What is (mass) communication?

Mass communication typically refers to the transmitting or transferring messages to a large number of people. This form of communication usually requires the use of a medium, whether it is television, magazines, newspaper, radio, television and etc. The term can also be described as the study of ways people communicate and transmit messages. A very well-known model of communication was developed by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver to which they state as the prototypical example of a transmissive model of communication: a model which reduces communication to a process of ‘transmitting information’. [1]

According to John Fiske, the Shannon and Weaver model is one which is ‘widely accepted as one of the main seeds out of which Communication Studies has grown’ [2]. Yes that might be true back then, however time has changed and we have slowly evolved into the age of technology. Daniel Chandler criticized the model to be too linear, one-way model. [3] And that communication between two people involves simultaneous ‘sending’ and receiving’. This is very clear with what is happening currently in ‘Cyberspace’. Meanings contained in messages can be interpreted in many ways. There is no single, fixed meaning in any message.[3]

While Hanno Hardt, on the other hand, describes the difference between communication and mass communication lies between the definition of democracy and individual participation. In his Myths for the Masses: An Essay on Mass Communication, Hardt states that both mass communication as a socially determinant and politically significant process of meaning-making and its increasingly powerful institutional presence in society constitute a major challenge to understanding democracy in terms of individual participation in the process of communication. [4]

[1] Shannon, Claude E. & Warren Weaver (1949): A Mathematical Model of Communication. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

[2] Fiske, John (1982): Introduction to Communication Studies. London: Routledge (Chapter 1, ‘Communication Theory’ is a good introduction to this topic).

[3] Chandler, Daniel. "Transmission Model of Communication." Prifysgol Aberystwyth / Aberystwyth University. 18 Sept. 1995. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/trans.html 04 Jan. 2011. Web.

[4] Hardt, Hanno. Myths for the Masses: an Essay on Mass Communication. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.