Mass communications: seven characteristicsA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWbeen challenged by what has been termed mass
self-communication, that is a new world of
blogging, indeed a blogosphere in which
thousands of ordinary people and groups have
modifi ed, if not as yet substantially altered, the
landscape of mass communication.
Mass self-communication is characterized by
horizontal fl ows of activity, of communicative
autonomy opening up a scenario which Manuel
Cassells in an article entitled ‘Communication,
power and counter-power’, published in the
International Journal of Communication (Vol.
1, 2007), says is ‘self-generated in content,
self-generated in emission and self-generated
in reception by many that communicate with
many’.
Faced with competition from horizontal
networking, corporate media have responded
by following policies of coexistence leading to
absorption: at vast expense, social networking
sites such as youtube (Google), myspace
(Murdoch’s news corp, until sold off at a
considerable loss in 2011) and Flickr.com
(Yahoo!) become part of the porfolios of corpo-
rate giants who, in Cassell’s words, ‘understood
the need to enter the battle in the horizontal
networks ... buying social networking sites to
tame their communities, owning the network
infrastructure to diff erentiate access rights, and
endless other means of policing and framing the
newest form of information space’. See cultiva-
tion; cultural apparatus; demotic turn;
mass communications: seven character-
istics; mobilization; normative theories
of mass media; web 2.0.
▶James Curran, ed., Media and Society (5th edition,
Bloomsbury Academic, 2010).
Mass communications: seven charac-
teristics In Towards a Sociology of Mass
Communications (Collier-Macmillan, 1969),
Denis McQuail cites the following features
of mass communications: (1) they normally
require complex formal organizations; (2) they
are directed towards large audiences; (3) they
are public – the content is open to all and the
distribution is relatively unstructured and
informal; (4) audiences are heterogeneous – of
many diff erent kinds – in composition, people
living under widely different conditions in
widely diff ering cultures; (5) the mass media can
establish simultaneous contact with very large
numbers of people at a distance from the source,
and widely separated from one another; (6) the
relationship between communicator and audi-
ence is addressed by persons known only in their
public role as communicators; (7) the audienceself-esteem itself ’). There are artists who put
creation before all else; there is the psychopathic
personality suff ering from a permanent loss of
the love needs; and there is the potential reversal
caused by the undervaluing of a long-satisfi ed
need: ‘Thus a man who has given up his job
rather than lose his self-respect, and who then
starves for six months or so, may be willing to
take his job back even at the price of losing his
self-respect.’
Th e hierarchy is at its most reversible in situ-
ations involving ‘ideals, high social standards,
high values, and the like. With such values
people become martyrs’. Torture victims who
defy their oppressors also confound Maslow’s
hierarchy. It is further acknowledged by Maslow
that human behaviour is prompted by multiple
motivations.
It would be theoretically possible, he says, ‘to
analyse a single act of an individual and see in
it the expression of his physiological needs, his
safety needs, his love needs, his esteem needs,
and self-actualization’. Equally, not all behaviour
is motivated; and motivation must also be
considered in the light of the ‘external fi eld’, the
pressures placed upon people to react in certain
ways. See self-concept; vals typology.
See also topic guide under communication
theory.
Mass communication Traditionally a term
describing institutionalized forms of public-
message production and dissemination, operat-
ing on a large scale, involving a considerable
division of labour in their production processes
and functioning through complex mediations
of print, fi lm, recording tape and photography.
However, as Denis McQuail points out in Mass
Communication Theory (Sage, 2010), ‘Mass
communication, in the sense of a large-scale,
one-way flow of public content, continues
unabated, but it is no longer carried only by
the “traditional” mass media. Th ese have been
supplemented by new media (especially the
Internet and mobile technology) and new types
of content and fl ow are carried at the same time.
Th ese diff er mainly in being more extensive, less
structured, often interactive as well as private
and individualized.’ Mass communication
systems are deeply involved in the processes
and debates surrounding culture, politics and
economics.
With the advent of the internet and the
arrival of the mobile phone with its capacity
for instant text and picture transmission, the
media institutions that once held a monopoly
of national and global communications have