AND MASS COMMUNICATION COMPARED

	Interpersonal Communication (You invite a friend to lunch.)	Mass communication (David E. Kelley produces The Practice)
Message	Nature Highly flexible and alterable Consequences You can change it in midstream. If feedback is negative, you can offer an alternative. I feedback still negative? Take a whole new approach.	Nature Identical, mechanically produced, simultaneously sent. Inflexible, unalterable. The completed The Practice episode that is aired. Consequences Once production is completed, The Practice cannon be changed. If a plot line or other communicative device isn’t working with the audience, nothing can be done.
Interpreter A	Nature One person – in this case you Consequences You know your mind. You can encode your own message to suit yourself, your values, your likes and dislikes.	Nature A large, hierarchically structured organization – in this case, David E. Kelley Productions and the ABC television network. Consequences Who really is Interpreter A? David E. Kelley? The writers? The director? The actors? The network and its standards and practices people? The sponsors? All must agree, leaving little room for individual vision or experimentation.
Interpreter B	Nature One or a few people, usually in direct contact with you and, to a greater or lesser degree, known to you – in this case, Chris Consequences You can tailor your message specifically to Interpreter B. You can make relatively accurate judgments about B because of information present in the setting. Chris is a vegetarian; you don’t suggest a steak house.	Nature A large heterogeneous audience known to Interpreter A only in the most rudimentary way, little more that basic demographics – in this case, several million viewers of The Practice Consequences Communication cannot be tailored to the wants, needs, and tastes of all audience members or even those of all members of some subgroup. Some more or less generally acceptable standard is set.
Feedback	Nature Immediate and direct yes or no response Consequences You know how successful your message is immediately. You can adjust your communication on the spot to maximize its effectiveness.	Nature Delayed and inferential. Even overnight ratings too late for this episode of The Practice. Moreover, ratings limited to telling the number of sets tuned in. Consequences Even if the feedback is useful, it is too late to be of value for this episode. In addition, it doesn’t suggest how to improve the communication effort.
Result	Flexible, personally relevant, possibly adventurous, challenging, or experimental	Constrained by virtually every aspect of the communication situation A level of communication most likely to meet the greatest numbers of viewers’ needs A belief that experimentation is dangerous A belief that to challenge the audience is to risk failure

Today that the fundamentals of mass communication are not as true as they once were, and it is due to the emergence of new media for human communication. In short, the argument to be made is that contemporary media are “demassifying” mass communication. Some examples of today’s new demassifying technologies include handheld devices such as cell phones or video games, but most important, Internet-based communication, including e-mail and the World Wide Web. This does not imply, however, that all demassified technologies are new. In fact, many older technologies allowed for narrowcasting to specific audiences and user control of content to some extent. In radio, FM and audiotape serve as examples; in television, UHF (radio), cable, satellite, and videocassettes illustrate this point. What is different about the new media is a matter of degree of dimassification. [Screening: Woody Allen “Radio Days”. Comment on the case of demassification. 03.2 – 29.24-35.57]

Technology-assisted or machine-assisted communication or media communication combines characteristics of both the interpersonal and mass communications. Furthermore, the growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web has further blurred the boundaries between these two types of communication. In the media communication setting, one ore more people are communicating by means of a mechanical device (or devices) with one or more receivers. One of the most important characteristics of media communication is that it allows the interlocutors to be separated by both time and space. The machine can give a message permanence by storing it, can also extend the range of the message by amplifying it and/or transmitting it over large distances, allows people to converse even if they are hundreds, and even thousands, of miles apart, a letter can be reread several years after it was written.

Let’s now summarize differences between “Mass” and “Technology-assisted” communication as presented in the article “The End of Mass Communication” and comment on each of them. [slide]

SUMMARY OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN “MASS”

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