In contemporary society, the term mass-media is almost omnipresent. That is because of the fact that mass-media still remains the main instrument in spreading a message to the large public and people are addicted to information. When we want to obtain certain information, we turn on the TV, we read a newspaper, we listen to the radio or we search on the Internet.
In my opinion, the mass-media doesn’t do only that. Besides information, it forms, educates, persuades, entertains, following the satisfaction of the needs and requirements of the information consumer, namely the public. Everything you need to know is in the mass-media. The mass-media provides you with information in any field and keeps you updated. It offers you information about history, economics, geography, politics. The mass-media shows you the latest fashion trends but also the latest technology. It teaches you how to cook, how to dress, how to behave, how to lose weight and even how to survive in critical situations, in the case of the internet, all these just with one click. Maybe that is why the mass-media is so present in our life and so addictive. The mass media consists of print press, radio, television and the internet, which are communication channels. All these means of mass communications have served the interests of society, at least apparently, managing to reach their own goals. The initial role of newspapers was to transform the events in news, but gradually, reading them has become a consideration standard in a modern, urbanized society. Today, newspapers have a somewhat limited audience and that is due to ongoing development of mass-media. The radio, television and especially the Internet, tend to detach more and more from the traditional media, corresponding to the requirements of a postmodern society.
As I said, people have certain necessities that they try to satisfy in various ways, one of these being the use of mass-media. The power of mass-media doesn’t lie on the fact that there could be a mass society, where individuals are isolated, but in the fact that mass-media has control over certain resources of information that individuals need to fulfil their goals. Thus, in a complex society where the media system is strengthened, it creates a real addiction of individuals for information resources of this system. Relations between the individual and mass-media can be strong or weak, conflicting or of cooperation, but regardless of these characteristics, there is a dependency relationship that is established or with the media system as a whole or with a specific media product. Over the time, the mass-media system has become increasingly necessary to achieve the coordination of political and economic activities or to mobilize citizens.
Due to the facilities offered by the mass communication’s system, the access to information is democratized: the ones that want to consult those data can obtain them, without any kind of political, religious, racial and social restrictions. But there are limits of transmission speed and cost of access. From this perspective, the history of mass communication is a history of constant improvement, of technological possibilities and of increase in number of institutions specialized in production and distribution of these goods, which meant a permanent decrease in the access costs. (Coman, 2016, p. 16)
Because the phenomenon of mass communication or in specialized language mass media, is a very complex one, in the course of time many researchers of this type of communication have developed all sorts of definitions to reach one as complex as possible and which could expose what mass media means as concretely as possible. Further on I will present 6 definitions of mass media, in a chronological order, that were created over time by famous scholars and I will express my opinion regarding them.
In 1953, the sociologist Eliot Freidson in his work ‘Communications Research and the Concept of the Mass’, outlined what he perceived as being the predominant definition of mass communication, which contained four distinguishing characteristics for the mass audience: 1) its composition is heterogeneous; 2) it is composed of individuals who do not know each other; 3) the members of the mass are not located in the same space; and 4) the mass has not a specific leader and it is organized in a very undefined way. I think that the theory of Freidson maintains its validity even nowadays. Indeed, the audience is still a heterogeneous one because it may belong to different cultures, races, groups, etc. It is also very large and can be formed of millions of people that, of course, will not ever get to know each other. I believe that also the third feature is very current. The public is not organized in a certain area, rather it is highly dispersed in different geographical areas. The receivers of message of mass communication could be found in any place of a specific country and even in any place of the world. Also, there is not a precise organization of the audience. Almost anyone, anytime can access any type of information.
Another definition of mass media is provided by a classic author of this type of communication’s studies, C. Wright, who states that “the media is oriented towards large, heterogeneous and anonymous audiences; content is transmitted publicly, and often reaches audiences simultaneously, the communicator tends to be, or operate within, a complex organization that may involve great expense.” (C. Wright, 1964, p. 94). As we can see, he keeps the audience’s characterization made by Freidson and add elements that refers to content but also talks about the person who send the message, namely the communicator.
In 1987, another definition media was formulated and states that mass-media refers to all social institutions which deal with production and distribution of knowledge and which distinguish themselves from others by certain characteristics, such as: the techniques that are used for mass production and distribution of messages are relatively advanced; they have a rigorous organization and a social regulation of their activities and messages are sent to audiences which are (potentially) very large, which are unknown to communicator and which have the possibility to receive the messages or to reject them (D. McQuail, 1987, p.498). As it can be noticed, if the first two definitions the focus was on the audience, here we find out more about the communicator of the message. In addition, this definition of McQuail adds another feature for the audience, namely its ability to receive or to reject messages. This characteristic of the public was also taken into account by other scholars which expressed their opposite opinion regarding the belief that mass-media was always just one-way distribution of content amongst an undifferentiated, large, and generally passive audience (Corner, 1979, p.26-32; Mosco and Kaye, 2000, p.31-46).
Later on, another definition of mass media was given by the American Sociologist Morris Janowitz who states that mass media „…comprise the institutions and techniques by which specialized social groups employ technological devices (press, radio, films, etc.) to disseminate symbolic content to large heterogeneous and widely dispersed audiences.”(M. Janowitz, 1996, vol. 3, p. 41).
Mabillot, in 2007, stated that this concept of mass communication can be an effective explanation for the surprising changes that are taking place within the environment of contemporary media. Here, the term ‘mass’ is conceptualized a bit more inclusively, to include not just the receivers of content, but the senders of content as well. The Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr are increasingly leading to a new way of perceiving the mass communication in which the individual that is part of the audience operates to the same extent in which the more traditional institutional communicator does. As it can be noticed, Mabillot puts somehow on an equal footing the receiver of the message and the communicator. The receiver is no longer just passive but, by his reactions, he also sends a message to the communicator.
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