Mass-media in Counselling
Luminiţa T ĂSICA
Institute of Educational Sciences, BucharestHistory
We discover sources of mass communication as early as Caesar’s time, 59 B.C., when
“Acta Diurna ” is issued in Rome, a daily journal that presented political and social
events, the war front situation, legal decisions regarding birth, marriage, death.
It is to be noted that in 1605, “Relation ” is the first newspaper published by Johann
Carolus in Strasbourg.
The media becomes truly “mass-media” only in the 18th century by ”penny press”
allowing a vast readers base and mass access to printed information on a large scale.
In the last century, media development is spurred by the advent of cinema and radio, but
especially television in the 1930s, to become mass extended in the last few decades.
“In the 1940s-50s, newspapers feared they would lose ground because of the radio. Then,
the rise of television alarmed press people more and more, but the only result was better
quality newspapers. With television widespread, USA Today began using large
photographs to compete with electronic media. The Internet now changes habits. In 1994 ,
the first online paper appears on the www” (www.mensa.ro).
These new media soon monopolize all social communication channels and revolutionize
the post-industrial society, transforming it into an informational society.
The huge impact of mass-media on the public space has prompted many to call it “the
fourth power in the state” or the “watchdog” of a democratic society.