CHAPTER I

Introduction to Mass
Communication Theory

e live in a rapidly changing media environment. Only a few years ago,

W most people had never heard of multimedia or the Internet. Now, you
can hardly pick up a newspaper without seeing a reference to one or the
other or both.
The changes taking place in the media environment are numerous and, in
some cases, breathtaking. Newspapers have been declining in circulation and
readership for some time. Television is changing from a five-network (ABC, CBS,
NBC, Fox, and public broadcasting) structure to cable systems with 50 channels,
and talk of 500 or more. Videocassette recorders make movies available for view-
ing in the home and allow viewers to time-shift recorded television programs.
Some magazines are publishing through pages on the World Wide Web or
through CD-ROMs. Older approaches to news are being replaced with what is
being called the New News. Advertising is grasping for its role in the new com-
munication landscape. People spend hours visiting with other people in com-
puter chat rooms, and virtual reality games give new dimensions of experience to
participants.
The term cyberspace, coined by science fiction writer William Gibson, has be-
come a popular way to refer to the metaphoric space where electronic communi-
cation takes place.
The United States recently reached the point where more computers were
sold than television sets (Powell, 1995). In addition, research shows that the use of
personal computers is starting to take time away from television viewing (Lieber-
man, 1995). We seem to be moving rapidly into a new, user-active, multimedia,
communication environment. One characteristic of the new media environment is
the recognition that all information is the same-it is digital (Powell).
Of course, it remains to be seen just where all these changes are leading us.
Will people really be willing to give up a newspaper with their morning coffee or
the chance to browse through a stack of their favorite magazines on their living
room couch at the end of the day? One possibility is that the new media, whatever
they are, will take their place beside the old media, which may not go away. A
common pattern in the past has been that new communication technologies have
not nudged out old technologies completely but have caused the old technologies
to take on new roles. For instance, television did not eliminate radio but led to
new types of radio programming, including talk shows and specialized music
formats.
3
4 PART I THE CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

Whatever form mass communication takes, it will continue to fulfill a vital

role in our lives. Mass communication provides the eyes and ears of society. It
provides the means by which society makes up its mind and the collective voice
by which society comes to know itself. It is a major source for the transmission of
society's values.

THE CONCEPT OF MASS COMMUNICATION

One of the changes the new technologies are bringing about is that the very defin-
ition of mass communication is coming into question. The definition of mass com-
munication used to be fairly clear. Mass communication could be defined by
three characteristics:
1. It is directed toward relatively large, heterogeneous, and anonymous
audiences.
2. Messages are transmitted publicly, are often timed to reach most audience
members simultaneously, and are transient in character.
3. The communicator tends to be or operate within a complex organization
that may involve great expense (Wright, 1959, p. 15).
But Internet newsgroups and mailing lists, radio talk shows that invite calls from
listeners, the World Wide Web, multichannel cable television, and such hybrids
as books with enclosed computer disks cannot be pigeonholed easily as to
whether or not they are mass communication.
Some of the characteristics of the new media environment are the following
(McManus, 1994):
1. Previously distinct technologies such as printing and broadcasting are
merging.
2. We are shifting from media scarcity to media abundance.
3. We are shifting from content geared to mass audiences to content tailored
for groups or individuals.
4. We are shifting from one-way to interactive media.
Journalism educator Richard Cole has noted, "The differences between media are
blurring. Newspapers are becoming much more like magazines and broadcast"
(Fonti, 1995, p. 16).

THE NEW MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

We are living in a time when communication systems are evolving rapidly. The
Internet is growing at a phenomenal rate and has started playing a significant_role
in the economy. New technological developments, including digital teleVision,
 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO MASS COMMUNICATION THEORY 5

promise dramatic changes in areas other than the Internet. The phrase media con-
vergence is being used to refer to the coming together of services that have been
separate, including the Internet, television, cable, and telephone. One of the rea-
sons for media convergence is technical-more media content is being put in a
digital format in the form of bits.
Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is beginning to playa significant role in
our lives. A University of Texas study in 1999 indicated that e-commerce has be-
come a major force in our society, with an overall value of $350 billion placed on
the Internet economy in 1998 (Glass, 1999). In just the five years since the intro-
duction of the World Wide Web, the Internet economy has begun to equal tradi-
tional sectors such as energy ($223 billion), automobiles ($350 billion), and
telecommunications ($270 billion) (Indicators Report, 1999).

Digital Television
A new system of delivery for television called digital television (DTV) offers the
possibility of a choice of 1400 to 1500 television channels, with some of the chan-
nels offering information and data services and features such as interactive
shopping. Digital television is a system that sends television signals in bits
rather than in the continuously varying signal of the old television system
(Sam's Digital Television Report, 1999). Digital television also involves com-
pression of television signals with a technique called MPEG-2. The combination
of digitization and compression means that six television channels can be trans-
mitted in the space that formerly was required for one. A particular form of dig-
ital television, high-definition television (HDTV), uses the entire capacity of
an old channel to send a very high resolution picture. Much of digital television
will not be HDTV~ but it will still provide sharper images and higher quality
sound than the television we are accustomed to. Reception of digital television
will require either a new digital television set or an adapter for an existing set.
Digital television will also provid'e a control box that lets the viewer interact in
various ways. Standards for digital television were approved on April '3, 1997,
by the Federal Communication Commission. All commercial television stations
must provide digital transmissions by May of 2003 (Sam's Digital Television Re-
port, 1999).
The major advantages of DTV are higher resolution pictures, pictures that
will not be degraded by interference, better sound, an increased number of televi-
sion channels to choose from, capability for transmission of data other than televi-
sion images (texts of speeches, etc.), and greater interactivity by the user. One
form of increased interactivity will probably be video-on-demand channels that
allow users to select movies to be viewed whenever they want.
At this point, DTV is being developed as a system that is independent from
the Internet. Some observers think DTV will be the means that most people will
use to get involved in interactive shopping, banking, and information gathering
rather than through the Internet (Higham, 1999).
6 PART I THE CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

The Internet
The Internet is basically a network of many computers hooked together. This net-
work is continuously available for electronic messages, including e-mail, file
transmission, and two-way communication between individuals or computers.
The Internet had been around for 20 years as a network for Defense Depart-
ment and scientific communication. What made the network suddenly appealing
to ordinary users was the invention in 1993 of Mosaic, a browser for the World
Wide Web that made the resources of the Web much more accessible (Maney,
1995b). Mosaic let the user tap into Web materials by simply pointing an arrow
and clicking a mouse, and it made it easy to view online graphics. Netscape, by
providing even easier and quicker access, soon replaced Mosaic as the most pop-
ular Web browser.
At about the same time that user-friendly, Web-browsing software was being
developed, the World Wide Web itself was showing a phenomenal growth in the
number of sites. Levy describes the Internet as being based on "unlimited chan-
nels of communication, community building, electronic commerce and a full-
blown version of interactivity that blurs the line between provider and consumer"
(Levy, 1995, p. 58).
The Internet began to take on a new role as a news medium in January of 1998
when Matt Drudge used his website to announce that Newsweek was holding up
the story of President Clinton's involvement with White House intern Monica
Lewinsky. Some experts have said Drudge's story boosted the Internet as a news
source in the same way the Gulf War did for CNN and the John F. Kennedy assas-
sination did for television in general (Lissit, 1998).
Another turning point in how the public gets its information may have oc-
curred on September 11, 1998, when the Starr Report was released on the Internet.
It was the highest traffic day ever on the Net (Clothier, 1998). Some people have
questioned whether the report, which contained specific details of President Clin-
ton's sexual relationship with Lewinsky, should have been distributed on the In-
ternet. But it can also be argued that the Internet was the most efficient way to
make the 445-page report available to all citizens at the same time.
The three most popular features of the Internet are e-mail, newsgroups and
mailing lists, and the World Wide Web:

1. E-mail. Millions of people now communicate by electronic messages, or

e-mail. It is not necessary to be a sophisticated Internet user to send e-mail
messages-many ordinary people do so through online services such as
American Online and Prodigy.
2. Newsgroups and mailing lists. Newsgroups and mailing lists are elec-
tronic message-sharing systems that let people interested in a common
topic exchange information and opinions. There are currently 20,000
newsgroups covering all kinds of topics. Some people feel that they get
news quicker and better from newsgroups than they do from newspapers
and magazines. Perhaps more importantly, newsgroups allow a kind of
 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO MASS COMMUNICATION THEORY 7

immediate response to messages by the news consumer that newspapers

and magazines do not.
3. The World Wide Web. The World Wide Web, also known as the WWW or
the Web, is a system by which information on many computers can be
rapidly and conveniently accessed by many other computers. Currently,
the Web uses the metaphor of the page, and users can move from one page
to a different page by merely clicking a mouse on a highlighted word or
spot on a page. These different pages can be on different computers all
over the world. Moving about on the Web was made much simpler for
users with the development of user-friendly Web-browsing software such
as Mosaic and Netscape.
Attention to websites is usually measured in terms of hits, or the number of
times the site is accessed by a user. Time-Warner's Pathfinder service is reported
to receive more than one million hits per week. Penthouse magazine's website
claims two million hits a day, and the site promoting the movie Showgirls claimed
one million hits a day. But the number of visits, in which people actually spend
some time and access some information, may be one percent of the number of hits
(Chao, 1995).
Many businesses are setting up webpages, often without a clear idea of how
they might be most useful (Maney, 1995a). The feeling seems to be, "You gotta
have a website." The problem, partly, is that web sites are being looked at as
places for advertisements-showing the tendency to look at new media in terms
of the old media. But the best websites do more than push the sponsor's
message-they are interactive, offering the user a number of ways to get involved
with online activities and resources.
Political candidates began using websites as part of their campaigns during
the 1996 presidential election, and they have continued to do so. George W. Bush's
website (www.georgewbush.com) in 1999 reported endorsements of Bush by
governors and other political figures and provided opportunities to volunteer or
contribute to the campaign. It also included lists of his campaign contributors in
computer-accessible files.
Hollywood stars and professional athletes have begun setting up their own
web sites so they can tell their stories without having them filtered through the
news media. Prominent stars with websites include Cindy Crawford (Cindy. com),
Leonardo DiCaprio (LeonardoDiCaprio.com) and Kelsey Grammer (Kelseylive.com).
Several athletes, including baseball player Albert Belle and soccer player Mia
Hamm, have their own websites through athletedirect.com.
The Internet also provides new opportunities for developing countries. The
Chinese government is seizing upon the Net as a method to jump-start the coun-
try into the twenty-first century. Some 300,000 Chinese had access to the Internet
in 1998, but that number was expected to grow to four million by the year 2000
(Ramo, 1998). The government seems less inclined than before to try to control ac-
cess to Net content, although there is still some blocking of Western sites such as
Time-Warner's Pathfinder.
8 PART I THE CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

Box 1.1 The Credibility of Web pages

Many webpages are mixing information and advertising in ways that typically did not happen in
the traditional mass media. One case dealing with this kind of mixing concerned a webpage cre-
ated by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. a leading authority on public health is-
sues. Dr. Koop's webpage (DrKoop.com) was designed to educate the public about health
issues.
One feature on the page was a Community Partners Program. a list of hospitals and health
centers described as "the most innovative and advanced health care institutions across the
country." Medical ethics expert Joshua Hauser has pointed out that the list was actually an ad-
vertisement for hospitals that had paid to be included.
Source: Noble (1999).

The Internet also has its critics. Essayist Sven Birkerts has suggested that the
change from print culture to electronic culture will lead to impoverishment of lan-
guage. He says electronic communication is leading to a · telegraphic kind of
"plainspeak" (Birkerts, 1994, p . 128). He predicts that we will see a decrease in
subtle forms of language such as ambiguity, paradox, irony, and wit.
Another disadvantage of the Internet and the World Wide Web is the power
they have to draw people away from the real world of terra firma-earth, trees,
flowers, and sunshine. Clifford Stoll, the author of several books on the Internet,
says the problem is that "three or four hours spent behind a computer is not time
spent with family, spouses or the community" (Haring, 1995, p. 7D).
Many users of networks and online services are also learning that they may
need to become more skeptical about the information they are receiving. Users of
the Internet and the commercial online services should be concerned about the
accuracy of information from these channels. Messages posted by individuals
may contain reliable information, but they may also contain rumors, speculation,
deliberately misleading statements, and outright deception. The kind of informa-
tion one might pick up from news groups or mailing lists differs from the infor-
mation published in a newspaper or magazine in one important respect-it has
not been checked for accuracy by an editor. Webpages can also mix information
and advertising in ways that are not clear to the user (see Box 1.1). This situation
actually lends itself to an increased need for journalists and other professional
communicators-people who have the skills to assess information, verify the ac-
curacy of statements, and, perhaps most important, give some guidelines about
what is important and useful and what is not.
Some experts argue that the future direction of the Internet will be largely de-
termined by market factors (Abrahamson, 1998). That is, the Internet will evolve
in ways that allow a major portion of it to be supported by advertising.

Agents
As the flow of information and the number of channels available to individuals
increase, it seems highly likely that people will need some assistance in sorting
 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO MASS COMMUNICATION THEORY 9

out all the available information. As MIT Media Lab Director Nicholas Negro-
ponte has suggested, channel surfing does not become an efficient search strategy
when you are faced with a thousand or more channels (Negroponte, 1995).
Help in sorting out information is likely to come in the form of computerized
robots, agents, or digital butlers. These entities will have some degree of artificial
intelligence and will be programmed to do various tasks for us. Some of them will
spend time while we are away from our computers searching for information that
we have instructed them to look for. They will probably also be capable of learn-
ing the information needs of their masters as they work. For instance, they will be
able to present us with pieces of information and then make note of which ones
we use and which we do not. This knowledge could then be used to modify sub-
sequent searches. Over a period of time, our agents could get to know our prefer-
ences very well and search for content that would fit those preferences.
These agents might take some kind of anthropomorphic form to make it eas-
ier for us to interact with them. One possible form would be happy or sad faces,
with various expressions giving us information about how a search was going
(Maes, 1995). Another possible form-and this is probably some distance in the
future-could be 8-inch tall holographic figures on our desktop that we would
communicate with through speech (Negroponte, 1995). It is also likely that we
will have a number of different agents that specialize in accomplishing various
tasks for .us. Some agents may even delegate tasks to other agents.

The New News

The concept of the New News developed during the 1992 presidential election. In
part, it referred to the appearances of presidential candidates on talk shows, on .
MTV, and in extended interviews on network shows such as The Today Show. Jon
Katz, the Rolling Stone writer who appears to have introduced the term, said, "The
New News is a heady concoction, part Hollywood film and TV movie, part pop
music and pop art, mixed with.popular culture and celebrity magazines, tabloid
telecasts, cable and home video" (Katz, 1992, p. 39).
Examples of the New News in operation include Ross Perot announcing his
candidacy for president on Larry King Live, the well-known saxophone-playing
visit by Bill Clinton to the Arsenio Hall show, the appearance of President Bush on
MTV, and the two-hour interview of Perot on The Today Show. The Old News is
represented primarily by the three television network evening newscasts, the
three major newsmagazines, and the ordinary daily newspapers.
One aspect of the New News is the blending of information and entertain-
ment, as we can see in Bush's MTV appearance and Clinton's saxophone playing.
Part of the idea seems to be to make news about politics more palatable, particu-
larly to younger audiences. Katz argues that "younger viewers and readers find
conventional journalism of no particular use in their daily lives" (Katz 1992, p. 40).
Another aspect of the New News is attempting to get the candidate directly
into contact with the public without the interference of a journalist. Sound bites of
candidates speaking as presented on the network evening news shows have be-
come shorter and shorter, decreasing to a length of 7.3 seconds in the first five
10 PART I THE CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

months of the 1992 campaign (Taylor, 1992). As Jay Rosen notes, "Call-in shows,
talk radio, C-Span, 800 numbers, videos and pamphlets produced by candidates
for voters-all promise information and political dialogue without intervention
by journalists" (Rosen, 1992, p. 20).
In fact, it does appear that the New News formats and the Old News formats
present candidates with different kinds of questions. Michael Kinsley, a writer for
The New Republic, examined questions asked at a White House press conference
with President Bush and those asked by viewers calling The Today Show when
Perot appeared (Kinsley, 1992). The White House press corps focused primarily
on the process of the campaign, while the viewers calling in asked Perot mostly
about substantive issues that affected citizens. In this case, the viewer questions
may have produced information more useful to the citizen attempting to follow
the campaign. Some writers suggest that the New News extends beyond election
campaign coverage. Katz presents Oliver Stone's movie JFK as one of his primary
examples of the New News. He says the film dealt with "passionate and some-
times frightening undercurrents in American life" that the Old News was not ad-
dressing (Katz, 1992, p. 38).
In some cases, the Old News seems to be losing out to the New News in those
qualities the Old News claimed as its major strengths-speed of delivery and
vividness of reporting. Messages on the Internet concerning Tiananmen Square
and the Exxon Valdez oil spill were thought by some observers to be "much more
vital and immediate than traditional news stories" (Fillmore, 1993).
Katz suggests that the New News will eventually replace the Old News. He
wrote, "Straight news-the Old News-is pooped, confused and broke. Each
Nielsen survey, each circulation report, each quarterly statement reveals the cultural
Darwinism ravaging the news industry" (Katz, 1992, p . 39). But it may be that the
Old News and the New News both have something to contribute and that they will
end up coexisting. Along these lines, one study looking at the impact of the Old
News and the New News found that the use of New News does not appear to lessen
the use of conventional news sources (Miller, Chew, and Yen, 1993). The study also
found that Old News sources have higher correlations than New News sources with
knowledge of a political campaign and with the belief that the campaign is exciting.

Changes in Advertising
The field of advertising is in a state of transition, primarily because of the large
changes taking place in the media environment. Traditional mass media advertis-
ing aimed at large, anonymous audiences may be a dying communication form. If
people begin to scan information networks with information agents or, as they are
sometimes called, knowbots (knowledge robots), advertising may have to find a
different role for itself (Rust and Oliver, 1994). A shift is already under way from
mass media advertising to database marketing, in which potential purchasers are
identified through information in databases and then targeted with direct adver-
tising appeals (Fox and Geissler, 1994).
Some writers have suggested that marketing in the twenty-first century will
be centered on interactive multimedia, and that advertising departments must
 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO MASS COMMUNICATION THEORY II

find a new mission of transferring information on the information highway (Rust

and Oliver, 1994). Much of Web advertising is already beginning to target the in-
dividual customer. One form is the e-mailing of recommendations to customers
based on their latest purchases. But targeting on the Web can go further. For in-
stance, it is possible to make real-time recommendations of books and records to a
person browsing Amazon.com or CDNow on the basis of the "books or records
they are currently examining on the site. Such a technique is called collaborative
filtering (Lach, 1998). The new area of integrated marketing communications can
be seen as a reaction to the changes in the communication field and an attempt to
define a field broader than advertising.

THE ROLE OFTHEORY

Theory is the ultimate goal of science. Theories are general statements that sum-
marize our understandings of the way the world works. In the field of mass com-
munication, much of our theory in the past has been implicit. People have relied
on folklore, traditional wisdom, and "common sense" to guide much of the prac-
tice of mass communication. Sometimes these assumptions are never even stated
or written down anywhere. Other times they take the forms of oversimplified
aphorisms or maxims. Many of these assumptions would benefit from being
tested through research. The result might be that the maxims"are confirmed, dis-
confirmed, or confirmed only partially (within certain limits). In any of these cases,
the media practitioner will have a firmer ground for taking action. In developing
theory, we are often trying to explain something that is difficult to understand. Ba-
sically, the goal of theory is to formulate statements or propositions that will have
some explanatory power. These theoretical statements can take various forms:

1. An if-then statement. For example: "If a young person watches a great deal
of violent television, then he or she will commit aggressive acts."
In the study of communication, there are not many propositions that
hold so absolutely that they can be stated as if-then statements. A more
common form of statement is the is more likely to statement.
2. An is more likely to statement. For example: "A person who watches violent
television is more likely to behave aggressively than a person who
watches nonviolent television."
3. The greater the X, the greater the Ystatement (see Hage, 1972). For exam-
ple: "The greater the violent television viewing, the greater the aggres-
sive behavior."
4. Statements using phrases like leads to. For example: "Watching violent televi-
sion leads to more aggressive behavior than watching nonviolent television."

The communication scientist argues that since we have some theory operat-
ing all the time anyway, why not try to make it the best possible theory? The sci-
entist believes that the greatest faith should be placed in those statements about