AND “TECHNOLOGY-ASSISTED” COMMUNICATION

	Mass Communication	Technology-Assisted Communication
1.	Centralized	Decentralized
2.	Few channels	Many channels
3.	Typified by television	Typified by video games and Web sites
4.	Massification (broadcasting homogenized content to amorphous masses)	Demassification (individuals’ targeting to niche audiences, smaller and discrete “taste cultures”)
5.	The empowered sender	The empowered user
6.	Users are content receivers, “consumers”	Users are content selectors, producers, editors, distributors
7.	Users’ motivation is arousal	Users’ motivation is the need of satisfaction
8.	Ego concept development – identification	Ego concept development – self-actualization
9.	High cost for material production and distribution	Low cost for material production and distribution
10.	Inconvenient technologies and less content producers; elite business	More convenient technologies and more content producers; anyone’s business
11.	Social control – laws, professional ethics, public education	Social control – technical devices, monitoring
12.	Learning – social modeling	Learning – experiential
13.	Number of murders a child sees by age 18	Number of murders a child commits by age 18
14.	The existence of the boundaries between mass and interpersonal communication	Blurring the boundaries between mass and interpersonal communication

1. The Internet was designed to be decentralized, meaning that control is distributed to all users who have relatively equal opportunity to contribute content.

2. The number of channels is going from few to many.

3. Mass communication is typified by television, whereas video games and Web sites may be considered the archetypes of media communication.

4. The explosion of available channels afforded by the new technologies contributes to the demassification of the media by defusing the audience for any particular media product. This has resulted to channel specialization, and the old model of broadcasting to the masses has given way to market segmentation and targeting to niche audiences. The threat of homogenized media content is diminished as new technologies enable many millions of individuals to become content producers and as audiences are reconceptualized as smaller and discrete “taste cultures,” rather then as an amorphous mass.

5. The trend toward redistribution of power over the media from elites to users makes obsolete the idea of a small handful of willful individuals attempting to impart a dominant ideology to maintain the status quo. For example, in addition to allowing a greater variety of voices and views into public discourse, the interactive capacity of the new media creates new ways of grassroots organizing and coalition building. Also along with media elites, the government is losing its power to control media content. The mass-ness of the media declines and as new technologies continue to empower individuals, social control by elite groups in society may become more difficult.

6. The increased bandwidth of the Internet further enhances user’s ability to become content producers. Tight control over access to the media by elites and professional gatekeepers is waning as individuals and organizations of modest means become content selectors, editors and distributors in their own right.

7. User motivation also changes as communication moves from mass to media. If a major motivation for using mass communication was arousal regulation, in an environment that enables people to locate information easily and efficiently, users’ motives may shift instead to more specific need satisfaction.

8. Motivation is tied to the ego concept, and the process by which the ego concept is developed may change as well. With mass communication, the ego concept is developed through identification with attractive others, for example, television characters or celebrities. With media communication, it is likely to develop through self-actualization, as the ability to connect with people who share our personal interests and ideas is enhanced through the new technologies.

9. The users produce fairly sophisticated material at low cost.

10. Many of the new technologies are more portable and, therefore, more convenient to use compared with older mass media. If smaller audiences mean reduced costs of production and distribution, then more content producers will be able to enter the media market. In the near future, the issue may be less about what media companies are doing to people and more about what people are doing with the media. Opportunities for self-expression once denied by the old media are celebrated by the new media. This idea is encapsulated in the now well-worn phrase “on the Internet anyone can be an author.”

11. In the mass communication environment, social control is maintained through laws (e.g., content regulation), professional ethics, and public education. In the new media environment, technical devices and monitoring are used to keep people in line (e.g., software that prevents access to certain Web sites or removes offensive language from chat groups).

12. The method of learning via mass communication was assumed to occur through social modeling, but with the increased interactivity and user control of media communication, learning will be more experiential.

13. The scare statistics with traditional mass communication was how many murders a child sees by the age of 18; with the interactive experiences afforded by new technologies, particularly, video games, it is how many virtual murders a child commits by age of 18.

14. The notion of the media as a social problem because of their unchecked power over the means of mass expression is also breaking down with the emergence of the new media. As described earlier, this idea rested on mass society theory and particularly on the notion of a passive, atomized audience. Although the idea of an atomized society has never really been correct (a more accurate descriptor, both then and now, is a “molecular society” where individuals are embedded in small interpersonal networks), it is even more far fetched today as new technologies extend our networks across the globe and blur the boundaries between mass and interpersonal communication.

[Screening “Press. Pause. Play.”]

These characteristics of the new media are cracking the foundations of our conception of mass communication.

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