Media, The

Mass communication is the process by which messages created by one person or a group of people are transmitted to a large audience. This process is made possible by the existence of a device (medium) that has the possibility to reach a large number of people. The complex of these devices (such as the press, radio, television, and the Internet) is often referred to as the mass media. Although ancient societies used forms of communication and devices that, relative to the technological possibilities of the times, could be classified as mass media, the invention and diffusion of the printing press in the 15th century transformed in an unprecedented way the possibilities of reproducing writings at low cost and reaching large audiences; this invention opened the possibility of the development of modern mass media. Newspapers developed during the 17th century in Europe, although it was only in the 19th century that they started reaching vast portions of the population in Europe and North America.

The production function of media products is characterized by huge economies of scale. The fixed cost of producing the first copy of a book or a newspaper normally constitutes the largest component of the total cost. Once the first unit has been produced, the possibility of producing more copies depends on the costs of the physical reproduction and delivery of the original product. The [Page 412]20th century saw these costs fall dramatically, thus allowing for the first time the distribution of printed material to a huge audience. The role of printed media in society has therefore increased with the discovery of new technologies for cheap and massive duplication of the original material. The same argument can be applied to movies and, later on, to the development of radio, television, and, more recently, the Internet.

The growth of mass communication has paralleled the development of democratic institutions to the point where the mass media have been referred to as the fourth power, a pillar of democratic decision making comparable to the executive, legislative, and judicial powers, whose separation constitutes the foundation of democratic governance. This idea is based on the presumption that mass media have a very powerful influence on public opinion and on voting behavior. Whether this is the case or not has been the object of intense debate among social scientists. Research in this direction started in the period between the two world wars, under a general presumption that mass communication was an extraordinarily powerful device: Walter Lippman, in his book Public Opinion in the early 1920s, suggested that “it is no daring prophecy” that learning to create consent will change politics. These ideas now go under the name of theories of mass propaganda: use of the media for political propaganda was quite common at the time both by authoritarian regimes and by the Allies during the World War II. However, the first systematic study, conducted on survey data by a group of researchers at Columbia University, provided rather disappointing results. Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet studied Erie County, Ohio, during the 1940–1944 American elections, finding little evidence in favor of the theories of mass propaganda, for they found that those with the strongest views listened to and read from their own partisan side. Those most open to conversion were the ones who read and listened the least.

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