mass media internet essay

Essay On Mass Media

500 words essay on mass media.

All kinds of different tools which come in use to help in distributing and circulating information and entertainment to the public come under the term of mass media. In other words, everything including radio, newspapers , cable, television and theatre are parts of mass media. These tools include exchanging opinions and public involvement. Through essay on mass media, we will go through it in detail.

Introduction to Mass Media

In today’s world, mass media embraces internet , cell phones, electronic mail, computers, pagers and satellites. All these new additions function as transmitting information from a single source to multiple receivers.

In other words, they are interactive and work on the person to person formula. Thus, it revolves around the masses i.e. the people. It is true that radio, television, press and cinema are in the spotlight when we talk about mass media.

Nonetheless, the role of pamphlets, books, magazines, posters, billboards, and more also have equal importance if not less. Moreover, the reach of these tools extends to a huge amount of masses living all over the country.

Television, cinema, radio and press are comparatively expensive forms of media which private financial institutions or the Government runs. These tools centre on the idea of mass production and mass distribution.

Therefore, newspapers, television and radio cater to the needs of the mass audience and accommodates their taste. As a result, it will not always be refined or sophisticated. In other words, it displays popular culture.

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The Function of Mass Media

The main function of mass media is to reach out to the masses and provide them with information. In addition to that, it also operates to analyze and observe our surroundings and provide information in the form of news accordingly.

As a result, the masses get constantly updated about not just their own surroundings but also around the world. This way mass media spreads and interprets information. For instance, weather forecasts equip people and farmers to plan ahead.

Similarly, fishermen get updates about the tidal activities from the news. In addition to this, mass media also strives to keep the fabric of our social heritage intact which showcasing our customs, myths and civilization.

Another major product of mass media is advertising. This way people learn about the goods and services in the market. It also spreads social awareness. For instance, anti-smoking campaign, women empowerment, green earth clean earth and more.

Most importantly, with the numerous mediums available in multiple languages, the masses get entertainment in their own language easily. Millions of people get to access a cheap source of relaxation and pass their time. In fact, it also helps to transport momentarily from our ordinary lives to a dream world. Thus, it remains the undisputed leader in reaching out to the masses.

Conclusion of Essay on Mass Media

All in all, while it is an effective tool, we must also keep a check on its consumption. In other words, it has the power to create and destroy. Nonetheless, it is a medium which can bring about a change in the masses. Thus, everyone must utilize and consume it properly.

FAQ on Essay on Mass Media

Question 1: Why is mass media important?

Answer 1: Mass media is essential as it informs, educates and entertains the public. Moreover, it also influences the way we look at the world. In other words, it helps in organizing public opinion.

Question 2: How does mass media affect our lives?

Answer 2: Mass media affects many aspects of human life, which range from the way we vote to our individual views and beliefs. Most importantly, it also helps in debunking false information.

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Top 10: Science in 2016

The 4th revolution: delegated intelligence and its shadows, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, can rainfall and climate change increase the risk of volcanic eruptions, featured author, latest book, first the media, then us: how the internet changed the fundamental nature of the communication and its relationship with the audience.

In just one generation the Internet changed the way we make and experience nearly all of media. Today the very act of consuming media creates an entirely new form of it: the social data layer that tells the story of what we like, what we watch, who and what we pay attention to, and our location when doing so.

The audience, once passive, is now cast in a more central and influential role than ever before. And like anyone suddenly thrust in the spotlight, we’ve been learning a lot, and fast.

This social data layer reveals so much about our behavior that it programs programmers as much as they program us. Writers for the blog website  Gawker  watch real-time web consumption statistics on all of their posts—and they instantly learn how to craft content to best command an audience. The head programmer for Fox Television Network similarly has a readout that gives an in-depth analysis of audience behavior, interest, and sentiment. In the run-up to the final episode of the American television drama  Breaking Bad , the series was drawing up to 100,000 tweets a day, a clear indication that the audience was as interested in what it had to say as what the producers were creating.

All this connected conversation is changing audiences as well. Like Narcissus, we are drawn to ourselves online and to the siren of ever-more social connections. In her book  Alone Together , Sherry Turkle (2011) points out that at this time of maximum social connection, we may be experiencing fewer genuine connections than ever before. The renowned media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1968, 73) saw the potential for this more than 40 years ago when he observed that  augmentation leads to amputation . In other words, in a car we don’t use our feet—we hit the road and our limbs go into limbo. With cell phones and social devices, we are connected to screens and virtually to friends worldwide, but we may forfeit an authentic connection to the world. Essentially, we arrive at Turkle’s “alone together” state.

In the past, one could turn the media off—put it down, go offline. Now that’s becoming the exception, and for many, an uncomfortable one. Suggest to a young person today that she go offline and she’ll ask, “Offline, what’s that?” or “Why am I being punished?” We are almost always connected to an Internet-enabled device, whether in the form of a smartphone, fitness monitor, car, or screen. We are augmented by sensors, signals, and servers that record vast amounts of data about how we lead our everyday lives, the people we know, the media we consume, and the information we seek. The media, in effect, follows us everywhere, and we’re becoming anesthetized to its presence.

It is jarring to realize that the implication of this total media environment was also anticipated more than 40 years ago by McLuhan. When he spoke of the “global village,” his point was not just that we’d be connected to one another. He was concerned that we’d all know each other’s business, that we’d lose a measure of privacy as a result of living in a world of such intimate awareness. McLuhan (1969) called this “retribalizing,” in the sense that modern media would lead us to mimic the behavior of tribal villages. Today, the effects of this phenomenon help define the media environment: we consciously manage ourselves as brands online; we are more concerned than ever with each other’s business; and we are more easily called out or shamed than in the bygone (and more anonymous) mass communication era.

We maintain deeply intimate relationships with our connected devices. Within minutes of waking up, most of us reach for a smartphone. We go on to check them 150 or more times throughout the day, spending all but two waking hours with a mobile device nearby (IDC 2013). As these devices become omnipresent, more and more data about our lives is nearly permanently stored on servers and made searchable by others (including private corporations and government agencies).

This idea that everything we do can be measured, quantified, and stored is a fundamental shift in the human condition. For thousands of years we’ve had the notion of accountability to an all-seeing, all-knowing God. He kept tabs on us, for our own salvation. It’s one of the things that made religion effective. Now, in just a few thousand days, we’ve deployed the actual all-seeing, all-knowing network here on earth—for purposes less lofty than His, and perhaps even more effective.

We are also in the midst of an unprecedented era of media invention. We’ve passed from the first web-based Internet to the always-connected post-PC world. We will soon find ourselves in an age of pervasive computing, where all devices and things in our built world will be connected and responsive, with the ability to collect and emit data. This has been called the  Internet of Things .

In the recent past, the pace of technological change has been rapid—but it is accelerating quickly. One set of numbers tells the story. In 1995, the Internet connected together about 50 million devices. In 2011, the number of connections exceeded 4.3 billion (at the time roughly half of these were people and half were machines). We ran out of Internet addresses that year and are now adopting a new address mechanism called IPv6. This scheme will allow for about 340 billion billion billion billion unique IP addresses. That’s probably the largest number ever seriously used by mankind in the design of anything. (The universe has roughly 40 orders of magnitude more atoms than we have Internet addresses, but man didn’t invent the universe and for the purpose of this chapter it is not a communication medium, so we’ll move on.)

Here is a big number we will contend with, and soon: there will likely be one trillion Internet-connected devices in about 15 years. Nothing on earth will grow faster than this medium or the number of connected devices and the data they emit. Most of these devices will not be people, of course, but the impact of a trillion devices emitting signals and telling stories on our mediated world cannot be overstated.

To visualize the size of all this, imagine the volume of Internet connections in 1995 as the size of the Moon. The Internet of today would be the size of Earth. And the Internet in 15 years the size of giant Jupiter!

Exponential change like this matters because it points out how unreliable it is to predict how media will be used tomorrow. Examining the spotty record of past predictions is humbling and helps open our minds to the future.

In 1878, the year after he invented the phonograph, Thomas Edison had no idea how it would be used; or rather, he had scores of ideas—but he could not come up a priori with the killer application of his hardware. Edison was a shrewd inventor who kept meticulous notes. Here were his top 10 ideas for the use of the phonograph:

• Letter writing, and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer.
• Photographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part.
• The teaching of elocution.
• Music—the phonograph will undoubtedly be liberally devoted to music.
• The family record; preserving the sayings, the voices, and the last words of the dying members of the family, as of great men.
• Music boxes, toys, etc.—A doll which may speak, sing, cry or laugh may be promised our children for the Christmas holidays ensuing.
• Clocks, that should announce in speech the hour of the day, call you to lunch, send your lover home at ten, etc.
• The preservation of language by reproduction of our Washingtons, our Lincolns, our Gladstones.
• Educational purposes; such as preserving the instructions of a teacher so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment; or learn spelling lessons.
• The perfection or advancement of the telephone’s art by the phonograph, making that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent records.

He first attempted a business centered on stenographer-free letter writing. That failed, largely because it was a big threat to the incumbent player—stenographers. It would be years (and a few recapitalizations) later that music would emerge as the business of phonographs. And this was a business that survived for well over 100 years before cratering.

When I reflect on my own career, I see this pattern of trying to understand—“Exactly what is this anyway?”—constantly repeat itself. In 1993, I collaborated with Bill Gates (1995) as he wrote  The Road Ahead . The book outlined what Gates believed would be implications of the personal computing revolution and envisioned a future profoundly impacted by the advent of what would become the Internet. At the time, we called this a “global information superhighway.”

I was working with Gates on envisioning the future of television. This was one year before the launch of the Netscape (then Mosaic) browser brought the World Wide Web to the masses. In 1993, we knew that in the coming years there would be broadband and new distribution channels to connected homes. But the idea that this would all be based on an open Internet eluded us completely. We understood what technology was coming down the pike. But we could not predict how it would be used, or that it would look so different from what we had grown accustomed to, which was centralized media companies delivering mass media content from the top down. In 1993 what we (and Al Gore) imagined was an “information superhighway”—Gates and I believed that this would be a means to deliver Hollywood content to the homes of connected people.

We understood that the Internet would be a means to pipe content to connected homes and to share information. But here’s what we missed:

• User-Generated Anything . The idea that the audience, who we treated as mere consumers, would make their own content and fascinate one another with their own ideas, pictures, videos,  feeds , and taste preferences ( Likes ) was fantastical. We knew people would publish content—this had been taking place on online bulletin boards and other services for years. But the idea that the public would be such a big part of the media equation simply did not make sense.
• The Audience As Distributor, Curator, Arbiter . We’d all be able to find content, because someone big like Microsoft would publish it. The idea that what the audience liked or paid attention to would itself be a key factor in distribution was similarly unfathomable. It would take the invention of Google and its PageRank algorithm to make clear that what everyone was paying attention to was one of the most important (and disruptive) tools in all of media. In the early 2000s, the rise of social media and then social networks would make this idea central.
• The Long Tail . In retrospect, it seems obvious: in a world of record shops and video rental stores it cost money to stock physical merchandise. Those economics meant stocking hits was more cost-effective than keeping less popular content on the shelves. But online, where the entire world’s content can be kept on servers, the economics flip: unpopular content is no more expensive to provision that a blockbuster move. As a result, audiences would fracture and find even the most obscure content online more easily than they could at Blockbuster or Borders. This idea was first floated by Clay Shirky in 2003, and then popularized by  Wired ’s Chris Anderson in 2004. That was also the year Amazon was founded, which is arguably the company that has capitalized on this trend most. It has been one of the most pervasive and disruptive impacts of the Internet. For not only has the long tail made anything available, but in disintermediating traditional distribution channels it has concentrated power in the hands of the new media giants of today: Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. (And Microsoft is still struggling to be a relevant actor in this arena.)
• The Open Internet . We missed that the architecture of the Internet would be open and power would be distributed. That any one node could be a server or a directory was not how industry or the media business, both hierarchal, had worked. The Internet was crafted for military and academic purposes, and coded into it was a very specific value set about openness with no central point of control. This openness has been central to the rapid growth of all forms of new media. Both diversity and openness have defined the media environment for the last generation. This was no accident—it was an act of willful design, not technological determinism. Bob Khan at DARPA and the team at BBN that crafted the Internet had in mind a specific and radical design. In fact, they first approached AT&T to help create the precursor of the Internet and the American communication giant refused—they wanted no part in building a massive network that they couldn’t control. They were right: not only was it nearly impossible to control, but it devoured the telephony business. But as today’s net neutrality battles point out, the effort to reassert control on the Internet is very real. For 50 years the Cold War was the major ideological battle between the free world and the totalitarian world. Today, it’s a battle for openness on the Internet. The issues—political and economic at their core—continue to underpin the nature of media on the Internet.

The Internet Gives Television a Second Act

New media always change the media that came before it, though often in unexpected ways. When television was born, pundits predicted it would be the death of the book. (It wasn’t.) The death of television was a widely predicted outcome of Internet distribution, the long tail, new content creators, and user-generated media. This caused fear in Hollywood and a certain delight, even schadenfreude in Silicon Valley. At conferences, technology executives took great pleasure in taunting  old media  with its novel forms and reminding the establishment that “it is only a matter of time.” New media would fracture audiences, and social media would hijack the public’s attention. The Internet was set to unleash an attention-deficit-disorder epidemic, leading viewers away from traditional television programming en masse. Yet television is doing better than ever. What happened?

As it turns out, the most widely discussed topic on social media is television. One third of Twitter users in the United States post about television (Bauder 2012), and more than 10 percent of all tweets are directly related to television programming (Thornton 2013). New forms of content (as well as new distribution methods) have increased the primacy of great programming, not diminished it. Competing platforms from Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and others have meant more competition for both network and cable television networks—and more power for program creators over whose content all the new distributors are fighting.

Despite the volume of content accessible via online platforms—100 minutes of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute—people still spend much of their time watching television, and television programming continues to reach a large majority of the population in developed countries. In the United States, people consume an average of 4 hours and 39 minutes of television every day (Selter 2012). In the United Kingdom, nearly 54.2 million people (or about 95 percent of the population above the age of four) watch television in a given week (Deloitte 2012). Thus, it appears that the “demise of television” is far from imminent (Khurana 2012).

In fact, television is better than it has ever been. Few predicted, even five years ago, that we would find ourselves in the middle of a new golden age in television. There is more content vying for our attention than ever before, and yet a number of rich, complex, and critically-acclaimed series have emerged. Shows like  Heroes , Mad Men ,  Breaking Bad ,  Game of Thrones , and  Homeland  are a testament to the success with which television has adapted to a new and challenging climate.

Networks are now developing niche shows for smaller audiences, and thrive on distribution and redistribution through new platforms. Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and HBO GO have pioneered new forms of viewing and served as the catalyst for innovative business deals. The practice of  binge viewing , in which we watch an entire season (or more) of a program in a short amount of time, is a product of on-demand streaming sites and social media. Before, viewers would have to consume episodes of televisions as they were aired or wait for syndication. Boxed DVD seasons were another way that audiences could consume many episodes at once, but this often meant waiting for networks to trickle out seasons spaced over time. Now, networks are pushing whole seasons to platforms such as Netflix at once. With enough spare time, one can now digest a whole series in an extremely condensed time frame.

This has changed not only our viewing habits, but also the nature of television content. Screenwriters are now able to develop deeper and more complex storylines than they ever had before. Where once lengthy, complex, and involved storylines were the domain of video games, we see this type of storytelling in drama series with some regularity. In addition, television shows are now constructed differently. As audiences become more conscious of the media and media creators, we find that programming is much more self-referential. Jokes on shows like  The Simpsons ,  Family Guy ,  30 Rock , and  The Daily Show  are often jokes about the media.

The consumption of television via on-demand streaming sites is not the only significant change to how we consume television content. There has been a tremendous shift in how we engage with television programming and how we interact with one another around television.

During the early decades of television, television viewing was a scheduled activity that drew groups of people together in both private homes and public spaces. The programming served as the impetus for such gatherings, and television watching was the primary activity of those who were seated in living rooms or stood before television sets in department stores or bars. Television continued to serve as a group medium through the 1960s and 1970s, but technological innovations ultimately transformed viewer behavior. The remote control, the videotape, the DVR, and mobile devices have led people to consume television content in greater quantities, but they do so increasingly in isolation. Once a highly anticipated social event, television programming is now an omnipresent environmental factor.

As television moved from a communal appointment medium to an individual activity initiated on demand, the community aspect of television has moved to the Internet. We have recreated the social function of television, which was once confined to living rooms, online—the conversation about television has expanded to a global level on social networking sites.

The sharp rise in multiscreen consumption is perhaps one of the most significant changes in modern media consumption, and has been a source of both excitement and concern among television network and technology executives alike. This form of media multitasking, in which a viewer engages with two or more screened devices at once, now accounts for 41 percent of time spent in front of television screens (Moses 2012). More than 60 percent of tablet users (Johnson 2012) and nearly 90 percent of smartphone users (Nielsen 2012) report watching television while using their devices.

Currently, television viewers are more likely to engage with content about television programming (such as Tweets or Facebook status updates) on complementary devices than they are to consume supplementary programming (such as simulcast sports footage) on a second screen. What is clear is that even if we are watching television in isolation, we are not watching alone.

Even when we’re alone, we often watch television with friends. Some 60 percent of viewers watch TV while also using a social network. Of this group, 40 percent discuss what they are currently watching on television via social networks (Ericsson 2012). More than half of 16 to 24-year-olds regularly use complementary devices to communicate with others via messaging, e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter about programs being watched on television (Ericsson 2012).

With all of this online communication, of course, comes data. With exacting precision, Twitter can monitor what causes viewers to post about a given program. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, a performance by Jay-Z and Kanye West generated approximately 70,000 tweets per minute (Twitter 2013). Later in the program, the beginning of a performance by Beyoncé generated more than 90,000 tweets per minute. Before she exited the stage, the superstar revealed her pregnancy by unbuttoning her costume. Tweets spiked at 8,868 per second, shattering records set on the social network shortly after such significant events as the resignation of Steve Jobs and the death of Osama Bin Laden (Hernandez 2011).

It is clear that television programming drives social media interaction. But do tweets drive consumers to tune in to a particular program? A report by Nielsen (2013) suggests that there is a two-way causal relationship between tuning in for a broadcast program and the Twitter conversation about that particular program. In nearly half of 221 primetime episodes analyzed in the study, higher levels of tweeting corresponded with additional viewers tuning in to the programming. The report also showed that the volume of tweets sent about a particular program caused significant changes in ratings among nearly 30 percent of the episodes.

The second-screen conversation about television programming is not limited to Twitter. Trendrr (2013), a social networking data analysis platform, recorded five times as much second-screen Facebook activity during one week in May 2013 than on all other social networks combined. Facebook recently released tools that will allow partner networks, including CNN and NBC, to better understand second-screen conversation taking place on the social network as it happens (Gross 2013). Using these tools, it is now possible to break down the number of Facebook posts that mention a certain term during a given time frame.

This real-time data—about who is watching television, where they are watching it from, and what they are saying about it—is of interest not just to television executives and advertisers, but the audience, too. There are several drivers for social television watching behavior, including not wanting to watch alone and the desire to connect with others (Ericsson 2012). Beyond connecting with the audience at large, dual-screen television viewers report using social networks to seek additional information about the program they are watching and to validate their opinions against a public sample.

I’ve witnessed times in my own life where watching TV alone became unacceptable. In order to make my viewing experience tolerable, I needed to lean on the rest of the viewing audience’s sensibility. Moments like these changed my relationship to the medium of television forever.

In January 2009, I watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama on television along with 37.8 million other Americans. As Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office, he strayed from the wording specified in the United States Constitution. I recognized that something had gone wrong—the president and the chief justice flubbed the oath? How could that be? What happened? I immediately turned to Twitter—and watched as everyone else was having the same instantaneous reaction. The audience provided context. I knew what was going on.

Twitter was equally useful to me during Super Bowl XLV when the Black Eyed Peas performed at the halftime show. The pop stars descended from the rafters of Cowboys Stadium and launched into a rendition of their hit song “I Gotta Feeling.” It sounded awful. I turned to my girlfriend in dismay: “There is something wrong with the television. My speakers must have blown! There is no way that a performance during the most-watched television event of all time sounds this horrible.” After tinkering with my sound system to no avail, I thought, “Maybe it’s not me. Could it be? Do they really sound this bad?” A quick check of Twitter allayed my fears of technical difficulties—yes, the Black Eyed Peas sounded terrible. My sound system was fine.

As the level of comfort with and reliance upon multiscreen media consumption grows among audiences, content producers are developing rich second-screen experiences for audiences that enhance the viewing experience.

For example, the Lifetime channel launched a substantial second-screen engagement for the 12th season of reality fashion competition  Project Runway  (Kondolojy 2013). By visiting playrunway.com during live broadcasts of the show, fans could vote in opinion polls and see results displayed instantly on their television screens. In addition to interactive voting, fans could access short-form video, blogs, and photo galleries via mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.

There are indications that second-screen consumption will move beyond the living room and into venues like movie theaters and sports stadiums. In connection with the theatrical rerelease of the 1989 classic  The Little Mermaid , Disney has created an iPad app called “Second Screen Live” that will allow moviegoers to play games, compete with fellow audience members, and sing along with the film’s score from their theater seats (Stedman 2013). In 2014, Major League Baseball will launch an application for wearable computing device Google Glass that will display real-time statistics to fans at baseball stadiums (Thornburgh 2013).

Music: Reworked, Redistributed, and Re-Experienced Courtesy of the Internet

The Internet has also completely transformed the way music is distributed and experienced. In less than a decade physical media (the LP and the CD) gave way to the MP3. Less than a decade after that, cloud-based music services and social sharing have become the norm. These shifts took place despite a music industry that did all it could to resist the digital revolution—until after it had already happened! The shareable, downloadable MP3 surfaced on the early web of the mid-1990s, and the music industry largely failed to recognize its potential. By the early 2000s, the Recording Industry Association of America had filed high-profile lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharing services like Napster and Limewire (as well as private persons caught downloading music via their networks). Total revenue from music sales in the United States plummeted from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in just ten years (Goldman 2010).

The truth was inescapable: its unwillingness to adopt new distribution platforms had badly hurt the music industry’s bottom line. Television (having watched the music debacle) adjusted far better to the realities of the content business in the digital age. But the recording industry was forced to catch up to its audience, which was already getting much of its music online (legally or otherwise). Only in recent years did major labels agree to distribution deals with cloud-streaming services including Spotify, Rdio, iHeartRadio, and MOG. The music industry has experienced a slight increase in revenues in the past year, which can be attributed to both digital music sales and streaming royalties (Faughnder 2013).

Ironically, what the music industry fought so hard to prevent (free music and sharing) in the early days of the web is exactly what they ended up with today. There is more music available online now than ever before, and much of it is available for free.

Applications like Spotify and Pandora give users access to vast catalogs of recorded music, and sites like SoundCloud and YouTube have enabled a new generation of artists to distribute their music with ease. There is also a social layer to many music services. Their sites and applications are designed to allow users to share their favorite songs, albums, and artists with one another. Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube (among others) enable playlist sharing.

The rapid evolution of online music platforms has led to fundamental changes in the way we interact with music. The process of discovering and digesting music has become an almost frictionless process. Being able to tell Pandora what you like and have it invoke a personalized radio station tailored to your tastes is not only more convenient that what came before it, it’s a qualitatively different medium. Gone are the days when learning about a new artist required flipping through the pages of a magazine (not to mention through stacks of albums at the record store).

As a kid I didn’t have much of a popular music collection, which was somewhat traumatic whenever it came to throwing a party or having friends over. The cool kids had collections; the rest didn’t. Telling friends to bring all their LPs over for the night didn’t make a lot of sense growing up in New York City, where they’d have to drag them along in a taxi or public bus. Fast forward to 2011. I was hosting a cocktail party at my home in San Francisco, which became an experiment in observing the effect of different kinds of Internet music services. In the kitchen, I played music via an iPod that contained songs and albums I had purchased over the years. (And my collection still was not as good as my cool friends.) In the living room, I streamed music via the Pandora app on my iPhone. Guests would pick stations, skip songs, or add variety as the night went on. Upstairs, I ran Spotify from my laptop. I had followed, as the service allows you to do, two friends whose taste I really admired—a DJ from New York, and a young woman from the Bay Area who frequently posted pictures of herself at music festivals to Facebook. In playing a few of their playlists, I had created the ultimate party soundtrack. I came across as a supremely hip host, without having to curate the music myself. Ultimately, everyone gravitated upstairs to dance to  my  Spotify soundtrack.

The iPod, Pandora, and Spotify all allowed me to digitally deliver music to my guests. However, each delivery device is fundamentally different. Adding music to an iPod is far from a frictionless process. I had purchased the songs on my iPod over the course of several years, and to discover this music I depended on word of mouth of friends or the once-rudimentary recommendations of the iTunes store. Before the introduction of iCloud in 2011, users had to upload songs from their iTunes library to an iPod or iPhone, a process that took time (and depending on the size of a user’s library, required consideration of storage constraints).

With Pandora came access to a huge volume of music. The Internet radio station boasts a catalog of more than 800,000 tracks from 80,000 artists. And it is a learning system that becomes educated about users’ tastes over time. The Music Genome Project is at the core of Pandora technology. What was once a graduate student research project became an effort to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level.” Using almost 400 attributes to describe and code songs, and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them, Pandora sought to generate stations that could respond to a listener’s taste and other indicators (such as the “thumbs down,” which would prevent a song from being played on a particular station again).

Spotify has a catalog of nearly 20 million songs. While the size of the service’s catalog is one of its major strengths, so too are its social features. The service, which launched in the United States in 2011 after lengthy negotiations with the major record labels, allowed users to publish their listening activity to Facebook and Twitter. The desktop player enabled users to follow one another, and make public playlists to which others could subscribe. In addition, users could  message  each other playlists. The sharing of Spotify playlists between connected users mimicked the swapping of mixtape cassettes in the late eighties and early nineties.

All of these are examples of how what the audience creates is a growing part of the creative process.

In the heyday of the album, the exact flow of one song to another and the overall effect was the supreme expression of overall artistic design and control. It wasn’t only the songs—the album represented 144 square inches of cover art and often many interior pages of liner notes in which to build a strong experience and relationship and story for your fans. It was a major advance over the 45, which provided a much smaller opportunity for a relationship with the band. With the arrival of MP3s, all of this was undone. Because we bought only the songs we were interested in, not only was the artist making less money, but he had lost control of what we were listening to and in what order. It didn’t much matter, because we were busy putting together playlists and mixtapes where we (the audience) were in charge of the listening experience.

The Internet has given us many tools that allow us to personalize the listening experience. More than that, listening to music has increasingly become a personal activity, one that is done in isolation. The simplicity with which music can be consumed online has changed music from an immersive media to a more ambient media, one that is easily taken for granted.

Interestingly, the rise in personal consumption of music (via MP3 and the cloud) has coincided with a sharp rise in festival culture. Now more than ever, audiences seek to be together—whether in Indio, California for Coachella; Black Rock City, Nevada for Burning Man; Chicago, Illinois for Lollapalooza; or Miami, Florida for the Ultra Music Festival—to experience music as a collective group.

At a time where we collectively listen to billions of hours of streamed music each month, nothing compels us in a stronger fashion than the opportunity to come together, outdoors, often outside of cell phone range, to bask in performances by our favorite artist. Festival lineups are stacked with independent artists and superstars alike. Interestingly, a lineup is not unlike a long playlist on iTunes. There is no way to catch every performance at South by Southwest or Electric Daisy Carnival—but there is comfort in knowing that many of your favorite artists are there in one place.

This has also proven out economically. At a time when selling recorded music had become ever-more challenging, the business of live music is experiencing a renaissance. In 2013, both weekend-long installments of the Coachella festivals sold out in less than 20 minutes and raked in $47.3 million in revenue (Shoup 2013). The rise of festivals (now one in every state of the U.S.) is a response to the Internet having made the act of consuming recorded music more ambient and banal than ever before while creating the need for greater social and immersive experiences.

At the core of going to a music festival or listening to  The White Album  with a group of friends is the need to experience music collectively. It is a realization that beyond even the song itself, perhaps the most inspiring and rousing element of music is not just the music itself, but our collective human experience of it.

Today, as the audience is restlessly making its own media, it is also learning fast that with new media come new rules and new exceptions. Media confer power on the formerly passive audience, and with that comes new responsibilities.

This was made startlingly evident in the wake of the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. At five o’clock in the evening on April 18, the FBI released a photo one of the suspects and asked the public for help in identifying him. Hours later, the Facebook page of Sunil Tripathi, a student who bore a resemblance to the suspect and was reported missing, was posted to the social news site Reddit. Word spread that this was the bomber. Within hours the story was amplified by the Internet news site BuzzFeed and tweeted to its 100,000 followers. Only, Tripathi had nothing to do with the crime. His worried family had created a Facebook page to help find their missing son. Over the next few hours Tripathi’s family received hundreds of death threats and anti-Islamic messages until the Facebook page was shut down.

The audience was making media, and spontaneously turning rumors into what appeared to be facts but weren’t, and with such velocity that facts were knocked out of the news cycle for hours that day (Kang 2013).

Four days later, an editor of Reddit posted to the blog a fundamental self-examination about crowd-sourced investigations and a reflection of the power of new media:

This crisis has reminded all of us of the fragility of people’s lives and the importance of our communities, online as well as offline. These communities and lives are now interconnected in an unprecedented way. Especially when the stakes are high we must strive to show good judgement and solidarity. One of the greatest strengths of decentralized, self-organizing groups is the ability to quickly incorporate feedback and adapt. reddit was born in the Boston area (Medford, MA to be precise). After this week, which showed the best and worst of reddit’s potential, we hope that Boston will also be where reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power.

(erik [hueypriest] 2013)

We are now able to surround ourselves with news that conforms to our views. We collect friends whose tastes and opinions are our own tastes and opinions. The diversity of the Internet can ironically make us less diverse. Our new media are immersive, seductive, and addictive. We need only turn to today’s headlines to see how this plays out.

On October 8, 2013, a gunman entered a crowded San Francisco commuter train and drew a .45-caliber pistol. He raised his weapon, put it down to wipe his nose, and then took aim at the passengers.

None of the passengers noticed because they were attending to something far more interesting than present reality. They were subsumed by their smartphones and by the network beyond. These were among the most connected commuters in all of history. On the other side of their little screens, passengers had access to much of the world’s media and many of the planet’s people. They were not especially connected to the moment or to one another. They were somewhere else.

Only when the gunman opened fire did anyone look up. By then, 20-year-old Justin Valdez was mortally wounded. The only witness to this event, which took place on a public train, in front of dozens of people, was a security camera, which captured the scene of connected bliss interrupted. The  San Francisco Chronicle reported the district attorney’s stunned reaction:

“These weren’t concealed movements—the gun is very clear,” said District Attorney George Gascón. “These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They’re just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They’re completely oblivious of their surroundings.”

Gascón said that what happened on the light-rail car speaks to a larger dilemma of the digital age. As glowing screens dominate the public sphere, people seem more and more inclined to become engrossed, whether they are in a car or a train or are strolling through an intersection.

In 1968, Marshall McLuhan observed how completely new media work us over. In  War and Peace in the Global Village  he wrote, “Every new technological innovation is a literal amputation of ourselves in order that it may be amplified and manipulated for social power and action.” (73)

We’ve arrived in full at an always-on, hyper-connected world. A network that connects us together yet can disconnect us from our present reality. An Internet that grants us the ability to create and remix and express ourselves as never before. One that has conferred on us responsibilities and implications we are only beginning to understand. The most powerful tools in media history are not the province of gods, or moguls, but available to practically all mankind.  The media  has become a two-way contact sport that all of us play. And because the media is  us , we share a vital interest and responsibility in the world we create with this, our extraordinary Internet.

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Gross, Doug. “CNN Among First with New Facebook Data-Sharing Tools.”  CNN.com , September 9, 2013.  http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/tech/social-media/facebook-media-data/index.html

Hernandez, Brian Anthony. “Beyonce’s Baby Inspired More Tweets Per Second Than Steve Jobs’ Passing.”  Mashable , December 6, 2011.  http://mashable.com/2011/12/06/tweets-per-second-2011/

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IDC (International Data Corporation). “Always Connected: How Smartphones and Social Keep Us Engaged.” An IDC Research Report, Sponsored by Facebook. 2013.  https://fb-public.app.box.com/s/3iq5x6uwnqtq7ki4q8wk

Johnson, Lauren. “63pc of Tablet Owners Use Device while Watching TV: Study.”  Mobile Marketer , September 17, 2012. http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/research/13781.html

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Internet: essay on internet as a mass media.

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This essay provides information about the Internet as a Mass media !

For much of the last one hundred and fifty years the most striking features of the development of the communication technologies have been the capacity to convey information to an ever-expanding range of audiences with a speed that now makes communication instantaneous. The speed of both broadcasting and interactive communication technologies has helped to compress dramatically all kinds of relationships across both time and space.

Image Courtesy : upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Internet_map_1024_-_transparent.png/1024px-Internet_map_1024_-_transparent.png

The media in all its forms became a central influence in the creation of individual, communal and national identities in the postindustrial societies. The emancipatory potential of new information and communication technologies has been further strengthened by the emergence of the Internet as a decentralised, interactive, comparatively more democratic network that created virtual communities and multiple realities.

From modest beginnings as a showcase for the technology and its commercial possibilities for image advertising, the Internet has had a role in expanding the media environment. The Internet fundamentally depends on telecommunications capacity. It is widely predicted to produce “digital” convergence, in which computing, telecommunications, and broadcasting all merge into a single stream of discrete bits carried on the same ubiquitous network. In this transformation of mediated communication into a more vernacular, more interactive, more nearly “natural” channel, the Internet stands out for expanding participation in whatever it touches.

Some scholars have argued that the Internet has become a mass medium used mostly by relatively passive consumers, and as such major content providers will dominate it. There is another view, which argues that Internet is not a mass media. According to them since Internet is giant network that interconnects innumerable smaller groups of linked computer networks and considering the three functions of Internet namely: (i) electronic mail or e-mail (transmission of messages to addressee or multiple addressee), (ii) bulletin board (like ordinary bulletin board) and (iii) World Wide Web (documents stored in Internet carrying varied information), it is evident that it is available only to the owner of a computer which is connected to network of computers and hence it cannot be considered as a mass media. They view Internet for transmitting messages to the owner of the computer and it does not transmit message or information to the general public as mass media does.

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Essay on Mass Media

Students are often asked to write an essay on Mass Media in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Mass Media

Introduction.

Mass media refers to various platforms that communicate and distribute information to a large number of people. These include television, radio, newspapers, and the internet.

Role of Mass Media

Types of mass media.

There are traditional forms like print media (newspapers, magazines) and broadcast media (TV, radio). The internet is a modern form, including social media, blogs, and news websites.

In conclusion, mass media is a powerful tool that can shape society. It is vital to use it responsibly for the benefit of all.

250 Words Essay on Mass Media

Introduction to mass media.

Mass media refers to the diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. It encompasses various forms of communication tools such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and digital platforms. The power of mass media lies in its ability to disseminate information, influence public opinion, and shape societal norms.

The Evolution of Mass Media

The journey of mass media began with print media, with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. The advent of electronic media, such as radio and television, in the 20th century, revolutionized the way information was shared. In the digital age, the internet has further transformed mass media, allowing for instantaneous global communication and interactivity.

Impact of Mass Media on Society

Mass media plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and culture. It has the power to influence political discourse, societal norms, and individual behavior. However, it can also propagate misinformation, leading to public confusion and mistrust. Hence, the ethical use of mass media is crucial.

The Future of Mass Media

The future of mass media lies in its convergence with digital technology. With the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning, mass media is likely to become even more personalized and interactive. However, this also raises concerns about privacy and the potential manipulation of information.

500 Words Essay on Mass Media

Mass media, an essential component of modern society, plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and disseminating information. It includes various platforms such as newspapers, radio, television, and the internet, which collectively serve as a mirror reflecting societal norms, values, and transformations.

The Role of Mass Media

Mass media is not merely an information-dissemination tool; it is a potent force in shaping public opinion and culture. It serves as a platform for debate, influencing political discourse and social issues. It has the power to set the agenda for public discourse, highlighting certain issues while downplaying others, thereby influencing what the public perceives as significant.

Democratization of Information

The advent of the internet and digital platforms has democratized information access, transforming mass media’s role. Previously, media was a one-way communication channel, with the public as passive consumers. However, the internet has made the public active participants, enabling them to generate, share, and react to content. This shift has democratized media, giving voice to previously unheard sections of society.

Mass Media and Social Change

Mass media has the potential to drive social change by bringing social issues to the forefront. It can expose injustices, spark debates, and drive collective action. For instance, the #MeToo movement gained momentum through social media, leading to significant shifts in societal attitudes towards sexual harassment.

The Dark Side of Mass Media

However, the power of mass media can also be misused, leading to negative societal impacts. The proliferation of fake news and misinformation, especially on social media platforms, is a significant concern. Moreover, media platforms can be used to spread hate speech, incite violence, or manipulate public opinion, as seen in various instances globally.

The Need for Media Literacy

In conclusion, mass media is a double-edged sword with the power to shape society positively or negatively. As we navigate this digital age, it is crucial to harness its potential for societal good, while mitigating its negative impacts. This balancing act requires critical media literacy, stringent regulations, and active participation from all stakeholders. The future of mass media is not just about technological advancements, but also about the ethical and responsible use of these powerful platforms.

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• Essay On Mass Media

Mass Media Essay

500+ words mass media essay.

The current age is termed the era of information. So, mass media is used to spread and share information. Mass media has become more potent after the advancement of digital technology. It is the most influential source of various ideas, news, and opinions. It also provides information about the happenings around the world.

Mass media means tools used in distributing and circulating information and entertainment to the masses. It includes television, the internet, radio, newspaper, and theatre. These modes of communication provide a platform to exchange opinions and public involvement.

In this essay on mass media, we will discuss the function of mass media and its importance to the world.

Introduction to Mass Media

In our society, mass media plays a crucial role. Mass media is a medium that brings news, entertainment, and cultural and educational programs to millions of homes. Mass media is classified into two categories: Print media and electronic media. Print media includes journals, newspapers, magazines, etc., and electronic media consists of the internet, TV, movies, etc. Some primary resources through which we get information are reading newspapers and magazines, listening to the radio and watching TV.

Radio, television, cinema and press are expensive forms of media run by private or government-run institutions. The main focus of these institutions is the idea of mass production and mass distribution. Among all the mass media tools, TV is the most popular. We have many channels to watch various shows, films, sports, plays, and educational and cultural programs.

Compared to other mass media tools, the information published in the newspapers is different. It publishes information about the latest happenings nationally and internationally. Some magazines and newspapers cover news, events, and reports on sports, cultural life, education, fashion, and entertainment for youth.

By watching TV or listening to the radio, you can upgrade your history, literature, and cultural knowledge and even learn foreign languages. Mass media includes cell phones, the internet, computers, pagers, emails, and satellites in today’s world. Information can be sent from a single source to multiple receivers through these mediums.

Other mass media tools such as books, magazines, pamphlets, books, billboards, etc., also have equal significance as the reach of these mediums extends to a massive number of masses.

The Function of Mass Media

Information.

One of the primary functions of mass media is the dissemination of information. Mass media circulates information and opinions about various events and situations to mass audiences. The information we get through multiple mediums of mass media is subjective, objective, secondary and primary. As an audience, we get informative news about the happenings worldwide via mass media. Media broadcast information on TV, radio, newspapers or magazines. Moreover, advertisements are also mainly for information purposes.

Entertainment

The most apparent function of mass media is entertainment. It is a performance that pleases people by making leisure time more enjoyable. Magazines and newspapers, television, radio, and other online mediums offer serials, stories, films, and comics to entertain audiences. Other instances include news, sports, columns, art and fashion. Infotainment means the fusion of entertainment and information, and edutainment is education and fun programs.

Socialisation

Socialisation means the transmission of culture and media works as reflectors of society. Socialisation is a process by which people behave in acceptable ways in their culture or society. Through this process, we learn how to become members of our community or human society in a greater sense. People who read a newspaper or watch television know how people react to matters and what norms and values they perceive on particular events, issues, or situations.

The link between the government and the people

The government utilises the power of mass media to explain, inform, and support its policies and programs.

Conclusion of Essay on Mass Media

All in all, while it is an effective tool, we must also check its consumption. In other words, it has the power to create and destroy. Nonetheless, it is a medium that can bring about a change in the masses. Thus, everyone must utilise and consume it properly.

From our BYJU’S website, students can also access CBSE Essays related to different topics. It will help students to get good marks in their exams.

Frequently asked Questions on Mass media Essay

Why is mass media important.

Mass media provides information, education and also entertainment. Thus it is considered important and a quick media to share any type of content.

What are two main categories of mass media?

Print media and electronic media are the two main mass media categories. All the other types of media mostly come under these two broad sections.

What types of information can one obtain from such mass media?

History, literature, kowledge on cultural and foreign language, etc are some of the examples that can be obtained from mass media.

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Short Essay: Mass Media

Mass media plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion, disseminating information, and influencing culture and politics. Writing a short essay on mass media requires a concise exploration of its functions, impacts, and the issues surrounding its influence. This guide will help you structure a comprehensive, engaging, and informative essay on this broad topic.

Table of Contents

Title and Introduction

Title : Choose a title that reflects the scope and angle of your essay, such as “Mass Media: The Engine of Modern Influence.”

Body of the Essay

Challenges and Ethical Considerations :

Summarize the main points made in the body of your essay, reaffirming the role and influence of mass media. Reflect on the balance between media’s benefits and its potential harms. Conclude with a forward-looking statement or question that prompts further thinking about the future of mass media in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

Mass Media Essay Example #1

Mass media refers to the various platforms through which information and entertainment are delivered to a large audience. These include television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and, increasingly, digital channels such as social media and online news websites. This essay explores the significant role mass media plays in shaping public opinion, influencing culture, and its implications on democracy and individual behavior.

Culturally, mass media is a powerful tool for the dissemination of popular culture. It promotes and normalizes cultural values, ideals, and trends. Television shows, movies, and music videos can introduce and popularize fashion trends, slang, and new behaviors, often transcending national boundaries. The global spread of pop culture, from Hollywood movies to K-pop music, exemplifies this capability, creating a shared cultural experience across different societies.

In democratic societies, the media is often termed the “fourth estate,” highlighting its role as a watchdog of the public interest. It serves to check and balance the powers of government by exposing wrongdoing, corruption, and abuse of power. Investigative journalism, for instance, has been crucial in uncovering scandals and holding public officials accountable.

The mass media industry is also a significant economic entity, employing millions of people worldwide and generating considerable revenue. Advertising plays a crucial role in this ecosystem, influencing the content and nature of media products. This dependency on advertising revenue can sometimes lead to sensationalism or “clickbait” content, prioritizing profit over journalistic integrity.

Ethically, the media has a responsibility to provide accurate, balanced, and fair reporting. However, the pressure to increase viewership or readership can sometimes lead media outlets to engage in practices that compromise these ethical standards. The representation of minorities, the handling of sensitive issues, and respect for privacy are ongoing ethical concerns in media practice.

Mass Media Essay Example #2

Work-life balance refers to the equilibrium where individuals prioritize both work and aspects of their personal life. This balance is crucial because it affects physical, emotional, and mental health. When work dominates life, it can lead to stress, burnout, and other health issues. Conversely, inadequate engagement in work can lead to a lack of career fulfillment and potential financial instability, affecting one’s sense of purpose and well-being.

Individual strategies to achieve work-life balance include setting clear boundaries between work and personal life. This might involve turning off work-related notifications after work hours or dedicating specific times for family and leisure activities. Effective time management also plays a critical role, as it allows individuals to maximize productivity during work hours, thereby freeing up time for personal pursuits.

In conclusion, achieving a healthy work-life balance is essential for both personal well-being and professional success. In the modern workplace, both employers and employees need to actively pursue strategies and policies that support this balance. As the nature of work continues to evolve, fostering environments that prioritize both productivity and well-being will be crucial for sustainable professional and personal development.

Mass Media Essay Example #3

Mass media also serves as a cultural conduit, spreading and normalizing societal norms and values. Through movies, television shows, and advertisements, media not only reflects cultural trends but also actively shapes them. This can be seen in the way global media phenomena, like American movies or Korean pop music, influence fashion, language, and behaviors across different cultures, promoting a homogenized global culture.

Despite its benefits, the concentration of media ownership and the commercial pressures to attract viewers and advertisers can lead to significant challenges. These include a reduction in the diversity of viewpoints and a potential overemphasis on sensationalism or emotionally charged content at the expense of nuanced reporting. This commercial aspect can undermine the media’s role in delivering unbiased and informative content, leading to a poorly informed public.

Ethical considerations in mass media are manifold. Issues such as bias, manipulation, privacy, and the representation of minority groups are perennial concerns. The ethical mandate for accuracy and fairness often clashes with the commercial imperatives of attracting a large audience. Moreover, in the digital age, the rapid spread of misinformation online poses additional ethical challenges for media practitioners and platforms.

Additional Writing Tips

About mr. greg.

Mr. Greg is an English teacher from Edinburgh, Scotland, currently based in Hong Kong. He has over 5 years teaching experience and recently completed his PGCE at the University of Essex Online. In 2013, he graduated from Edinburgh Napier University with a BEng(Hons) in Computing, with a focus on social media.

Mass Media Essay For Students in English

Table of Contents

Mass Media Essay: Mass media encompasses a diverse array of communication channels, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and digital platforms. Its significance lies in its role as a powerful tool for informing, entertaining, and influencing society on a global scale. Mass media shapes public opinion, disseminates information, and reflects and shapes cultural norms and values. Students might find writing an essay on mass media highlighting its significance and impact a bit difficult. Here we are with this article to help you with essay writing on this topic. In this article, we have provided sample essays of different lengths, ranging from 100 to 500 words on the realm of mass media and its multifaceted influence.

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Long and Short Mass Media Essays

Short essay on mass media of 100 words.

Mass media plays a significant role in today’s society. It refers to a wide range of communication platforms, such as television, radio, newspapers, and the internet, that reach a large audience. The primary purpose of mass media is to inform, entertain, and persuade. It keeps us updated with current events, broadcasts various forms of entertainment, and presents different perspectives on important issues.

While mass media can be a powerful tool for democracy and education, it is crucial to consume media critically and discerningly to avoid misinformation and manipulation. In a world driven by technology and constant connectivity, it is essential for high school students to be media literate and aware of the influence of mass media.

Mass Media Essay of 250 Words

Mass media encompasses a wide range of communication channels that have become an integral part of our daily lives. Television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the internet collectively form the backbone of mass media. Its primary purpose is to reach a large audience and convey information, news, entertainment, and advertisements.

One of the most significant roles of mass media is to inform the public. News outlets, both traditional and digital, deliver news from around the world, keeping people updated on current events, politics, science, and culture. In this way, mass media acts as a bridge between people and the world.

Additionally, mass media influences public opinion. It shapes our perceptions and beliefs, often by highlighting certain issues and downplaying others. Media has the power to set agendas, influence social norms, and even impact political decisions.

media also serves as a source of entertainment. Television programs, movies, music, and online content provide an escape from daily routines and offer a variety of choices to suit diverse tastes.

In the digital age, social media platforms have gained immense popularity, allowing individuals to become content creators and share their perspectives with a global audience. This democratization of media has transformed the way information is disseminated and has given rise to citizen journalism.

In conclusion, mass media is a powerful force that shapes our worldviews, informs us, entertains us, and influences our choices. Its impact is widespread and profound, making it a central aspect of modern society.

Short Essay on Mass Media of 300 Words

Mass media is an integral part of modern society, encompassing various communication channels that reach large audiences simultaneously. These channels include television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the internet, and they serve multiple functions, from informing and educating to entertaining and influencing.

One of the primary functions of mass media is to inform the public. News outlets, both traditional and digital, deliver news from around the world, providing information on current events, politics, science, and culture. Mass media acts as a vital link between individuals and the broader world, helping people stay informed and connected.

In addition to providing information, mass media shapes public opinion. It influences our perceptions and beliefs by highlighting certain issues, framing narratives, and emphasizing specific perspectives. The media’s ability to set agendas and sway public sentiment makes it a potent tool in shaping society.

Mass media is also a significant source of entertainment. Television programs, movies, music, online videos, and gaming provide a wide range of choices to cater to diverse tastes. These forms of entertainment offer relaxation and an escape from the demands of daily life.

The digital age has brought about a transformation in the media landscape, with the rise of social media platforms. Social media allows individuals to become content creators and share their viewpoints with a global audience. It has empowered citizen journalism and facilitated real-time communication and activism.

However, it’s important to recognize that mass media can also have drawbacks, such as sensationalism, bias, and the spread of misinformation. In this digital era, discernment and critical thinking are crucial when consuming media.

In conclusion, mass media is a multifaceted phenomenon that serves as a cornerstone of contemporary society. It informs, influences, entertains, and connects us, making it an essential aspect of our daily lives.

Long Essay on Mass Media of 500 Words

Mass media refers to various means of communication that reach a wide audience, such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and social media platforms. It plays a significant role in shaping our society and influencing our thoughts, opinions, and behaviors. In this essay, we will discuss the importance of mass media, its impact on society, and the responsibility it carries.

Firstly, mass media is essential for disseminating information to the public. It acts as a bridge between the people and the world, providing us with news and updates on important events happening locally and globally. Whether it is political affairs, economic developments, or social issues, mass media serves as a platform to educate and inform the public. It allows us to stay connected and aware of what is happening around us, which is crucial for active participation in society.

Secondly, mass media has a profound influence on society and culture. It has the power to shape public opinion, attitudes, and behaviors. Through its various mediums, it can highlight certain issues, set agendas, and create trends. For instance, television shows and movies significantly impact fashion, lifestyle choices, and societal norms. Advertisements also play a crucial role in influencing consumer behavior and promoting certain products and services. Therefore, media has the ability to both reflect and shape the values and ideals of a society.

However, with great power comes great responsibility. Mass media carries the responsibility of ensuring unbiased and accurate reporting. Unfortunately, media bias and misinformation are pressing concerns. Certain media outlets may have hidden agendas or political affiliations, which can lead to skewed reporting and the spread of misinformation. This can have severe consequences, such as the dissemination of false news, increased polarization, and the erosion of public trust. In order to uphold its credibility, the mass media needs to prioritize balanced reporting and fact-checking.

Furthermore, the mass media can be a double-edged sword when it comes to content consumption. On one hand, it provides a platform for diverse voices and perspectives, promoting inclusivity and democracy. It allows marginalized communities and underrepresented individuals to have their stories heard. On the other hand, mass media can also perpetuate stereotypes, reinforce existing biases, and contribute to the digital divide. It is crucial for users to critically analyze the content they consume and actively seek out diverse sources to ensure a well-rounded understanding of the world.

In conclusion, mass media plays a crucial role in society, acting as a source of information, a shaper of culture, and a platform for public discourse. However, it also carries immense responsibility in terms of accurate reporting, avoidance of biases, and the promotion of diverse voices. As consumers of media, it is vital for us to critically analyze the content we consume and actively participate in shaping the role that mass media plays in our lives. By doing so, we can ensure that the mass media continues to be a force for positive change and progress in our society.

FAQs on Mass Media Essay

What is mass media.

Mass media refers to various communication channels, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the internet, designed to reach a large audience simultaneously.

How does mass media influence society?

Mass media influences society by shaping public opinion, disseminating information, providing entertainment, setting agendas, and impacting cultural norms and behaviors.

What are the types of mass media?

The types of mass media include television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and digital platforms such as websites and social media.

How does mass media impact politics?

Mass media plays a significant role in politics by covering elections, political campaigns, and government policies. It can influence voter opinions and public perception of political figures.

What is the role of social media in mass media?

Social media is a subset of mass media that empowers individuals to create and share content. It has revolutionized communication, enabling real-time interactions and citizen journalism.

How does mass media affect our daily lives?

Mass media informs us about current events, entertains us with various content, and shapes our worldview, influencing our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

What is the impact of mass media on culture?

Mass media reflects and influences cultural trends, including fashion, music, art, and social norms. It can contribute to the globalization of culture.

Is mass media always reliable?

Mass media can vary in reliability. It's essential to critically evaluate sources and cross-check information to ensure accuracy and avoid misinformation.

What is the future of mass media in the digital age?

Mass media is evolving in the digital age, with increasing reliance on online platforms and user-generated content. The future includes more interactive and personalized media experiences.

What is a short note on mass media?

Mass media encompasses various communication channels that reach a broad audience, including television, radio, newspapers, and the internet, serving as a vital source of information, entertainment, and influence.

What is the main importance of mass media?

The main importance of mass media lies in its ability to shape public opinion, disseminate information, provide a platform for free expression, and facilitate communication on a global scale, making it a cornerstone of modern society.

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The Impact of Media on Society Cause and Effect Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Role of media in the society, impact of media on society, works cited.

Media is one of the world’s power and force that can not be undermined. Media has a remarkable control in almost every aspect of our lives; in politics, social and cultural or economic welfares. Perhaps the best analysis of the impact that media has played in the society is through first acknowledging its role in information flow and circulation.

It is would be unjust to overlook the importance of information to the society. Information is the significant to the society in the sense that, all that happens in the society must be channeled and communicated among the society’s habitats. Without media, the habitats or else the population will be left clueless on what is happening or what is ought to happen.

From another perspective, the society benefits from the media in a number of ways and as well it derives a lot of misfortunes from the society. However, regardless of the impact that is made by media on the society, the media remains to be one of the strongest forces that influence the pillars of the society. This essay paper highlights the impacts that media has continued to assert on the society either in a positive or in a negative manner.

The most common role that media has played in the society has been; to inform people, to educate people and sometimes to offer leisure or entertainment. The role of media in the society is stretched back in the ancient traditions when, there were approaches on which media role in the society was perceived. Some of these approaches included a positive approach, critical approach, production approach, technological approach, information approach and finally a post colonial approach.

A positivist approach assumed that media’s role in the society was to achieve predetermined objectives of the society, usually from a beneficial perspective. The critical approach assumes that media is pertinent can be used in struggle for power and other issues in the society that were preceded by a spark of a new or old ideology.

The production approach is that media plays a greater role in society by providing a new experience of reality to the masses by providing an avenue of new perceptions and visions. The information approach assumes that the key role of media in the society is to provide information channels for the benefit of the society (Fourie178).

With the above roles being achieved in one of the most remarkable means over centuries, media has some solid impacts that have been imprinted on the society. Some of these impacts and effects are to remain for ever as long as media existence will remain while others require control and monitoring due to their negative effects on the society. The best approach to look at this is by first describing the positive impacts that media has had on the society (Fourie 25).

The development of media and advancement of mass media is such positive impact that media has accomplished in recent times. It has been proven that mass communication has influenced social foundation and governments to means that only can be termed pro-social (Preiss 485). An example of such can be use of mass media in campaigns to eradicate HIV and AIDS in the society.

Mass communication through media avenues such as the internet, television and radio has seen great co-operation of government, government agencies, non-government organizations, private corporations and the public in what is seen as key society players in mutual efforts towards constructing better society. In this context, media has contributed to awareness, education of the society and better governance of the society.

Were it not for media, the worlds most historical moments would probably be forgotten today especially in the manner they reshape our contemporary society in matters regarding politics, economics and culture (Fourie 58).

However, media has had its shortcomings that have negative influence on the society. These negatives if not counterchecked or controlled will continue to ruin the values and morals of a society that once treasured morality and value of information.

These negative impacts include: media has contributed to immense exposure of violence and antisocial acts from media program that are aimed at entertaining the public. Media roles in the society have been reversed by merely assuming a role of society visibility thus controlling the society rather than being controlled by society.

Media has continued to use biased tactics to attract society attention and thus having a negative impact on the society’s culture due to stereotyping of other cultures. Media has continued to target vulnerable groups in the society such as children and youths be exposing them to pornographic materials that has sexual immorality consequence on the society’s young generations.

It is through such shortcomings that the cognitive behavior’s which shape the moral fiber of the society gets threatened by media (Berger 106). However, regardless of the impacts of the media on the society, the future of the media will evolve with time and its role in the society will unlikely fade.

Berger, Arthur. Media and society: a critical perspective . Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. 2007.

Fourie, Pieter. Media studies: media history, media and society . Cape Town: Juta and company ltd. 2008.

Preiss, Raymond. Mass media effects research: advances through meta-analysis . New York: Routledge. 2007.

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IvyPanda. (2018, July 31). The Impact of Media on Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-impact-of-media-on-society/

"The Impact of Media on Society." IvyPanda , 31 July 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/the-impact-of-media-on-society/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'The Impact of Media on Society'. 31 July.

IvyPanda . 2018. "The Impact of Media on Society." July 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-impact-of-media-on-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Impact of Media on Society." July 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-impact-of-media-on-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Impact of Media on Society." July 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-impact-of-media-on-society/.

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11.2 The Evolution of the Internet

Learning objectives.

• Define protocol and decentralization as they relate to the early Internet.
• Identify technologies that made the Internet accessible.
• Explain the causes and effects of the dot-com boom and crash.

From its early days as a military-only network to its current status as one of the developed world’s primary sources of information and communication, the Internet has come a long way in a short period of time. Yet there are a few elements that have stayed constant and that provide a coherent thread for examining the origins of the now-pervasive medium. The first is the persistence of the Internet—its Cold War beginnings necessarily influencing its design as a decentralized, indestructible communication network.

The second element is the development of rules of communication for computers that enable the machines to turn raw data into useful information. These rules, or protocols , have been developed through consensus by computer scientists to facilitate and control online communication and have shaped the way the Internet works. Facebook is a simple example of a protocol: Users can easily communicate with one another, but only through acceptance of protocols that include wall posts, comments, and messages. Facebook’s protocols make communication possible and control that communication.

These two elements connect the Internet’s origins to its present-day incarnation. Keeping them in mind as you read will help you comprehend the history of the Internet, from the Cold War to the Facebook era.

The History of the Internet

The near indestructibility of information on the Internet derives from a military principle used in secure voice transmission: decentralization . In the early 1970s, the RAND Corporation developed a technology (later called “packet switching”) that allowed users to send secure voice messages. In contrast to a system known as the hub-and-spoke model, where the telephone operator (the “hub”) would patch two people (the “spokes”) through directly, this new system allowed for a voice message to be sent through an entire network, or web, of carrier lines, without the need to travel through a central hub, allowing for many different possible paths to the destination.

During the Cold War, the U.S. military was concerned about a nuclear attack destroying the hub in its hub-and-spoke model; with this new web-like model, a secure voice transmission would be more likely to endure a large-scale attack. A web of data pathways would still be able to transmit secure voice “packets,” even if a few of the nodes—places where the web of connections intersected—were destroyed. Only through the destruction of all the nodes in the web could the data traveling along it be completely wiped out—an unlikely event in the case of a highly decentralized network.

This decentralized network could only function through common communication protocols. Just as we use certain protocols when communicating over a telephone—“hello,” “goodbye,” and “hold on for a minute” are three examples—any sort of machine-to-machine communication must also use protocols. These protocols constitute a shared language enabling computers to understand each other clearly and easily.

The Building Blocks of the Internet

In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began research on protocols to allow computers to communicate over a distributed network . This work paralleled work done by the RAND Corporation, particularly in the realm of a web-based network model of communication. Instead of using electronic signals to send an unending stream of ones and zeros over a line (the equivalent of a direct voice connection), DARPA used this new packet-switching technology to send small bundles of data. This way, a message that would have been an unbroken stream of binary data—extremely vulnerable to errors and corruption—could be packaged as only a few hundred numbers.

Figure 11.2

Centralized versus distributed communication networks

Imagine a telephone conversation in which any static in the signal would make the message incomprehensible. Whereas humans can infer meaning from “Meet me [static] the restaurant at 8:30” (we replace the static with the word at ), computers do not necessarily have that logical linguistic capability. To a computer, this constant stream of data is incomplete—or “corrupted,” in technological terminology—and confusing. Considering the susceptibility of electronic communication to noise or other forms of disruption, it would seem like computer-to-computer transmission would be nearly impossible.

However, the packets in this packet-switching technology have something that allows the receiving computer to make sure the packet has arrived uncorrupted. Because of this new technology and the shared protocols that made computer-to-computer transmission possible, a single large message could be broken into many pieces and sent through an entire web of connections, speeding up transmission and making that transmission more secure.

One of the necessary parts of a network is a host. A host is a physical node that is directly connected to the Internet and “directs traffic” by routing packets of data to and from other computers connected to it. In a normal network, a specific computer is usually not directly connected to the Internet; it is connected through a host. A host in this case is identified by an Internet protocol, or IP, address (a concept that is explained in greater detail later). Each unique IP address refers to a single location on the global Internet, but that IP address can serve as a gateway for many different computers. For example, a college campus may have one global IP address for all of its students’ computers, and each student’s computer might then have its own local IP address on the school’s network. This nested structure allows billions of different global hosts, each with any number of computers connected within their internal networks. Think of a campus postal system: All students share the same global address (1000 College Drive, Anywhere, VT 08759, for example), but they each have an internal mailbox within that system.

The early Internet was called ARPANET, after the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency (which added “Defense” to its name and became DARPA in 1973), and consisted of just four hosts: UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Now there are over half a million hosts, and each of those hosts likely serves thousands of people (Central Intelligence Agency). Each host uses protocols to connect to an ever-growing network of computers. Because of this, the Internet does not exist in any one place in particular; rather, it is the name we give to the huge network of interconnected computers that collectively form the entity that we think of as the Internet. The Internet is not a physical structure; it is the protocols that make this communication possible.

Figure 11.3

A TCP gateway is like a post office because of the way that it directs information to the correct location.

One of the other core components of the Internet is the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) gateway. Proposed in a 1974 paper, the TCP gateway acts “like a postal service (Cerf, et. al., 1974).” Without knowing a specific physical address, any computer on the network can ask for the owner of any IP address, and the TCP gateway will consult its directory of IP address listings to determine exactly which computer the requester is trying to contact. The development of this technology was an essential building block in the interlinking of networks, as computers could now communicate with each other without knowing the specific address of a recipient; the TCP gateway would figure it all out. In addition, the TCP gateway checks for errors and ensures that data reaches its destination uncorrupted. Today, this combination of TCP gateways and IP addresses is called TCP/IP and is essentially a worldwide phone book for every host on the Internet.

You’ve Got Mail: The Beginnings of the Electronic Mailbox

E-mail has, in one sense or another, been around for quite a while. Originally, electronic messages were recorded within a single mainframe computer system. Each person working on the computer would have a personal folder, so sending that person a message required nothing more than creating a new document in that person’s folder. It was just like leaving a note on someone’s desk (Peter, 2004), so that the person would see it when he or she logged onto the computer.

However, once networks began to develop, things became slightly more complicated. Computer programmer Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing the naming system we have today, using the @ symbol to denote the server (or host, from the previous section). In other words, [email protected] tells the host “gmail.com” (Google’s e-mail server) to drop the message into the folder belonging to “name.” Tomlinson is credited with writing the first network e-mail using his program SNDMSG in 1971. This invention of a simple standard for e-mail is often cited as one of the most important factors in the rapid spread of the Internet, and is still one of the most widely used Internet services.

The use of e-mail grew in large part because of later commercial developments, especially America Online, that made connecting to e-mail much easier than it had been at its inception. Internet service providers (ISPs) packaged e-mail accounts with Internet access, and almost all web browsers (such as Netscape, discussed later in the section) included a form of e-mail service. In addition to the ISPs, e-mail services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail provided free e-mail addresses paid for by small text ads at the bottom of every e-mail message sent. These free “webmail” services soon expanded to comprise a large part of the e-mail services that are available today. Far from the original maximum inbox sizes of a few megabytes, today’s e-mail services, like Google’s Gmail service, generally provide gigabytes of free storage space.

E-mail has revolutionized written communication. The speed and relatively inexpensive nature of e-mail makes it a prime competitor of postal services—including FedEx and UPS—that pride themselves on speed. Communicating via e-mail with someone on the other end of the world is just as quick and inexpensive as communicating with a next-door neighbor. However, the growth of Internet shopping and online companies such as Amazon.com has in many ways made the postal service and shipping companies more prominent—not necessarily for communication, but for delivery and remote business operations.

Hypertext: Web 1.0

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a graduate of Oxford University and software engineer at CERN (the European particle physics laboratory), had the idea of using a new kind of protocol to share documents and information throughout the local CERN network. Instead of transferring regular text-based documents, he created a new language called hypertext markup language (HTML). Hypertext was a new word for text that goes beyond the boundaries of a single document. Hypertext can include links to other documents (hyperlinks), text-style formatting, images, and a wide variety of other components. The basic idea is that documents can be constructed out of a variety of links and can be viewed just as if they are on the user’s computer.

This new language required a new communication protocol so that computers could interpret it, and Berners-Lee decided on the name hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). Through HTTP, hypertext documents can be sent from computer to computer and can then be interpreted by a browser, which turns the HTML files into readable web pages. The browser that Berners-Lee created, called World Wide Web, was a combination browser-editor, allowing users to view other HTML documents and create their own (Berners-Lee, 2009).

Figure 11.4

Tim Berners-Lee’s first web browser was also a web page editor.

Modern browsers, like Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, only allow for the viewing of web pages; other increasingly complicated tools are now marketed for creating web pages, although even the most complicated page can be written entirely from a program like Windows Notepad. The reason web pages can be created with the simplest tools is the adoption of certain protocols by the most common browsers. Because Internet Explorer, Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and other browsers all interpret the same code in more or less the same way, creating web pages is as simple as learning how to speak the language of these browsers.

In 1991, the same year that Berners-Lee created his web browser, the Internet connection service Q-Link was renamed America Online, or AOL for short. This service would eventually grow to employ over 20,000 people, on the basis of making Internet access available (and, critically, simple) for anyone with a telephone line. Although the web in 1991 was not what it is today, AOL’s software allowed its users to create communities based on just about any subject, and it only required a dial-up modem—a device that connects any computer to the Internet via a telephone line—and the telephone line itself.

In addition, AOL incorporated two technologies—chat rooms and Instant Messenger—into a single program (along with a web browser). Chat rooms allowed many users to type live messages to a “room” full of people, while Instant Messenger allowed two users to communicate privately via text-based messages. The most important aspect of AOL was its encapsulation of all these once-disparate programs into a single user-friendly bundle. Although AOL was later disparaged for customer service issues like its users’ inability to deactivate their service, its role in bringing the Internet to mainstream users was instrumental (Zeller Jr., 2005).

In contrast to AOL’s proprietary services, the World Wide Web had to be viewed through a standalone web browser. The first of these browsers to make its mark was the program Mosaic, released by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. Mosaic was offered for free and grew very quickly in popularity due to features that now seem integral to the web. Things like bookmarks, which allow users to save the location of particular pages without having to remember them, and images, now an integral part of the web, were all inventions that made the web more usable for many people (National Center for Supercomputing Appliances).

Although the web browser Mosaic has not been updated since 1997, developers who worked on it went on to create Netscape Navigator, an extremely popular browser during the 1990s. AOL later bought the Netscape company, and the Navigator browser was discontinued in 2008, largely because Netscape Navigator had lost the market to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser, which came preloaded on Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system. However, Netscape had long been converting its Navigator software into an open-source program called Mozilla Firefox, which is now the second-most-used web browser on the Internet (detailed in Table 11.1 “Browser Market Share (as of February 2010)” ) (NetMarketshare). Firefox represents about a quarter of the market—not bad, considering its lack of advertising and Microsoft’s natural advantage of packaging Internet Explorer with the majority of personal computers.

Table 11.1 Browser Market Share (as of February 2010)

For Sale: The Web

As web browsers became more available as a less-moderated alternative to AOL’s proprietary service, the web became something like a free-for-all of startup companies. The web of this period, often referred to as Web 1.0, featured many specialty sites that used the Internet’s ability for global, instantaneous communication to create a new type of business. Another name for this free-for-all of the 1990s is the “dot-com boom.” During the boom, it seemed as if almost anyone could build a website and sell it for millions of dollars. However, the “dot-com crash” that occurred later that decade seemed to say otherwise. Quite a few of these Internet startup companies went bankrupt, taking their shareholders down with them. Alan Greenspan, then the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, called this phenomenon “irrational exuberance (Greenspan, 1996),” in large part because investors did not necessarily know how to analyze these particular business plans, and companies that had never turned a profit could be sold for millions. The new business models of the Internet may have done well in the stock market, but they were not necessarily sustainable. In many ways, investors collectively failed to analyze the business prospects of these companies, and once they realized their mistakes (and the companies went bankrupt), much of the recent market growth evaporated. The invention of new technologies can bring with it the belief that old business tenets no longer apply, but this dangerous belief—the “irrational exuberance” Greenspan spoke of—is not necessarily conducive to long-term growth.

Some lucky dot-com businesses formed during the boom survived the crash and are still around today. For example, eBay, with its online auctions, turned what seemed like a dangerous practice (sending money to a stranger you met over the Internet) into a daily occurrence. A less-fortunate company, eToys.com , got off to a promising start—its stock quadrupled on the day it went public in 1999—but then filed for Chapter 11 “The Internet and Social Media” bankruptcy in 2001 (Barnes, 2001).

One of these startups, theGlobe.com , provided one of the earliest social networking services that exploded in popularity. When theGlobe.com went public, its stock shot from a target price of $9 to a close of $63.50 a share (Kawamoto, 1998). The site itself was started in 1995, building its business on advertising. As skepticism about the dot-com boom grew and advertisers became increasingly skittish about the value of online ads, theGlobe.com ceased to be profitable and shut its doors as a social networking site (The Globe, 2009). Although advertising is pervasive on the Internet today, the current model—largely based on the highly targeted Google AdSense service—did not come around until much later. In the earlier dot-com years, the same ad might be shown on thousands of different web pages, whereas now advertising is often specifically targeted to the content of an individual page.

However, that did not spell the end of social networking on the Internet. Social networking had been going on since at least the invention of Usenet in 1979 (detailed later in the chapter), but the recurring problem was always the same: profitability. This model of free access to user-generated content departed from almost anything previously seen in media, and revenue streams would have to be just as radical.

The Early Days of Social Media

The shared, generalized protocols of the Internet have allowed it to be easily adapted and extended into many different facets of our lives. The Internet shapes everything, from our day-to-day routine—the ability to read newspapers from around the world, for example—to the way research and collaboration are conducted. There are three important aspects of communication that the Internet has changed, and these have instigated profound changes in the way we connect with one another socially: the speed of information, the volume of information, and the “democratization” of publishing, or the ability of anyone to publish ideas on the web.

One of the Internet’s largest and most revolutionary changes has come about through social networking. Because of Twitter, we can now see what all our friends are doing in real time; because of blogs, we can consider the opinions of complete strangers who may never write in traditional print; and because of Facebook, we can find people we haven’t talked to for decades, all without making a single awkward telephone call.

Recent years have seen an explosion of new content and services; although the phrase “social media” now seems to be synonymous with websites like Facebook and Twitter, it is worthwhile to consider all the ways a social media platform affects the Internet experience.

How Did We Get Here? The Late 1970s, Early 1980s, and Usenet

Almost as soon as TCP stitched the various networks together, a former DARPA scientist named Larry Roberts founded the company Telnet, the first commercial packet-switching company. Two years later, in 1977, the invention of the dial-up modem (in combination with the wider availability of personal computers like the Apple II) made it possible for anyone around the world to access the Internet. With availability extended beyond purely academic and military circles, the Internet quickly became a staple for computer hobbyists.

One of the consequences of the spread of the Internet to hobbyists was the founding of Usenet. In 1979, University of North Carolina graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis connected three computers in a small network and used a series of programming scripts to post and receive messages. In a very short span of time, this system spread all over the burgeoning Internet. Much like an electronic version of community bulletin boards, anyone with a computer could post a topic or reply on Usenet.

The group was fundamentally and explicitly anarchic, as outlined by the posting “What is Usenet?” This document says, “Usenet is not a democracy…there is no person or group in charge of Usenet …Usenet cannot be a democracy, autocracy, or any other kind of ‘-acy (Moraes, et. al., 1998).’” Usenet was not used only for socializing, however, but also for collaboration. In some ways, the service allowed a new kind of collaboration that seemed like the start of a revolution: “I was able to join rec.kites and collectively people in Australia and New Zealand helped me solve a problem and get a circular two-line kite to fly,” one user told the United Kingdom’s Guardian (Jeffery, et. al., 2009).

GeoCities: Yahoo! Pioneers

Fast-forward to 1995: The president and founder of Beverly Hills Internet, David Bohnett, announces that the name of his company is now “GeoCities.” GeoCities built its business by allowing users (“homesteaders”) to create web pages in “communities” for free, with the stipulation that the company placed a small advertising banner at the top of each page. Anyone could register a GeoCities site and subsequently build a web page about a topic. Almost all of the community names, like Broadway (live theater) and Athens (philosophy and education), were centered on specific topics (Archive, 1996).

This idea of centering communities on specific topics may have come from Usenet. In Usenet, the domain alt.rec.kites refers to a specific topic (kites) within a category (recreation) within a larger community (alternative topics). This hierarchical model allowed users to organize themselves across the vastness of the Internet, even on a large site like GeoCities. The difference with GeoCities was that it allowed users to do much more than post only text (the limitation of Usenet), while constraining them to a relatively small pool of resources. Although each GeoCities user had only a few megabytes of web space, standardized pictures—like mailbox icons and back buttons—were hosted on GeoCities’s main server. GeoCities was such a large part of the Internet, and these standard icons were so ubiquitous, that they have now become a veritable part of the Internet’s cultural history. The Web Elements category of the site Internet Archaeology is a good example of how pervasive GeoCities graphics became (Internet Archaeology, 2010).

GeoCities built its business on a freemium model, where basic services are free but subscribers pay extra for things like commercial pages or shopping carts. Other Internet businesses, like Skype and Flickr, use the same model to keep a vast user base while still profiting from frequent users. Since loss of online advertising revenue was seen as one of the main causes of the dot-com crash, many current web startups are turning toward this freemium model to diversify their income streams (Miller, 2009).

GeoCities’s model was so successful that the company Yahoo! bought it for $3.6 billion at its peak in 1999. At the time, GeoCities was the third-most-visited site on the web (behind Yahoo! and AOL), so it seemed like a sure bet. A decade later, on October 26, 2009, Yahoo! closed GeoCities for good in every country except Japan.

Diversification of revenue has become one of the most crucial elements of Internet businesses; from The Wall Street Journal online to YouTube, almost every website is now looking for multiple income streams to support its services.

Key Takeaways

• The two primary characteristics of the original Internet were decentralization and free, open protocols that anyone could use. As a result of its decentralized “web” model of organization, the Internet can store data in many different places at once. This makes it very useful for backing up data and very difficult to destroy data that might be unwanted. Protocols play an important role in this, because they allow some degree of control to exist without a central command structure.
• Two of the most important technological developments were the personal computer (such as the Apple II) and the dial-up modem, which allowed anyone with a phone line to access the developing Internet. America Online also played an important role, making it very easy for practically anyone with a computer to use the Internet. Another development, the web browser, allowed for access to and creation of web pages all over the Internet.
• With the advent of the web browser, it seemed as if anyone could make a website that people wanted to use. The problem was that these sites were driven largely by venture capital and grossly inflated initial public offerings of their stock. After failing to secure any real revenue stream, their stock plummeted, the market crashed, and many of these companies went out of business. In later years, companies tried to diversify their investments, particularly by using a “freemium” model of revenue, in which a company would both sell premium services and advertise, while offering a free pared-down service to casual users.

Websites have many different ways of paying for themselves, and this can say a lot about both the site and its audience. The business models of today’s websites may also directly reflect the lessons learned during the early days of the Internet. Start this exercise by reviewing a list of common ways that websites pay for themselves, how they arrived at these methods, and what it might say about them:

• Advertising: The site probably has many casual viewers and may not necessarily be well established. If there are targeted ads (such as ads directed toward stay-at-home parents with children), then it is possible the site is successful with a small audience.
• Subscription option: The site may be a news site that prides itself on accuracy of information or lack of bias, whose regular readers are willing to pay a premium for the guarantee of quality material. Alternately, the site may cater to a small demographic of Internet users by providing them with exclusive, subscription-only content.
• Selling services: Online services, such as file hosting, or offline services and products are probably the clearest way to determine a site’s revenue stream. However, these commercial sites often are not prized for their unbiased information, and their bias can greatly affect the content on the site.

Choose a website that you visit often, and list which of these revenue streams the site might have. How might this affect the content on the site? Is there a visible effect, or does the site try to hide it? Consider how events during the early history of the Internet may have affected the way the site operates now. Write down a revenue stream that the site does not currently have and how the site designers might implement such a revenue stream.

Archive, While GeoCities is no longer in business, the Internet Archive maintains the site at http://www.archive.org/web/geocities.php . Information taken from December 21, 1996.

Barnes, Cecily. “eToys files for Chapter 11,” CNET , March 7, 2001, http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-253706.html .

Berners-Lee, Tim. “The WorldWideWeb Browser,” 2009, https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb .

Central Intelligence Agency, “Country Comparison: Internet Hosts,” World Factbook , https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2184rank.html .

Cerf, Vincton, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, “Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program,” December 1974, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc675 .

Greenspan, Alan. “The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society, ” (lecture, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, DC, December 5, 1996), http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/1996/19961205.htm .

Internet Archaeology, 2010, http://www.internetarchaeology.org/swebelements.htm .

Jeffery, Simon and others, “A People’s History of the Internet: From Arpanet in 1969 to Today,” Guardian (London), October 23, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/interactive/2009/oct/23/internet-arpanet .

Kawamoto, Dawn. “ TheGlobe.com ’s IPO one for the books,” CNET , November 13, 1998, http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-217913.html .

Miller, Claire Cain. “Ad Revenue on the Web? No Sure Bet,” New York Times , May 24, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/technology/start-ups/25startup.html .

Moraes, Mark, Chip Salzenberg, and Gene Spafford, “What is Usenet?” December 28, 1999, http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/what-is/part1/ .

National Center for Supercomputing Appliances, “About NCSA Mosaic,” 2010, http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/Projects/mosaic.html .

NetMarketShare, “Browser Market Share,” http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcal=1&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=132 .

Peter, Ian. “The History of Email,” The Internet History Project, 2004, http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html .

The Globe, theglobe.com, “About Us,” 2009, http://www.theglobe.com/ .

Zeller, Jr., Tom. “Canceling AOL? Just Offer Your Firstborn,” New York Times , August 29, 2005, all http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/technology/29link.html .

Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Mind Over Mass Media

By Steven Pinker

• June 10, 2010

Truro, Mass.

NEW forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber.

So too with electronic technologies. PowerPoint, we’re told, is reducing discourse to bullet points. Search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge rather than dive to its depths. Twitter is shrinking our attention spans .

But such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously.

For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying. Other activities in the life of the mind, like philosophy, history and cultural criticism, are likewise flourishing, as anyone who has lost a morning of work to the Web site Arts & Letters Daily can attest.

Critics of new media sometimes use science itself to press their case, citing research that shows how “experience can change the brain.” But cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk. Yes, every time we learn a fact or skill the wiring of the brain changes; it’s not as if the information is stored in the pancreas. But the existence of neural plasticity does not mean the brain is a blob of clay pounded into shape by experience.

Experience does not revamp the basic information-processing capacities of the brain. Speed-reading programs have long claimed to do just that, but the verdict was rendered by Woody Allen after he read “War and Peace” in one sitting: “It was about Russia.” Genuine multitasking, too, has been exposed as a myth, not just by laboratory studies but by the familiar sight of an S.U.V. undulating between lanes as the driver cuts deals on his cellphone.

Moreover, as the psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons show in their new book “The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us,” the effects of experience are highly specific to the experiences themselves. If you train people to do one thing (recognize shapes, solve math puzzles, find hidden words), they get better at doing that thing, but almost nothing else. Music doesn’t make you better at math, conjugating Latin doesn’t make you more logical, brain-training games don’t make you smarter. Accomplished people don’t bulk up their brains with intellectual calisthenics; they immerse themselves in their fields. Novelists read lots of novels, scientists read lots of science.

The effects of consuming electronic media are also likely to be far more limited than the panic implies. Media critics write as if the brain takes on the qualities of whatever it consumes, the informational equivalent of “you are what you eat.” As with primitive peoples who believe that eating fierce animals will make them fierce, they assume that watching quick cuts in rock videos turns your mental life into quick cuts or that reading bullet points and Twitter postings turns your thoughts into bullet points and Twitter postings.

Yes, the constant arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive, especially to people with attention deficit disorder. But distraction is not a new phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life. Turn off e-mail or Twitter when you work, put away your Blackberry at dinner time, ask your spouse to call you to bed at a designated hour.

And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate. They are not granted by propping a heavy encyclopedia on your lap, nor are they taken away by efficient access to information on the Internet.

The new media have caught on for a reason. Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is the author of “The Stuff of Thought.”

GRE Issue Essay #13

Aarya Mujumdar

Mass media and the internet have caused people’s attention spans to get shorter. However, the overall effect has been positive: while people are less able to focus on one thing, they more than makeup for it with an enhanced ability to sort through large quantities of information and find what’s important. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons or examples that could be used to challenge your position.

I contend with the statement that mass media and the internet have caused people’s attention spans to get shorter. Social media applications such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. have a substantial role in this. Studies have shown that because of the short attention spans of people the duration of movie trailers which is already 2 to 3 minutes has been further reduced. However, I disagree with the contention that the overall effect of shorter attention spans has been positive because their ability to sort through large quantities of information to find what’s important is enhanced. There are numerous instances to corroborate that not only has the overall effect not been positive but also that there has been no enhancement of a person’s ability to sort through large quantities of information to search for what is important.

Firstly, let us take an example of social media applications such as Instagram. Instagram has special short videos known as “reels”. The duration of these reels ranges from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. People have become too addicted to scrolling these reels and this has led to coin the term “doomed scrolling”. Doomed scrolling can be defined as a person scrolling through some social media application for hours, looking at meaningless content and not absorbing any information presented. Thus, this lucidly demonstrates that with shorter attention spans people are scrolling away for hours on end, without any retention nor without sorting through the surfeit of information to search for what is important.

Secondly, people become so engrossed in scrolling through various applications that they do not pay attention to what is happening in their surroundings. This can be illustrated by funny instances such as people eating anything served to them because they are more focused on their cell phones. There are also serious instances where people crossing roads get hit by cars simply due to the reason that they are preoccupied with their cell phones. This loss of death certainly cannot ascertain the claim that the overall effect of lower attention spans has been positive.

However, there are a few examples where shorter attention spans are useful. Let us say that one is shopping online for a dress. By using several filters and quickly moving through other options, one easily chooses a dress that fits their needs. Thus, in this case, a shorter attention span led to rapid decision-making.

To conclude, I contend that the overall effect of shorter attention spans has been anything but positive. People fall more prey to accidents because of their shorter attention spans. They can no longer sort through what has more precedence and are absorbed in the shiny digital world. Texting and scrolling while walking has led to several grave accidents and the loss of many precious lives. Thus shorter attention span certainly has had a negative overall effect.

Written by Aarya Mujumdar

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The mass media are diversified media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place varies. Broadcast media such as radio, recorded music, film and television transmit their information electronically. Print media use a physical object such as a newspaper, book, pamphlet or comics,[1] to distribute their information. Outdoor media are a form of mass media that comprises billboards, signs, or placards placed inside and outside of commercial buildings, sports stadiums, shops, and buses. Other outdoor media include flying billboards (signs in tow of airplanes), blimps, skywriting,[2] and AR Advertising. Public speaking and event organising can also be considered forms of mass media.[3] The digital media comprises both Internet and mobile mass communication. Internet media provide many mass media services, such as email, websites, blogs, and Internet-based radio and television. Many other mass media outlets have a presence on the web, by such things as having TV ads that link to a website, or distributing a QR Code in print or outdoor media to direct a mobile user to a website. In this way, they can utilise the easy accessibility that the Internet has, and the outreach that Internet affords, as information can easily be broadcast to many different regions of the world simultaneously and cost-efficiently. In the late 20th Century, mass media could be classified[by whom?] into eight mass media industries: books, newspapers, magazines, recordings, radio, movies, television and the internet. With the explosion of digital communication technology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the question of what forms of media should be classified as “mass media” has become more prominent. For example, it is controversial whether to include cell phones, video games, and computer games (such as MMORPGs) in the definition. In the 2000s, a classification called the “seven mass media” became popular. In order of introduction, they are: 1.Print (books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, etc.) from the late 15th century 2.Recordings (gramophone records, magnetic tapes, cassettes, cartridges, CDs, DVDs) from the late 19th century 3.Cinema from about 1900 4.Radio from about 1910 5.Television from about 1950 6.Internet from about 1990 7.Mobile phones from about 2000 Each mass media has its own content types, its own creative artists and technicians, and its own business models. For example, the Internet includes web sites, blogs, podcasts, and various other technologies built on top of the general distribution network. The sixth and seventh media, internet and mobile, are often called collectively as digital media; and the fourth and fifth, radio and TV, as broadcast media. Some argue that video games have developed into a distinct mass form of media.[6] While a telephone is a two-way communication device, mass media refer to medium which can communicate a message to a large group, often simultaneously. However, modern cell phones are no longer a single-use device. Most cell phones are equipped with internet access and capable of connecting to the web which itself is a mass medium. A question arises whether this makes cell phones a mass medium or simply a device used to access a mass medium (the internet). There is currently a system by which marketers and advertisers are able to tap into satellites, and broadcast commercials and advertisements directly to cell phones, unsolicited by the phone’s user.[citation needed] This transmission of mass advertising to millions of people is a form of mass communication. Video games may also be evolving into a mass medium. Video games convey the same messages and ideologies to all their users. Users sometimes share the experience with one another by playing online. Excluding the internet however, it is questionable whether players of video games are sharing a common experience when they play the game separately. It is possible to discuss in great detail the events of a video game with a friend you have never played with because the experience was identical to you both. The question is whether this is then a form of mass communication. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as Runescape provide a common gaming experience to millions of users across the globe. It is arguable that the users are receiving the same message, i.e., the game is mass communicating the same messages to the various players. Characteristics Five characteristics of mass communication have been identified by Cambridge University’s John Thompson:[7] “[C]omprises both technical and institutional methods of production and distribution” This is evident throughout the history of the media, from print to the Internet, each suitable for commercial utility. Involves the “commodification of symbolic forms”, as the production of materials relies on its ability to manufacture and sell large quantities of the work. Just as radio stations rely on their time sold to advertisements, so too newspapers rely on their space for the same reasons. “[S]eparate contexts between the production and reception of information” Its “reach to those ‘far removed’ in time and space, in comparison to the producers”. “[I]nformation distribution” – a “one to many” form of communication, whereby products are mass-produced and disseminated to a great quantity of audiences. Mass vs. mainstream The term “mass media” is sometimes used as a synonym for “mainstream media”, which are distinguished from alternative media by the content and point of view. Alternative media are also “mass media” outlets in the sense that they use technology capable of reaching many people, even if the audience is often smaller than the mainstream. In common usage, the term “mass” denotes not that a given number of individuals receives the products, but rather that the products are available in principle to a plurality of recipients.[7] Mass vs. local Mass media are distinguished from local media by the notion that whilst the former aims to reach a very large market such as the entire population of a country, the latter broadcasts to a much smaller population and area, and generally focuses on regional news rather than global events. A third type of media, speciality media, provide for specific demographics, such as specialty channels on TV (sports channels, porn channels, etc.). These definitions are not set in stone, and it is possible for a media outlet to be promoted in status from a local media outlet to a global media outlet. Some local media, which take an interest in state or provincial news, can rise to prominence because of their investigative journalism, and to the local region’s preference of updates in national politics rather than regional news. The Guardian, formerly known as the Manchester Guardian is an example of one such media outlet. Once a regional daily newspaper, The Guardian is currently a nationally respected paper.[8] Forms of mass media Broadcast A family listening to a crystal radio in the 1920s The sequencing of content in a broadcast is called a schedule. With all technological endeavours a number of technical terms and slang have developed please see the list of broadcasting terms for a glossary of terms used. Television and radio programs are distributed through radio broadcasting over frequency bands that are highly regulated by the Federal Communications Commission in the United States. Such regulation includes determination of the width of the bands, range, licencing, types of receivers and transmitters used, and acceptable content. Cable programs are often broadcast simultaneously with radio and television programs, but have a more limited audience. By coding signals and having a cable converter box in homes, cable also enables subscription-based channels and pay-per-view services. A broadcasting organisation may broadcast several programs at the same time, through several channels (frequencies), for example BBC One and Two. On the other hand, two or more organisations may share a channel and each use it during a fixed part of the day. Digital radio and digital television may also transmit multiplexed programming, with several channels compressed into one ensemble. When broadcasting is done via the Internet the term webcasting is often used. In 2004 a new phenomenon occurred when a number of technologies combined to produce podcasting. Podcasting is an asynchronous broadcast/narrowcast medium, with one of the main proponents being Adam Curry and his associates the Podshow. Film ‘Film’ encompasses motion pictures as individual projects, as well as the field in general. The name comes from the photographic film (also called filmstock), historically the primary medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist’motion pictures (or just pictures and “picture”), the silver screen, photoplays, the cinema, picture shows, flicks’and commonly movies. Films are produced by recording people and objects with cameras or by creating them using animation techniques and/or special effects. Films comprise a series of individual frames, but when these images are shown in rapid succession, the illusion of motion is given to the viewer. Flickering between frames is not seen because of an effect known as persistence of vision’whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Also of relevance is what causes the perception of motion; a psychological effect identified as beta movement. Film is considered by many[who?] to be an important art form; films entertain, educate, enlighten and inspire audiences. Any film can become a worldwide attraction, especially with the addition of dubbing or subtitles that translate the film message. Films are also artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Video games A video game is a computer-controlled game in which a video display such as a monitor or television is the primary feedback device. The term “computer game” also includes games which display only text (and which can therefore theoretically be played on a teletypewriter) or which use other methods, such as sound or vibration, as their primary feedback device, but there are very few new games in these categories. There always must also be some sort of input device, usually in the form of button/joystick combinations (on arcade games), a keyboard & mouse/trackball combination (computer games), or a controller (console games), or a combination of any of the above. Also, more esoteric devices have been used for input. Usually there are rules and goals, but in more open-ended games the player may be free to do whatever they like within the confines of the virtual universe. In common usage, a “computer game” or a “PC game” refers to a game that is played on a personal computer. “Console game” refers to one that is played on a device specifically designed for the use of such, while interfacing with a standard television set. “Arcade game” refers to a game designed to be played in an establishment in which patrons pay to play on a per-use basis. “Video game” (or “videogame”) has evolved into a catchall phrase that encompasses the aforementioned along with any game made for any other device, including, but not limited to, mobile phones, PDAs, advanced calculators, etc. Audio recording and reproduction Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical or mechanical re-creation and/or amplification of sound, often as music. This involves the use of audio equipment such as microphones, recording devices, and loudspeakers. From early beginnings with the invention of the phonograph using purely mechanical techniques, the field has advanced with the invention of electrical recording, the mass production of the 78 record, the magnetic wire recorder followed by the tape recorder, the vinyl LP record. The invention of the compact cassette in the 1960s, followed by Sony’s Walkman, gave a major boost to the mass distribution of music recordings, and the invention of digital recording and the compact disc in 1983 brought massive improvements in ruggedness and quality. The most recent developments have been in digital audio players. An album is a collection of related audio recordings, released together to the public, usually commercially. The term record album originated from the fact that 78 RPM Phonograph disc records were kept together in a book resembling a photo album. The first collection of records to be called an “album” was Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, release in April 1909 as a four-disc set by Odeon records.[9][10] It retailed for 16 shillings’about ??15 in modern currency. A music video (also promo) is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song. Modern music videos were primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came into their own in the 1980s, when Music Television’s format was based on them. In the 1980s, the term “rock video” was often used to describe this form of entertainment, although the term has fallen into disuse. Music videos can accommodate all styles of filmmaking, including animation, live action films, documentaries, and non-narrative, abstract film. Internet See also: Web extra The Internet (also known simply as “the Net” or less precisely as “the Web”) is a more interactive medium of mass media, and can be briefly described as “a network of networks”. Specifically, it is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and governmental networks, which together carry various information and services, such as email, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web. Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is the system of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections etc.; the Web is the contents, or the interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is accessible through the Internet, along with many other services including e-mail, file sharing and others described below. Toward the end of the 20th century, the advent of the World Wide Web marked the first era in which most individuals could have a means of exposure on a scale comparable to that of mass media. Anyone with a web site has the potential to address a global audience, although serving to high levels of web traffic is still relatively expensive. It is possible that the rise of peer-to-peer technologies may have begun the process of making the cost of bandwidth manageable. Although a vast amount of information, imagery, and commentary (i.e. “content”) has been made available, it is often difficult to determine the authenticity and reliability of information contained in web pages (in many cases, self-published). The invention of the Internet has also allowed breaking news stories to reach around the globe within minutes. This rapid growth of instantaneous, decentralized communication is often deemed likely to change mass media and its relationship to society. “Cross-media” means the idea of distributing the same message through different media channels. A similar idea is expressed in the news industry as “convergence”. Many authors understand cross-media publishing to be the ability to publish in both print and on the web without manual conversion effort. An increasing number of wireless devices with mutually incompatible data and screen formats make it even more difficult to achieve the objective ‘create once, publish many’. The Internet is quickly becoming the center of mass media. Everything is becoming accessible via the internet. Rather than picking up a newspaper, or watching the 10 o’clock news, people can log onto the internet to get the news they want, when they want it. For example, many workers listen to the radio through the Internet while sitting at their desk. Even the education system relies on the Internet. Teachers can contact the entire class by sending one e-mail. They may have web pages on which students can get another copy of the class outline or assignments. Some classes have class blogs in which students are required to post weekly, with students graded on their contributions. Blogs (web logs) Blogging, too, has become a pervasive form of media. A blog is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or interactive media such as images or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order, with most recent posts shown on top. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images and other graphics, and links to other blogs, web pages, and related media. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) are part of a wider network of social media. Microblogging is another type of blogging which consists of blogs with very short posts. RSS feeds RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal blogs. It is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts. An RSS document (which is called a “feed” or “web feed” or “channel”) contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays. Podcast Main article: Podcast A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. Mobile Mobile phones were introduced in Japan in 1979 but became a mass media only in 1998 when the first downloadable ringing tones were introduced in Finland. Soon most forms of media content were introduced on mobile phones, tablets and other portable devices, and today the total value of media consumed on mobile vastly exceeds that of internet content, and was worth over 31 billion dollars in 2007 (source Informa). The mobile media content includes over 8 billion dollars worth of mobile music (ringing tones, ringback tones, truetones, MP3 files, karaoke, music videos, music streaming services etc.); over 5 billion dollars worth of mobile gaming; and various news, entertainment and advertising services. In Japan mobile phone books are so popular that five of the ten best-selling printed books were originally released as mobile phone books. Similar to the internet, mobile is also an interactive media, but has far wider reach, with 3.3 billion mobile phone users at the end of 2007 to 1.3 billion internet users (source ITU). Like email on the internet, the top application on mobile is also a personal messaging service, but SMS text messaging is used by over 2.4 billion people. Practically all internet services and applications exist or have similar cousins on mobile, from search to multiplayer games to virtual worlds to blogs. Mobile has several unique benefits which many mobile media pundits claim make mobile a more powerful media than either TV or the internet, starting with mobile being permanently carried and always connected. Mobile has the best audience accuracy and is the only mass media with a built-in payment channel available to every user without any credit cards or PayPal accounts or even an age limit. Mobile is often called the 7th Mass Medium and either the fourth screen (if counting cinema, TV and PC screens) or the third screen (counting only TV and PC). Print media Book Main article: Book Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon, 1902 A book is a collection of sheets of paper, parchment or other material with a piece of text written on them, bound together along one edge within covers. A book is also a literary work or a main division of such a work. A book produced in electronic format is known as an e-book. Magazine A magazine is a periodical publication containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising and/or purchase by readers. Magazines are typically published weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly or quarterly, with a date on the cover that is in advance of the date it is actually published. They are often printed in color on coated paper, and are bound with a soft cover. Magazines fall into two broad categories: consumer magazines and business magazines. In practice, magazines are a subset of periodicals, distinct from those periodicals produced by scientific, artistic, academic or special interest publishers which are subscription-only, more expensive, narrowly limited in circulation, and often have little or no advertising. Magazines can be classified as: General interest magazines (e.g. Frontline, India Today, The Week, The Sunday Times etc.) Special interest magazines (women’s, sports, business, scuba diving, etc.) Newspaper A newspaper is a publication containing news and information and advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint. It may be general or special interest, most often published daily or weekly. The first printed newspaper was published in 1605, and the form has thrived even in the face of competition from technologies such as radio and television. Recent developments on the Internet are posing major threats to its business model, however. Paid circulation is declining in most countries, and advertising revenue, which makes up the bulk of a newspaper’s income, is shifting from print to online; some commentators, nevertheless, point out that historically new media such as radio and television did not entirely supplant existing. Outdoor media Outdoor media is a form of mass media which comprises billboards, signs, placards placed inside and outside of commercial buildings/objects like shops/buses, flying billboards (signs in tow of airplanes), blimps, skywriting, AR Advertising. Many commercial advertisers use this form of mass media when advertising in sports stadiums. Tobacco and alcohol manufacturers used billboards and other outdoor media extensively. However, in 1998, the Master Settlement Agreement between the US and the tobacco industries prohibited the billboard advertising of cigarettes. In a 1994 Chicago-based study, Diana Hackbarth and her colleagues revealed how tobacco- and alcohol-based billboards were concentrated in poor neighbourhoods. In other urban centers, alcohol and tobacco billboards were much more concentrated in African-American neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods.[2] Purposes A panel in the Newseum in Washington, D.C., shows the September 12 headlines in America and around the world Mass media encompasses much more than just news, although it is sometimes misunderstood in this way. It can be used for various purposes: Advocacy, both for business and social concerns. This can include advertising, marketing, propaganda, public relations, and political communication. Entertainment, traditionally through performances of acting, music, sports, and TV shows along with light reading; since the late 20th century also through video and computer games. Public service announcements and emergency alerts (that can be used as political device to communicate propaganda to the public).[8] Professions involving mass media Journalism Journalism is the discipline of collecting, analyzing, verifying and presenting information regarding current events, trends, issues and people. Those who practice journalism are known as journalists. News-oriented journalism is sometimes described as the “first rough draft of history” (attributed to Phil Graham), because journalists often record important events, producing news articles on short deadlines. While under pressure to be first with their stories, news media organizations usually edit and proofread their reports prior to publication, adhering to each organization’s standards of accuracy, quality and style. Many news organizations claim proud traditions of holding government officials and institutions accountable to the public, while media critics have raised questions about holding the press itself accountable to the standards of professional journalism. Public relations Public relations is the art and science of managing communication between an organization and its key publics to build, manage and sustain its positive image. Examples include: Corporations use marketing public relations to convey information about the products they manufacture or services they provide to potential customers to support their direct sales efforts. Typically, they support sales in the short and long term, establishing and burnishing the corporation’s branding for a strong, ongoing market. Corporations also use public relations as a vehicle to reach legislators and other politicians, seeking favorable tax, regulatory, and other treatment, and they may use public relations to portray themselves as enlightened employers, in support of human-resources recruiting programs. Nonprofit organizations, including schools and universities, hospitals, and human and social service agencies, use public relations in support of awareness programs, fund-raising programs, staff recruiting, and to increase patronage of their services. Politicians use public relations to attract votes and raise money, and, when successful at the ballot box, to promote and defend their service in office, with an eye to the next election or, at career’s end, to their legacy. Publishing Publishing is the industry concerned with the production of literature or information ‘ the activity of making information available for public view. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers. Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed works such as books and newspapers. With the advent of digital information systems and the Internet, the scope of publishing has expanded to include websites, blogs, and the like. As a business, publishing includes the development, marketing, production, and distribution of newspapers, magazines, books, literary works, musical works, software, other works dealing with information. Publication is also important as a legal concept; (1) as the process of giving formal notice to the world of a significant intention, for example, to marry or enter bankruptcy, and; (2) as the essential precondition of being able to claim defamation; that is, the alleged libel must have been published. Software publishing A software publisher is a publishing company in the software industry between the developer and the distributor. In some companies, two or all three of these roles may be combined (and indeed, may reside in a single person, especially in the case of shareware). Software publishers often license software from developers with specific limitations, such as a time limit or geographical region. The terms of licensing vary enormously, and are typically secret. Developers may use publishers to reach larger or foreign markets, or to avoid focussing on marketing. Or publishers may use developers to create software to meet a market need that the publisher has identified. History Early wooden printing press, depicted in 1520. The history of mass media can be traced back to the days when dramas were performed in various ancient cultures. This was the first time when a form of media was “broadcast” to a wider audience. The first dated printed book known is the “Diamond Sutra”, printed in China in 868 AD, although it is clear that books were printed earlier. Movable clay type was invented in 1041 in China. However, due to the slow spread of literacy to the masses in China, and the relatively high cost of paper there, the earliest printed mass-medium was probably European popular prints from about 1400. Although these were produced in huge numbers, very few early examples survive, and even most known to be printed before about 1600 have not survived. The term “mass media” was coined with the creation of print media, which is notable for being the first example of mass media, as we use the term today. This form of media started in Europe in the Middle Ages. Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press allowed the mass production of books to sweep the nation. He printed the first book on a printing press with movable type in 1453. The Gutenberg Bible, one of the books he published, was translated into many different languages and printed throughout the continent. The invention of the printing press in the late 15th century gave rise to some of the first forms of mass communication, by enabling the publication of books and newspapers on a scale much larger than was previously possible.[11][12][13] The invention also transformed the way the world received printed materials, although books remained too expensive really to be called a mass-medium for at least a century after that. Newspapers developed from about 1612, with the first example in English in 1620;[14] but they took until the 19th century to reach a mass-audience directly. The first high-circulation newspapers arose in London in the early 1800s, such as The Times, and were made possible by the invention of high-speed rotary steam printing presses, and railroads which allowed large-scale distribution over wide geographical areas. The increase in circulation, however, led to a decline in feedback and interactivity from the readership, making newspapers a more one-way medium.[15][16][17] The phrase “the media” began to be used in the 1920s.[18] The notion of “mass media” was generally restricted to print media up until the post-Second World War, when radio, television and video were introduced. The audio-visual facilities became very popular, because they provided both information and entertainment, because the colour and sound engaged the viewers/listeners and because it was easier for the general public to passively watch TV or listen to the radio than to actively read. In recent times, the Internet become the latest and most popular mass medium. Information has become readily available through websites, and easily accessible through search engines. One can do many activities at the same time, such as playing games, listening to music, and social networking, irrespective of location. Whilst other forms of mass media are restricted in the type of information they can offer, the internet comprises a large percentage of the sum of human knowledge through such things as Google Books. Modern day mass media consists of the internet, mobile phones, blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds.[19] During the 20th century, the growth of mass media was driven by technology, including that which allowed much duplication of material. Physical duplication technologies such as printing, record pressing and film duplication allowed the duplication of books, newspapers and movies at low prices to huge audiences. Radio and television allowed the electronic duplication of information for the first time. Mass media had the economics of linear replication: a single work could make money. An example of Riel and Neil’s theory. proportional to the number of copies sold, and as volumes went up, unit costs went down, increasing profit margins further. Vast fortunes were to be made in mass media. In a democratic society, the media can serve the electorate about issues regarding government and corporate entities (see Media influence). Some consider the concentration of media ownership to be a threat to democracy.[20]

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The mass media, including television, radio and newspapers, have great influence in shaping people's ideas. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

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Some people think that parents should teach their children to be good members of society However, others believe School is the best place to learn this. Discuss both the view and give your opinion.

The development of tourism contributed to english becoming the most prominent language in the world. some people think this will lead to english becoming the only language to be spoken globally. what are the advantages and disadvantages to having one language in the world, topic: children’s education is expensive. in some countries, the government pays some of or all the costs. do the advantages out weight its disadvantages, in the past, lectures were the traditional method of teaching large numbers of students in a classroom. nowadays new technology is increasingly being used to teach students. what are the advantages and disadvantages of this new approach in teaching give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge., some people say history is one of the most important school subjects. other people think that, in today's world,subjects like science and technology are more important than history. discuss both these views and give your own opinion..

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social media

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• LifeWire - What is Social Media?
• Boise State Pressbooks - Social Media and Web 2.0
• social media - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Recent News

social media , a form of mass media communications on the Internet (such as on websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos). Social networking and social media are overlapping concepts, but social networking is usually understood as users building communities among themselves while social media is more about using social networking sites and related platforms to build an audience.

The earliest forms of social media appeared almost as soon as technology could support them. E-mail and chat programs debuted in the early 1970s, but persistent communities did not surface until the creation of the discussion group network USENET in 1979. USENET allowed users to post and receive messages within subject areas called newsgroups. USENET and other discussion forums, such as privately hosted bulletin board systems (BBSs), enabled individuals to interact, but each was essentially a closed system. With the release in 1993 of the Mosaic web browser , those systems were joined with an easy-to-use graphical interface. The architecture of the World Wide Web made it possible to navigate from one site to another with a click, and faster Internet connections allowed for more multimedia content than could be found in the text-heavy newsgroups.

The first companies to create social networks based on web technology were Classmates.com and SixDegrees.com. Classmates.com, founded in 1995, used an aggressive pop-up advertising campaign to draw web surfers to its site. It based its social network on the existing connection between members of high-school and college graduating classes, armed service branches, and workplaces. SixDegrees.com was the first true social networking site. It was launched in 1997 with most of the features that would come to characterize such sites: members could create profiles for themselves, maintain lists of friends, and contact one another through the site’s private messaging system. SixDegrees.com claimed to have attracted more than three million users by 2000, but it failed to translate those numbers into revenue and collapsed with countless other dot-coms when the “ bubble ” burst that year for shares of e-commerce companies.

Nevertheless, social media sites became popular in the early 21st century. Social networks such as Friendster and MySpace emerged that allowed family members, friends, and acquaintances to connect online. Those two sites were eventually supplanted by Facebook , which became one of the world’s most popular social media sites with billions of users worldwide . Other forms of social media emerged for the sharing of specific types of content. For example, YouTube allows users to share videos, and TikTok is specifically designed for the sharing of short videos. LinkedIn emphasizes a user’s professional connections, where users create pages similar in structure to résumés.

Concerns over the possible negative effects of social media are also growing in tandem with the burgeoning technology. For example, some observers suggest that social media sites spur greater schadenfreude —the emotional experience of pleasure in response to another’s misfortune—perhaps as a result of the dehumanization that occurs when interacting through screens on computers and mobile devices . Some studies also suggest a strong tie between heavy social media use and increased depression , anxiety , loneliness , suicidal tendencies, and feelings of inadequacy.