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Mass Communication: Some Redefinitional Notes

Article · January 2002

DOI: 10.22230/cjc.2002v27n1a1272

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 Mass Communication:
Some Redefinitional Notes

Rowland Lorimer
Simon Fraser University

Abstract: This paper offers a new definition of mass communication, one that
embraces the Internet and its capacity to allow communication between individ-
uals on a mass scale; decentralized broadcasting by means of the Web; and the
traditional, centralized media of mass communication such as broadcasting and
newspapers. It argues that such a redefinition affirms public access and relegates
centralized broadcasting to a more appropriate, particular type of mass commu-
nication. It also discusses other redefinitional literature that focuses on the mass/
interpersonal communication dichotomy. The paper is intended both to redefine
and to encourage discussion of the significance of changing, modern communi-
cation technology.

Résumé : Cet article propose une nouvelle définition de la communication de

masse qui inclut : Internet et sa capacité d’assurer la communication entre indi-
vidus à une échelle de masse; la radiodiffusion décentralisée que permet le Web;
et les médias centralisés traditionnels de la communication de masse comme la
radiodiffusion et les journaux. L’article soutient qu’une telle redéfinition permet
de mettre de l’avant l’idée d’accès du public et relègue la radiodiffusion centra-
lisée à un type particulier de communication de masse, ce qui semble plus appro-
prié. Il discute aussi d’autres écrits proposant des redéfinitions portant sur la
dichotomie « communication de masse/communication interpersonnelle ». Le
but de l’article est à la fois de redéfinir la signification de technologies de com-
munication modernes et changeantes et d’encourager la discussion de cette signi-
fication.

Introduction
This short definitional paper is written in an attempt to engage others in the dis-
cussion and consideration of the evolution of our communication system and how
we might best conceptualize it. In the third and fourth editions of Mass Commu-
nication in Canada, Lorimer & McNulty (1996) and then Lorimer & Gasher
(2001) dealt with the evolution of the Internet by reviving an old term, public com-
munication. They spoke of the Internet as an extension of public access to world-
wide communication technologies such as the postal system, telephones, and

Rowland Lorimer is a Professor in the School of Communication, and Director of the Canadian
Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC
V6B 5K3. He is publisher and an editor emeritus of the Canadian Journal of Communication. E-mail:
lorimer@sfu.ca

Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 27 (2002) 63 -72

©2002 Canadian Journal of Communication Corporation

63
64 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 27 (1)

telecommunication. The intent was to draw attention to the Internet as an exten-

sion of a certain organization of communication technologies rather than a
brand-new, revolutionary technology that we had never seen before and which was
going to change democracy fundamentally (as the rhetoric of the day suggested).
For the developmental stage of the Internet at that juncture, the dichotomy of mass
and public communication sufficed. However, with the expansion of the capaci-
ties of World Wide Web technologies, and specifically the ability of anyone to
broadcast by means of a Web site to the whole world, such a dichotomy no longer
works. The redefinition of mass communication presented in this paper, within a
social model of communication itself that conceptually embraces the Internet,
seems a much more useful way to proceed.

The meaning of mass

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (9th ed.) offers a variety of meanings for the noun
mass. Included among them are: “a coherent body of matter of indefinite
shape . . . a dense aggregation of objects . . . a large number or amount . . . an
unbroken expanse . . . covered or abounding in . . . a main portion . . . the
majority . . . (in pl.) the ordinary people . . . affecting large numbers of people or
things; large-scale” (Thompson, 1993, p. 838). The purpose of including so many
definitions is to point out that, moving into semiotics for a moment, the sign mass
is complex and extensive, truly polysemic. And extensive as the definitions of
mass are, The Concise Oxford does not wholly recognize the use of “mass” by
social theorists. The closest it comes is to provide an example of large-scale:
“(mass audience; mass action; mass murder)” (p. 838).
McQuail (1983, 1987, 1994), in each of his introductions to Mass Communi-
cation, and Tim O’Sullivan and his colleagues, writing in 1983 in Key Concepts in
Communication, note what they term mass society theory of the early twentieth
century. This model of industrialist/capitalist societies portrayed them as com-
posed of elites (capitalist owners, politicians, the clergy, landowners, artists, intel-
lectuals) and workers,
a vast work-force of atomized, isolated individuals without traditional bonds of
locality or kinship, who were alienated from their labour by its repetitive,
unskilled tendencies and by their subjection to the vagaries of the market. Such
individuals were entirely at the mercy of (i) totalitarian ideologies and propa-
ganda; [and] (ii) influence by the mass media (comprising, in this period, the
emergent cinema and radio. (O’ Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, & Fiske, p. 131)
No mention is made of Marx or the Frankfurt School but, presumably, the
authors had these theorists in mind when they were writing. O’Sullivan, Hartley,
Saunders, & Fiske point out that “Mass society theory has been refuted by histor-
ical evidence” (p. 131) but that the concept of the alienated majority of society has
survived. It appears to have survived the almost 20 years since O’Sullivan and his
colleagues’ discussion. The moral force of such a view—as an aberration of such
values as altruism and a sense of belonging— seems to have invested itself in
much social commentary on globalization.
Lorimer / Mass Communication: Some Redefinitional Notes 65

However, as The Concise Oxford attests, one need not imbue the word mass
with a sense of alienation or totalitarian. It can indeed mean, simply, large-scale.
This is how it is meant in this paper.

Communication: A mathematical and a social definition

In 1949, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver proposed a mathematical model of
communication that makes reference to the basic organization of communications
technology. In this model, seen in Figure 1, a person, the encoder, formulates a
message by, for example, putting an idea into words. Words are symbols for an
idea, for example the word chair represents the object chair. The person (or
device) receiving the message, the decoder, unravels the signals and, on the basis
of the symbols sent, formulates meaningful content. In this case the decoder
would formulate an idea of the object “chair,” which has been coded into speech
or writing. (The nature of the idea so formulated by both encoder and decoder, by
the way, is complex, not simple.) The channel is the medium through which the
message is conducted, for example a human voice in air. The decoder may then let
the encoder know that she or he has understood the message (through the same
process, sending a message back). This might be done by means of a simple
non-verbal nod of the head and a smile. Or the decoder might carry on the dis-
course, taking it in a new direction, for example, “Which chair?” These responses
are called feedback. Any interference in the transmission of the intended message
is referred to as noise. Noise may be loud background noise that makes it difficult
to hear, a heavy unfamiliar accent, the snow on a television screen, static on the
radio, a misplaced paragraph in a newspaper, or the imperfect encoding into
words of the idea that the encoder has in his or her mind.

Figure 1: Shannon and Weaver’s Mathematical Model of Communication

(1949)
66 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 27 (1)

Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) model works well for engineers who speak in
terms of fidelity and message transmission. However, it works less well for soci-
ologists and others concerned with the social nature of communication.
While many involved with the social nature of communication have moved
on from Shannon & Weaver’s (1949) model, there does not yet exist a commonly
accepted standard social model of communication. Lorimer & Gasher (2001)
offer such a social model of communication, but it has not been taken up by the
Canadian, let alone the international, community of communication scholars. The
model is shown below as Figure 2. It is designed to emphasize social variables.
The social context within which message formulation takes place is termed the
“encoding envelope.” At the other end, the “decoding envelope” represents the
context of ideas and understandings that the decoder brings to deciphering of the
encoded message. (The nature of these envelopes of understanding and meaning
exchange is the stuff of semiotics, as well as of discourse analysis, and other the-
ories of meaning generation and communicative interaction.)
In between the encoding and decoding process, the model turns away from
the transmission channel and the distortion that noise introduces and focuses on
the transformation of any message that any medium (or channel) introduces. At
one level, to put an idea into words is not the same as painting a picture in an
attempt to communicate the same idea. At another level, a news story on televi-
sion is not the same as a newspaper write-up of the same story. Similarly, a novel
differs from its movie adaptation. In fact, talking to a child, a friend, or a person in
a position of authority transforms both the content of the message and the choice
of media as well as the manner in which the chosen media are used. In encoding,
the envelope of activities the person doing the encoding engages in includes
taking into account the physical and social context as well as the person for whom
the message is intended. In transmitting, the media transform the message in
encouraging a certain structure in the encoding process, and they further trans-
form it by making certain elements predominant for decoding. Television empha-
sizes the picture. Writing emphasizes linearity and logic.

Figure 2: A Social Model of Communication

Lorimer / Mass Communication: Some Redefinitional Notes 67

What can we take from this model to bring forward a social definition of
communication? Viewed from a social perspective, communication is the process
by which a message (content) (meaning) is encoded, transmitted, and decoded and
the manner in which a message (content) (meaning) is transformed by that
three-part process.

Mass communication
If we were to carry forward the above (social) definition of communication
together with the definition of mass as large-scale, we would see mass communi-
cation as, simply, communication on a large or mass scale, in other words, a lot of
messages being encoded, sent, and decoded. Some of mass communication is
exactly that—a lot of people talking on the telephone, sending and receiving
e-mail, writing and receiving letters. Interestingly, however, until very recently the
accepted meaning of the term mass communication did not describe mass com-
munication as communication taking place on a mass scale. What was, and still is,
more often termed mass communication is the communication that happens by
means of movies, large daily newspapers, and broadcasting (that is, the creation
and mass distribution of information and entertainment). Tim O’Sullivan and his
colleagues (1983) captured that type of mass communication quite well:
Mass communication is the practice and product of providing leisure entertain-
ment and information to an unknown audience by means of corporately
financed, industrially produced, state regulated, high-technology, privately
consumed commodities in the modern print, screen, audio and broadcast
media. (O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, & Fiske, 1983, p. 131) (This definition
was written prior to the development of the Internet, cell phones, Palm Pilots,
and CD-ROM games and does not encompass them.)
At the time of providing that definition, O’Sullivan et al. pointed out that this
usage of the term mass communication had the potential to mislead. They advised
that, following in the aftercurrents of mass society theory, the word mass encour-
ages many to think of the audience as a vast, undifferentiated agglomeration of
unthinking individuals, likely to behave in a non-rational, if not irrational, manner.
This conception of the audience is misleading. In reality, those who watch televi-
sion or read newspapers or go to movies are a heterogeneous group who bring
many different contexts (encoding envelopes) to any message. Moreover, O’Sul-
livan et al. added, the word communication tends to mask the social and industrial
nature of the media and promotes a tendency to think of them as analogous to
interpersonal communication, that is, communication on a mass scale. Back in
1983, with these caveats in place, O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, & Fiske’s defini-
tion was generally accepted and was well used. Parallel definitions were put
forward by others, including DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach (1982).
However, times and technology have changed. Beginning in about 1990,
when Internet usage began to migrate from science communication to the wider
world, the possibilities for person-to-person communication on a mass scale
expanded dramatically. Suddenly, it became possible to post an e-mail to an
68 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 27 (1)

address anywhere in the world that had an e-mail system, where the message
would await access by the user. The transmission was instantaneous and free—no
writing paper, envelope, postage stamp, mailbox, mail pickup, imperfect post
office sorting and handling, travel by air, land, or sea, re-sorting, and delivery; nor,
alternatively, any dictation over a phone to a telegrapher and an exorbitant charge
per word; nor, alternatively again, any need for a dedicated machine to create a
graphic to be sent over phone lines to arrive in fuzzy form at the other end. In
quick succession, a number of technologies were added on to text-exchange pro-
tocols so that by 2000, digital files of any type—text, sound, image—could be
exchanged between any computer user and any other computer user for an insig-
nificant cost. Moreover, with the deployment of World Wide Web (WWW) tech-
nology, alongside platform-independent file writing and reading, the foundations
of centralized mass communication (that is, corporately financed, industrially
produced, state-regulated, high-technology institutions) as the only form of mass
communication began to unravel.
By 2000, it had also become possible for any person with a bit of effort (and
little more expense than a computer, some software, and Internet access) to create
a Web site that was accessible around the world. In other words, while the Internet
started off as a means for person-to-person communication (on a mass scale), as
the business community began to use the Internet for commercial content, and
with the success of WWW technology, the Internet became both a mass
person-to-person communication system and a mass (decentralized) broadcast
system —in short, a large-scale communication system open to and welcoming
(by its affordability) the public. It allowed anyone who wished to do so to create
content for next to nothing and make that content available (i.e., broadcast it) to
the world. Given that millions were anxious to do just that, search engines were
developed to facilitate finding information, thereby adding substantially to the
effectiveness of the technology as a means of mass communication.
These changes are far more significant than people, including members of
the media and media theorists generally, recognize. In a sense, these changes
expose O’Sullivan and his colleagues’ caveats to be an awareness of an inade-
quacy of the mass communication system at a particular stage in its evolution.
Like Newton, before Einstein, O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, & Fiske described
what they saw in the context of their time. What they could not imagine was tech-
nology developing that would allow interpersonal communication on a mass
scale. No one did, except Marshall McLuhan, and few understood fully or
believed what McLuhan actually claimed. So, reflective of their time (and
then-current usage of the term), they defined mass communication not as mass
communication at all but rather as the mass distribution of information and enter-
tainment products. Looked at now, such a definition appears to carry echoes of
mass society theory: not its moral, anti-alienating force, but its view of mass com-
munication as centralized production and widespread distribution.
Lorimer / Mass Communication: Some Redefinitional Notes 69

The past ten years of technological change have set in place communication
on a mass scale. As a consequence, we are now in a position to put forward a new
definition of mass communication with three different subsections. Here they are.
Mass communication is state- and interstate-organized transmission of intel-
ligence, including (1) centralized mass information or entertainment dissemina-
tion (encompassing radio, television, newspapers, film, magazines, books,
recorded and performed music, and advertising); (2) decentralized information or
entertainment dissemination (on the World Wide Web); and (3) provision for
decentralized media-based interaction on a mass scale (via, for example, tele-
phone, the mail, e-mail, pagers, two-way radio, and fax).
1. Centralized mass information or entertainment dissemination— in shorter
form, centralized mass communication—is the corporately financed indus-
trial production of entertainment and information to large, unknown audi-
ences by means of print, screen, audio, broadcast, audiovisual, and Internet
technologies or public performance for both private and public consumption.
In certain instances (e.g., broadcasting and, less often, print) it is state regu-
lated.
2. Decentralized, publicly accessible, information or entertainment
dissemination—in shorter form, decentralized mass communication—is the
wide dissemination by individuals or organizations either through ready
access to, or wide distribution of, symbolic (i.e., information or entertain-
ment) products through sometimes state-regulated, publicly accessible chan-
nels (e.g., the Web, e-mail).
3. Public mass communication —in shorter form, mass communication —is
communication on a mass scale: the exchange of intelligence at the societal
level among individuals or small or large groups by means of publicly acces-
sible, sometimes state-regulated channels.
Note that by reconfiguring mass communication in this way, the public access
component gets built into what mass communication actually is, and centralized
control becomes a special case rather than the foundation stone of the enterprise.

The mass media

Now let us turn to the term mass media, which is really a contraction of the term
mass communication media. O’Sullivan and his colleagues provide a definition of
mass media by providing a list, which runs as follows:
Usually understood as newspapers, magazines, cinema, television, radio and
advertising; sometimes including book publishing (especially popular fiction)
and music (the pop industry). (O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, & Fiske, 1983,
p. 130)
To this list I would add interactive media (such as CD-ROMs, especially
games) and certain uses of the Internet. This list of mass media, even with these
two additions, amounts to concrete examples of centralized mass communication
institutions, i.e., sub-definition (1). And as James Curran (1982, p. 202) points
70 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 27 (1)

out, the mass media are really a subset of modern centralized mass communica-
tion institutions and practices, because such a list does not include all instances of
centralized mass communication. Buildings, pictures, statues, coins, banners,
stained glass, songs, medallions, and rituals of all kinds are mass media in that
they involve institutions communicating with members of society. Today, they
remain media of centralized mass communication but we do not often talk about
them as mass media institutions.
In the context of widespread technological change, the mass media can be
redefined as containing the three elements identified in the proposed three-part
definition of mass communication; thus a need for a redefinition of the mass
media.
The mass media can be defined as the sometimes state-regulated, corporately
financed, and industrially organized institutions of information and entertainment
dissemination such as newspapers, magazines, cinema, television, radio, adver-
tising, book publishing, music publishing, recording and performance, and all
interactive media that are engaged in providing entertainment and information to
large, unknown audiences for both private and public consumption. The mass
media also include Internet activities (e.g., Web sites) designed to disseminate
information broadly. Finally, the mass media encompass those technologies and
organizations which allow communicative interaction on a mass scale—phones,
faxes, postal services, cell phones, Blackberrys™, Palm Pilots™, and the like.
Note that because the term mass media focuses on technologies and institu-
tions, whereas the term mass communication concentrates on process, there is not
a complete parallel in the definitions. Thus, rather than speak of the centralized
mass media, the publicly accessible decentralized mass media, and publicly acces-
sible mass media, it appears more appropriate to emphasize that the mass media
include centralized dissemination, decentralized dissemination, and provision for
interaction on a mass scale. Additionally, such a redefinition recaptures the tele-
phone, fax machines, and postal services as part of the mass media rather than rel-
egating the telephone and fax machines to telecommunication and the post office
to an often undiscussed medium.
With this said, I would be remiss not to consider what others have been
thinking about mass communication.

Other conceptions of mass communication

The journal literature discussing conceptions of mass communication is not rich.
Moreover, it would appear that our U.S. colleagues have enmeshed themselves in
an unnecessary dichotomy, less accepted and less institutionalized outside the
USA.
Caplan (2001), for example, entitles his exploration as “Challenging the
Mass-Interpersonal Communication Dichotomy: Are We Witnessing the Emer-
gence of an Entirely New Communication System?” His article is based in a con-
sideration of the literature rather than the phenomenon itself and is thus
encumbered by the notion that mass communication and interpersonal communi-
cation are two separate entities. At some level of specificity they are. As Caplan
Lorimer / Mass Communication: Some Redefinitional Notes 71

points out, Goffman’s (1959, 1963, 1967) characterization of interpersonal inter-

action, involving mutual considerations by all participants of the others, encour-
ages one to see interpersonal communication as fundamentally quite different
from mass communication. Certainly there is plenty of other literature and insti-
tutional practice, especially in the United States, to encourage one to think of the
two as separate.
However, working with such a dichotomy at this level of specificity pulls
Caplan into a vortex that sees him, following Walther (1996), talking about a
brand-new field of Internet-mediated interpersonal communication they call
“hyperpersonal” communication. Caplan notes that other U.S. scholars have also
become enmeshed in the mass/interpersonal dichotomy, but that they have
attempted to combine the two fields into one. He cites Lea & Spears (1995) and P.
B. O’Sullivan (1999) for using words such as blurring, merging, and bridging in
their attempts to integrate the fields. He rejects this developmental direction,
citing Thomas Kuhn (1970) to support his desire for founding the new field of
hyperpersonal communication.
Conceptually, it is far easier and more ego gratifying to found, or help found,
a new field than it is to create integrative conceptual structures. The possible cre-
ation of a new field is not a positive development, not least because it is founded
on distinctly U.S. institutional practices and structures. When Caplan, citing
Burgoon & Walther (1990), Feenberg (1989), Turkle (1994, 1996), Walther
(1996), and Walther & Burgoon (1992), talks of distinctive features of hyperper-
sonal message sending —“the development and editing of self-presentation,
selective and optimized presentation of one’s self, and unfettered by unwanted
cues or multiple conversation demands” (2001, p. 7)—the equivalents in a variety
of communication contexts are obvious. Such equivalents can be found in rhetor-
ical skills, in letter writing, in lecturing, in acting, in radio performance, as well as
in the design of television programs and movies and the writing of books. Every
communicational act takes place within an encoding envelope that takes into
account content, medium, and receiver. Each communicational context is com-
posed of a distinctive set of variables. Just as, following Feenberg (1989), the
“me-as-text” of an e-mail differs from the “me” in face-to-face interactions, so the
“me” in one face-to-face interaction differs from the “me” in any other
face-to-face interaction. Moreover, the presenting “I” behind each of these “me’s”
is both one person and many —a complexity of situational and technology-biased
selves that forms an overall identity as well as multiple selves presented in mul-
tiple contexts.
The issue in developing definitions or creating fields of inquiry is surely to
examine phenomena at an appropriate level of abstraction, one that allows one to
maintain a conceptual framework that provides insight into parallels as well as
specific differences. While the above definitions of mass, communication, mass
communication, and the mass media do not focus on interpersonal elements, the
consideration of those elements is not precluded. Opting for a new field of hyper-
personal communication seems a bit overdetermined by technology.
 72 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 27 (1)

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