Interpersonal and Mass Communication: Relationships (1)
Mass communication is part of the whole process of communication going on all the time in our lives. People watch television in their homes, and what they see and hear is affected by family attitudes Cartier Roadster Replica Watches and the comments of friends and relatives. Despite the importance of the mass media, we still hear live speeches, and we still talk to one another in small groups, face-to-face at parties, in classes, at the grocery store, and in city council meetings.
All of these contacts influence our experience of and our reaction to mediated messages. But the messages in the mass media also affect our communication with family and friends. Mass communication needs to be studied, and for purposes of study we have to try to isolate it, but mass communication is not really separable from other kinds of communication.
Mass Media Use
The relationship between mass communication and other forms of communication is evident in our use of the mass media. With the exception of films shown in theaters, most mediated messages are consumed by individuals alone or in small groups: a family or group of friends around a television set, a carpool of fellow workers listening to a radio program, a bus rider reading a newspaper, a computer user exploring the Internet.
Thus, the mass media reach large, anonymous, heterogeneous audiences with rapid, transient, public messages generated by impersonal, organizational sources. Most mass communication, however, occurs in intimate, personal, small-group settings.
Some people worry that our experience of the mediated message is displacing our desire to experience events that require that we transport ourselves to some other physical location. Scholars debate whether low voter turnout is prompted in part by the would-be voters’ sense that they already have participated fully in the campaign by watching it in ads and televised news, including debates between candidates.
Impact of Mass Media
Mediated messages have not just entered our lives; they have changed our patterns of living. The impact of television has been the most dramatic: Americans spend more time watching television than doing anything else except sleeping and eating!
The effect of all of this is the subject of much controversy. One study gathered on-going reactions from television viewers; the research led to the following conclusions:
Television viewing is a passive and relaxing, low concentration activity. Viewing is often driven by the wish to escape or avoid negative affective states. Viewers tend to feel passive and less alert after viewing. Heavier Replica Breitling viewers feel worse than light viewers generally, and particularly when alone or during unstructured time.
Television has also changed the way we get information. More than half of all Americans admit to getting most of their news from television rather than from newspapers.4 In fact, more Americans trust television as a news source (53%) than trust newspapers (23%).5
But our attitudes toward television and the other mass media are mixed. We Americans fear the power of the press and the power and influence of the mass media generally, and this fear is reflected in the titles of such books as Amusing Ourselves to Death,
Some of our fear and distrust arises from a belief that the mass media are mono-lithic, that they are controlled by ever-fewer people, and that they speak with a single voice. Such attitudes demonstrate a recognition of the power held by those who con-trol our access to information. Patterns of ownership that increasingly concentrate media outlets in fewer and fewer hands are also a source of concern. Despite such concentration of power, the mass media are various, and different types can be identified.
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