Stages of mass communication

Stages of mass communication

               1. A message is formulated by  professional communicators.

                2. The message is sent out in a relatively rapid and continuous way.

                3. The messages reach relatively large and diverse audiences.

                4. Achieving similarities of meaning.

                5. Members of the audience are influenced in some way.

Professional communicators

Reporters, actors, authors, editorial writers, official spokesman—who gather edit disseminate media content.

Specialists who make their living working for some part of comm industry.

They usually depend on a host of other groups --creative people (artists, researchers, composers, directors); Technicians, commercial sponsor etc.

Rapid and Continuous Dissemination

Today high speed presses can run off hundreds of thousands of copies of a book for distribution around the country in a matter of days.

The same is true of the other media: once a film is produced, thousands of copies can be sent to theatres all over the country virtually overnight.

Radio & Tv conquer distances without delay.

Modern mass communication is usually continuous rather than sporadic. Newspaper appear everyday, magazines weekly or monthly; Publishers and movie producers provide a continuing flow of books and films to the public.

Large and Diverse (mass) Audience

The term mass refers to the social nature of the audience rather than to their size. This term needs explanation. Here we use mass to refer top simply to size and diversity, without the other connotations.And diverse in sex, education, race, color, age.

Achieving similarities of meaning

The essence of human communication is the achievement of more or less parallel sets of meanings between sender & receiver.

The meanings must be relatively accurate or similar for communication to be fruitful. If the receiver & sender differ in meaning then comm will be inaccurate.

Influencing people

The last stage in mass Comm is the outcome of the preceding stages. The changes can range from trivial to profound. It can change our thinking, our attitudes, belief (party preferences, religious convictions, public issues). At trivial level, a person may be entertained by reading comics. At the Social rather than personal level, mass communication can change our language and its shared understanding by introducing new words and meanings, example: AIDS, Tsunami, Katrina.