The Transition to Mass Media

Video 2.2 provides a timeline of communication technologies:

 

As discussed in the textbook, different types of media are associated with different economies. In pre-agricultural societies, people tended to be nomadic hunter-gatherers without permanent dwellings. There was little use for writing because it would have been difficult to carry books or scrolls while constantly on the move. Instead, the emphasis was on oral culture. The collective history and myths of the culture were told in songs and long epic poems that could be committed to memory.

Agricultural societies developed writing to keep track of inventories and business sales. Very few people could read or write. Those that were literate typically held positions of power advising religious and political leaders. The ability to read and write conferred access to knowledge, and knowledge equaled power. Those with knowledge often try to restrict access to that knowledge in order to maintain power. For example, in many cultures, women were discouraged from attending or not allowed to attend school. This gave men in those societies more power than women.

The birth of modern mass media can be traced to the development of industrial society. Here again we see how external technological, social, and economic developments influenced the shape of media. The invention of the steam engine radically altered how goods were produced. Instead of an artisan making products by hand with a few apprentices in a small shop, factories were built requiring dozens or hundreds of workers to operate the machinery. The need for many workers led to rapid growth of cities. At the same time, farming techniques were also rapidly improving, so fewer workers were needed for agriculture. With fewer jobs on the farm and more jobs in the city, workers began to move from rural areas to urban areas.

The result was a large concentration of people living in cities to work in all the factories. As technology made production more efficient, businesses suddenly found themselves with warehouses full of new mass-produced products. Goods were being produced faster than they could be sold. The solution was to increase demand so that people would buy more products. Companies began to spend more money on advertising to stimulate demand for their products.

At the same time, advances in printing technology made newspapers cheaper to produce than ever before. It was also cheaper to distribute newspapers in an urban area with high population density than in a rural area with very low population density. The cheap cost of newspapers led to increased literacy so that more people began to read newspapers.  As the audience for newspapers increased, more and more advertisers began to use newspapers to market their goods. The increase in advertising revenue helped keep the price low, leading to further increases in circulation.

Newspapers began to compete for the largest audience so they would be more attractive to advertisers.  This push led newspapers to emphasize objectivity in their news reporting in order to attract a wider audience. In the 1700s and early 1800s, most newspapers were overtly political and aligned with a political party. But in the late 1800s, newspapers realized that if they tried to be neutral and objective, they could attract readers from all the political parties and thereby increase circulation. This attempt to attract a mass audience evolved into the mass media system we know today.

Now, as the internet and cable television allow for an infinite range of choices, we see a movement away from mass media toward personal, customizable media. Pandora creates a custom radio station for each listener, and Facebook and Google can create custom news feeds for each user.