See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/284733552

The Internet: The Medium of the Mass Media

Article · January 2011

CITATIONS READS
3 11,292

1 author:

Obiageli Pauline Ohiagu

University of Port Harcourt
14 PUBLICATIONS   24 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Internet Penetration Rates: A cross country analysis View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Obiageli Pauline Ohiagu on 27 November 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Citation:
Ohiagu, O. P. (2011). The Internet: The Medium of the Mass Media. Kiabara Journal of
Humanities 16 (2), 225-232.

Abstract
If anything is dynamic in today’s world, it is the concept and process of communication. Every aspect
of it including its channels keeps evolving by the year. Despite the controversies that range on
whether the Internet is a mass medium or not, the number of its audience members that keeps
increasing geometrically by the day makes it undeniably one. It is a new mass medium and a forceful
one too, which has become an integral part of other mass media as well as the media supporting
industries- public relations and advertising. This paper presents the Internet not just as a channel for
mass communication like any other technological tool used by contemporary man to transmit public
messages rapidly to a large, mixed and anonymous audience, but as a unique mass medium that even
stands out as the medium of other mass medium. The Internet is not only a mass medium but is also
a global medium with a potential to reach everyone on the globe. It is also a unique channel for mass
communication which has challenged if not altered some of the fundamental and traditional concepts
of a mass medium.

Introduction - Understanding the Internet

The International Network commonly abridged to Internet simply means a global network of millions
of computer networks. In other words, it is a network of all computer networks worldwide or plainly
a network of networks. The Internet allows for instantaneous exchange of information to and from
any part of the globe. Through its electronic mail often referred to as email for short, instant
messaging or chat facilities, the Internet makes it possible for people to communicate with others
both at the interpersonal and mass levels of communication. It also allows its users’ access to
volumes of information available on the World Wide Web. Data more voluminous than any known
encyclopedia can be transferred from one part of the world to the farthest part of the globe at the
speed of light. Thus users can download or upload information at a startling speed.

1
 A recent development of the Internet is its social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tagged, hi 5,
and My Space that are excellent in enhancing the interactional and socialization dimensions of mass
communication. Social media, as they are now called, are networking people into indeed one global
village where everyone gets to know of what is happening in everyone else’s life even as the events
unfold. Many people keep daily diaries of their life events and activities on the social media and their
friends can partake or react to such posts instantaneously. For Arens (2006: 540) discussing the
digital interactive media and the information highway, “the highway is the Internet and it is already
the fastest growing medium in history.”

The Internet as a Medium of Mass Communication

If anything is dynamic in today’s world, it is the concept and process of communication. Every aspect
of it including its channels keeps evolving by the year. Not too long ago many communication
scholars had problem accepting the Internet as an emerging mass communication medium. But a
critical scrutiny of the features of the classical mass communication media such as radio, television,
newspapers and magazines shows the Internet exhibiting the same qualities. Such analysis puts the
Internet on an equal platform with the old mass media if not on a higher position. A look at these
attributes will drive home the point.

i. Reach: A medium is said to have a good reach or coverage if it has the ability to expose a large
number of people to a given mass media message within a given period. In the words of Rossiter
(1997) reach is the “number of target audience individuals exposed to the advertising or
promotion in an advertising circle” (p. 447). Frequencies restrict the reach of radio and television
media to a limited region or territory (except if they are enabled by the Internet boundless waves
or satellite orbits). The circulation of print newspapers and magazines depend on manual
distribution. This is a strong limitation as newspapers from Nigeria, for example, cannot reach
people in even the neighbouring countries through such vehicle –assisted distribution system. But
when enhanced on the Internet, the online version has no boundaries. An electronic newspaper
can be accessed from any part of the world where there is an Internet network.

The Internet, on the other hand, has the potential to reach everyone hooked up to an Internet-
enabled system. Its services or network can be received anywhere without any restriction through

2
 any of the Internet Service Providers (ISP). That some people do not have computers or Internet
connection is not a weakness of the medium, after all, some people too cannot afford TV sets and
therefore cannot receive TV signals. So the Internet has the capacity to reach a large audience and
even a larger audience than some conventional mass media especially print newspapers and
magazines. In fact, the Internet is not only a mass medium but is also a global medium with a
potential to reach everyone on the globe. Arens (2006) noted “that with an audience of some 800
million people worldwide, the Internet is also the only true global medium, providing information
and commerce opportunities that are immediately accessible around the world” (p. 558). Hanson
(2005) argued that “by inventing the WWW, Tim Berners Lee, the British physicist, created the
software that allows the Internet to work as a medium of mass communication” (p.274).

Edmund Lee (http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/charlie-sheen-verified-twitter-account-

fast/149171/) on March 2, 2011 posted a shocking article retrieved March 25, 2011 on how
Charlie Sheen signed up for a Twitter account and in less than 24hours more than 900,000 of his
fans had connected to him. Well, it might be argued that this is not an everyday experience since
Charlie Sheen is a Hollywood celebrity who cashed on his existing media popularity. Yet it is an
indication of the potential of the Internet to reach a large audience almost simultaneously.
President Obama of America has about... fans on his page, similarly, President Goodluck
Jonathan has about…fans on his page. Even some individuals who have no previous popularity
record have amassed huge contacts on their pages. The point being made here is that the Internet
especially through the social networks can boast of a large reach or coverage like other mass
medium, if not more.

ii. Simultaneity of Reception: Another feature of the traditional mass media is simultaneity,
which is the ability of the medium to transmit the message to audience members at the same
time or nearly the same time. Hanson (2005) underlined that “mass communication messages
are transmitted rapidly to the receivers. Audience members can receive the message
simultaneously, as they would in the case of a radio broadcast; at similar though not identical
times, as in the case of a newspaper or magazine; and occasionally over an extended period, as
in the case of CD, movie or video ” (p.11).

3
Perhaps, the greatest weakness of the Internet as a mass communication channel lies in its
poor capacity to be accessed simultaneously by the mass audience. Yet, apart from radio and
television that broadcast transient messages simultaneously to the receivers, all other mass
media are to some degree equally have this deficiency. Newspapers, magazines, billboards,
books and the Internet cannot be accessed at the same time. Nevertheless, their permanent
nature as opposed to the transient nature of radio and TV messages counters this weakness
since people can access them even moments after they are transmitted.

In itself, the Internet has the potential to reach everyone who is connected at the same second
just as radio and TV signals can be received at once by all who tune in to the same channel.
However, in reality, the possibility of many being hooked up online all at the same time, and
surfing through the same website is very slim. Nevertheless, not even radio, TV and much less
newspapers and magazines can hope to achieve simultaneity of reception especially with our
contemporary multi-channel phenomenon. The impossibility of this is compounded by the
countless number of alternative media options. In our media saturated world, what chances are
there that a mass audience will all tune in to the same radio or TV station simultaneously
when there are pretty too many options? So the Internet gambles for a mass audience as the
other media are also forced to do in our media-saturated- era. Just as no medium or any
particular media house can promise to command a mass patronage or reception of any of its
messages in modern society because of the exploding media options, similarly the Internet
may not easily communicate to a mass audience simultaneously. With the advent of new
media technologies the possibility of a national media is no more feasible; rather most media
now engage in narrowcasting, niche marketing or targeting. With a plethora of viewing
options, the media audience has been fragmented. Audience fragmentation or segmentation
and narrowcasting are features of our digital technology driven society.

Yet by routing a message in some popular websites such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL,
Hotmail etc which are visited by many people world-wide, the possibility of simultaneous
mass communication is enhanced. For example, during the inauguration speech of Barrack
Obama – America’s 1st black president – countless number of peoples from around the globe
watched the telecast simultaneously on some of these websites. Besides, if about a thousand

4
 surfers from every country visit the website at the same time, when that is added up
worldwide, we have a number that is larger than what can just be described as a mass
audience.

iii. Anonymity: A mass communication channel allows the sender to reach a large,
heterogeneous and anonymous audience. Because of the number involved, the audience is a
mixed group and the sender cannot personally know most of them. The producers of a
webcast, a webzine, an on-line newspaper or a popular corporate website cannot know the
individual audience members who would visit their sites. The audience members on their part
may also not know the sender of such online messages or information.

Besides, what can be more anonymous than the cyber experience where people exchange
views and mails online with other people they have never seen or met outside the virtual
world of the Internet? For example, when a producer of media content on Facebook (one of
the popular Internet social networks) who has 2, 000 people in his network posts any
information on his page or wall, he wouldn’t know who among these 2, 000 people would see
his post and there is no way he can know all of them personally. So while the Internet has the
potentials for interpersonal communication, it equally enables people to communicate with an
anonymous audience or group.

iv. Heterogeneity of Audience: If a medium of mass communication must reach a heterogeneous

and spatially dispersed audience, then no other medium does it better than the Internet. The
Internet audience are a thoroughly mixed group in sex, age, location, status, class, race and
culture. They can be spatially dispersed both in reality and in the virtual world.

v. Dual Outreach: In fact, the Internet has an added advantage since it can be adapted for both a
narrow and mass reach depending on the users need. It has the potential for both global
marketing and narrowcasting to a specialized or segmented audience. What is more, in the
same manner that radio and TV can switch from one language to the other, the Internet can be
accessed in most popular languages spoken in different parts of the world. So not even
language is a barrier here unlike for books, newspapers, magazines and billboards that are

5
 limited by language. Its barrier though is technological illiteracy barrier, because one must
have some level of computer proficiency before he can access the Internet. Accessibility too
can limit the Internet and this too will soon be in the past as Internet threatens to become
cheaper and more easily accessible. Biagi (2005) confirmed that: “the Web is a new medium,
but its growth to become a true mass medium for a majority of people seeking information
and entertainment is limited only by digital technology and economics” (p. 191). It is a
medium limited only by technology and economics.

Measured against the above benchmarks for assessing a mass communication tool, it has been proved
beyond logic with enough evidence that the Internet is a mass medium of communication and indeed
an effective mass medium capable of reaching a very large, mixed and anonymous audience.

Joshua Gans (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/facebook_is_the_largest_news_o.html) in an article

titled ‘Facebook is the largest news organization ever’ posted on March 11, 2011 and retrieved on
March 25, 2011 argued that ‘Facebook is a fully fledged news organization on a scale we have never
seen. News organizations do two major things, commercially speaking: they use news to grab
attention and then sell that attention to advertisers.’ And this, of course is what Facebook and other
social networks are doing subtly. The writer observes that Facebook not only provides a platform
whereby individuals become reporters, editors, and publishers but the medium offers a compelling
proposition to advertisers because a good number of people go there every day even if they are not
likely to spend more than a few minutes there. He goes further to compare some features of Facebook
to that of a typical newspaper such as news delivery, providing room for opinions and entertainment.

Facebook is delivering on the first task of the news organization. Some Facebook friends
might express opinions, but more often they are reporting facts. What is more, because
these facts are reported to social connections, they are actually accurate. Nothing binds
one to the truth more than the accountability of an ongoing personal relationship. Do
you ever hear it exclaimed, "I heard on Facebook that your train broke down and that
turned out to be an exaggeration"? Facebook knows this. The company even calls it a
"News Feed." And it is peppered with other news stories coming from mainstream
outlets your friends have shared. You can read it like a newspaper (postpost.com) or a
magazine (Flipboard for the iPad). Even the games, jokes, surveys, and other attention-
grabbing activities on Facebook have a long provenance in newspapers, which are full of
games (crosswords and Sudoku), jokes (the comics), and polls. These are a long-
standing part of the news experience.

6
 The Internet as a Unique Mass Medium
The next task in this work which is the major contribution of this paper is to x-ray ways in which the
Internet is distinct from other mass media in order to understand why this paper qualifies it as the
medium of all mass media. The Internet’s uniqueness extends also to alter some old definitions of
mass communication and demands a revisit of some old concepts of mass communication.

1. Ability to Enhance the Performance of Other Media: A major edge or distinctiveness of the
Internet over the old or existing mass media lies in its ability to enhance the performance of the other
media. In fact, it can be safely said that the Internet has become an indispensable part of radio,
television, newspaper and magazine’s effective and successful existence. The old mass media have
continued to enhance their relevance by hooking up to the Internet. In a very short time, it will be
inconceivable to think of any media outfit that can survive without supporting itself with an online
version of its productions. Therefore, the Internet can aptly be called not just a mass medium but also
the medium of the mass media because it is also a channel through which the other media enhance
their relevance or overcome their own limitations of frequencies, circulation or transiency. Through
the Internet medium, the contents of the other media: radio, TV, books, magazines, and newspapers
are relayed to a wider audience.

2. Flexibility of Usage: What is more, the Internet has the potential to function as radio, television,
newspaper or magazine depending on the user’s need. No other known mass medium has this unique
ability of functioning as a different medium in different circumstances. The user therefore decides
what medium to make of the Internet. Radio can never be used as a television medium, neither can
newspaper ever become radio or serve the purpose of a magazine. But the Internet can swap its nature
by a single mouse click. Still related to this Internet flexibility, Hanson (2005) added that “the thing
that makes computer based communication so powerful is that it includes virtually every level of
communication, from the interpersonal communication of e-mail and instant messaging to the mass
communication of the World Wide Web” (p. 272).

3. Ability to Combine Features of Other Media: As a result of this flexibility nature, it combines all
the strengths of the old mass media such as visual ability of TV and the print media; motion picture

7
 potential of TV and film, sound ability of radio, TV and film, retrieval and permanent nature of books
and the print media. What a medium!

4. Ability to Empower Audience as Active Users: Before the advent of the Internet, receivers were
merely seen as audience members whose contribution to the communication process was limited to
passively absorbing whatever the senders had to offer. Their choice was very limited beyond tuning
off from the channel or media content. With the invention of cable and its consequent many channels
availability, the audience had greater choices to make concerning what media content to consume and
when. The arrival of the remote control empowered them more since they would not even need to get
up from their seats to change to any station. But the control was indeed a remote one.

However, when the Internet came on board, they ceased to be merely a passive audience on the
consumption lane but they quickly transformed to active users who select not only what medium to
use, but which of its many contents to consume. A television sports fan who wants to watch the news
on a television channel is kept hostage as a typical audience member from the beginning of the news
cast to the end before he is satisfied. On the Internet he quickly goes to the sports link thus controlling
the communication process and using the media as he wants.

5. A Medium for Two-Way Communication: The Internet users are equally engaged actively
in the production aspect of the communication process. They respond to messages and also create
their own messages. It is indeed a mass medium with a difference which offers both the sender and
the receiver equal opportunities in the communication process; and both are simply referred to as
users. Hanson (2005) observed that the Internet became a full-fledged mass communication network
in the 1990s, although its beginnings dates back to 1969. Rather than simply making it easier for
individuals and organizations to send messages to a mass audience, the new computer networks are
designed for two-way communication. Audience members who were once passive receivers could
now send messages back to the original senders thus becoming message providers themselves. Thus
there is no fixed status of sender or receiver in this new communication setting. This
interchangeability of sender – receiver roles is not a unique feature of the Internet. A newspaper
reader who sends a letter to the editor may have become also a sender but the Internet’s potential for
instantaneous feedback is perhaps what makes it stand out in this ability.

8
6. The Internet Challenges Conventional Concepts of Mass Communication: The Internet
has also challenged the conventional understanding of the mass communication sender as always an
organized, complex and expensive system. Today mass communication on the Internet is not
necessarily the product of a large, complex and sophisticated organization such as the Nigerian
Television Authority (NTA). Even a single individual can use the Internet to generate and sustain
communication with a very large and mixed (mass) group. Neither must mass communication be an
expensive or capital-intensive- investment as that of setting a broadcast station or floating a
newspaper. All one needs for Internet mass communication may be a computer and an Internet
modem.

Dominick (2007) asserted that the WWW “brings the Internet into the realm of mass communication
and reverses the traditional pattern of one-to-many communication. Web sites offer everybody the
chance to become mass communicators, mass communication is never guaranteed, but the potential is
there….The affordability of this channel can make anybody an electronic publisher with access to a
potential audience of millions, thus creating a whole new type of mass communicator” (p.17).

7. The Internet has a Worldwide Audience: With development and time, the Internet might
even dare to become the primary mass medium as ubiquitous as every man’s radio. Oyewole (2007)
concurred that the Internet has become a “dominant infrastructure in the modern society.” Similarly,
O’ Guinn, Allen and Semenik (2006) documented that in 2006 it was estimated that there are about
1.3 billion Internet users worldwide which represents only about 20 percent of the world’s
population. Yet, though the Internet, like many communication technologies started rather upscale, it
is now broadening to middle – and lower income consumers with the advent of more affordable
computers. Wireless technology will spread the application even further and faster to poor countries
that cannot afford the infrastructure needed for wired connections. Citing Cha (2005) in an article
published in Providence Journal, Baran (2009) similarly estimated that there are at least 1 billion
users worldwide. Any current study on the Internet audience will definitely reveal a further geometric
multiplication of the figures quoted in 2005 and 2006 above.

In conclusion, if we understand mass communication as put forward by Hanson (2007) as a society-

wide communication process in which an individual or institution uses technology to send messages
to a large mixed audience, most of whose members are not known to the sender, then the Internet is

9
 undeniably a mass medium. Against the yardstick of the features of a mass medium its position as a
mass medium is not negotiable. But more importantly, it is a global medium reaching the entire
universe; it is the medium of the other media enhancing their relevance and keep them from
extinction; it has challenged and altered many traditional concepts of mass communication.

References
Arens, W. F. (2006). Contemporary advertising. Boston: McGraw Hill Irwin.
Baran, S. J. (2009). Introduction to mass communication: media literacy and culture.
Boston: McGraw Hill Irwin.
Biagi, S. (2005). Media impact: an introduction to mass media. Belmont: Thompsom Wadsworth.
Dominick, J. (2007). The dynamics of mass communications: media in the digital age ( 9th ed.)
Boston: McGraw Hill.
Hanson, R. E. (2005). Mass communication: living in a media world. Boston: McGraw
Hill Irwin.
O’Guinn, T. C., Allen C. T., & Semenik R. J. (2006). advertising and integrated
brand promotion. Ohio: Thomson South-Western.
Rossiter J.R (1997). Advertising communications & promotions management. Boston: McGraw
Hill Irwin.
Oyewole, J. (2007) Internet and the possibilities for DevCom. In Understanding development
communication, J. Scrampical, and A. Aram (Eds.), Delhi: Media House, 380-398.

Internet Resources

Gans, J. (2011) http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/facebook_is_the_largest_news_o.html)

Lee, E. (2011) (http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/charlie-sheen-verified-twitter-account-
fast/149171/)

10

View publication stats