The Gate of Mass Media!

  For this third post, we were asked to example our understanding of the simple and general term mass media. Well didn’t this take me long to understand! It took me about 3 days to really look into what this term meant to me. I completed all my other posts and this one was the very last one I came back too. So here I am, thinking about this simple, but broad term and what it means to me. So my first insistent was, what is the definition for Mass media? :

Dictonary.com states:

-         Noun, plural mass media.
- Any of the means of communication, as television or newspapers that reach very larger numbers of people.

       Well according to that definition, mass media is any medium used to transmit mass communication. From the radio, to the Internet, mass media is used to transmit mass communication. So now the real question is, what is Mass Communication? Well what we do know, is that mass communications is usually understood to relate to newspapers, via radio, television, magazines and film, as they are all used both for disseminating news and for adverting.

But when I think about the term mass media, I generally think about media taking over the world. Look at our world and what do you see? Media. Okay, but now what type of media? If it’s not an average day- to-day cell phone in one persons hand, then it’s the newly modernized Mac pro in then other. I look at the word Mass media, and quickly think about the different types of media that over powers our world.

   As mentioned in Week 3 in our Lecture, Ian talks about how technology is everywhere. We create our own technology, our own certain type of media. If its from our digital alarm clock that wakes up at 5 in the morning, to our morning news. Media over powers our life and we all know it!  As McLuhan claimed “ We ought to take the same point of view about media: they are neither blessed nor cursed, only that they are HERE.” Exactly, media is here and it’s not stopping, but why? Simple answer, us! We create this new over powering life, we are the cause as to why media over powers our lives.

   However, we are just the simple characters that impose and create mass media. When is someone using their cell phone, to someone seeing the news on television, to out teacher showing us clips on youtube, we are being presented to the masses of mass media.

    So what is confusing about this term? Why did it take me so long to understand? Well the question isn’t simple. My way of looking at mass media might not be right, yes its why own opinion, but not everyone’s opinion can we right. So what is mass media? That’s where the confusion lies. None really thinks about the term “mass media,” because we generally think that whatever is brought to us or even discussed is media. In Playboy Interview, Marshall McLuhan speaks about his definition of media and mentions “ Media is broad, includes any technology whatever that creates extensions of the human body and sense….societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which men communicate.”  And there lies the great power of mass media, it has the power to change and shape a society and influence a great number of people.

   So now I go back and ask myself, do I understand this term? Well I think I touched based on many things, and made an attempt, however what I found out is that I am aware that I am apart of this mass that this media reaches out too.

   So in the end I come to an understanding that mass media is the gate that opens the channel of communication, but that we are the masses that choose which channel of communication we want!

Aur Revior!

Happy Blogging!