of view, the results of the interpersonal communication and mass communication are different. The interpersonal communication is considered as more result oriented and effective than that of the mass communication