The ability to rise above the din and make our messages known to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people is a big deal. For example, here you are watching this video along with thousands of other people, and there are a myriad of things I could share with you. But we here at Study Hall think it's important to learn together, and specifically in this course, to learn about the patterns that guide human communication and the similarities we share.
Over the centuries, the power of mass media has grown. Now its different forms shape the news, change our cultural ideas, and even form our identities. And how we got here, that is, the history of mass media, is the story of people saying many different kinds of things and using this incredible power in so many ways that we can still learn from today. It's a history we are writing right now, in this video, and all over the internet.
I'm Cassandra Writer and this is Study Hall Intro to Human Communication. Mass media refers to the ways that people share messages to huge audiences through print, audiovisual, or electronic media. That's kind of vague, and that's because throughout history, mass media has come in a lot of different forms, and we've updated what we consider a huge audience. Like, if we were living in the 1400s and were lucky enough to have access to books, books and other printed materials would be the main form of mass media that we'd encounter.
Now, we have so many options for mass media that people can choose how to communicate mass messages. And readers or viewers get to choose how they receive their messages. But though the forms have changed, it's interesting to think about whether what we can do with mass media has changed too. Like, mass media can entertain us, inform us, spur us to action, or change our existing habits.
And in order to explore that and be more savvy consumers and producers of mass media, we need to get a sense of where mass media comes from. One side note, our journey is focusing specifically on Europe and the United States. But most cultures have developed or taken up mass media in different ways and on different timelines. Now, in order for mass media to become possible, first, information needed to become durable. For instance, as soon as a message could be written down, it could reach a much wider audience and even exist long after the author forgot about it.
Or, you know, died. Second, we needed a way for messages to be spread and understood on a wide scale. A message that's written down can reach more people than if I say it to individual people.
But the reach of a written message is still limited to who has contact with that piece of writing. And usually that wasn't many people back in the days of handwritten papyrus scrolls, which were precious and kept to a limited audience in part because of how labor-intensive they were to create. It wasn't until the 15th century that mass media really began to develop in Europe. In the 1430s, inventor and goldsmith Johann Gutenberg used his blacksmithing skills to create something called the printing press. It used little letter blocks known as movable types.
to form words and sentences. And when inked and pressed on paper, the printing press could quickly produce hundreds of copies of the same message. While he wasn't the only one developing methods to make books and printed materials quickly, Gutenberg's method caught on.
And the printing press did two big things that continue to have impacts today. First, it made it possible to share knowledge in a cheaper way. Books were wildly expensive since they had to be copied by hand. Second, as the printing press was replicated and became more common, People could share knowledge that otherwise would have stayed very local. Astronomers could publish what they were learning about the skies, and religious reformers could share critiques of church leadership.
And more people than ever could afford to learn things like reading and writing, since educational materials could be produced much more cheaply. Basically, cheaper books, knowledge being more widely available, and increased literacy meant that more messages could become mass media. So print, and especially books, was one of the first important forms of mass media. And mass-produced printed information was now serving various purposes, like learning, engaging in intellectual discourse, expressing political beliefs, and keeping people informed, which are still things that mass media does today.
Recognizing the big changes in how durable and accessible information became thanks to the printing press gives us insight we can apply to new forms of mass media. One of the next important innovations in the history of mass media is something that might sound really boring. Making paper cheaper. But as paper costs came down over the centuries after the printing press took off, more people could afford printed information. Newspapers and magazines became a way to find out the news in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Even during the early 20th century, they were the best way to get the most current information on politics, economics, local business, and more. Then, with more technological advances throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, mass media moved beyond print media. The advent of broadcasting allowed messages to be sent over long distances in audio and later video formats.
Developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, radio was the first broadcast media. Radio towers transmitted a stream of audio that could be accessed by anyone who was within range of the transmission and had a receiver. And this was really significant for the size of the audience mass media could reach.
Mass media has always been used for entertainment, but audio added new methods of engagement. from radio dramas to broadcast music. And in 1925, 5.5 million radios were being used in the United States, and it became common to listen in for important shows and announcements, as well as entertainment. And while it took several centuries for mass media audiences to grow from the hundreds to the thousands to the millions, the next wave of innovation was quickly approaching in the 1940s. Television broadcasts both audio and video, and soon television sets were in most U.S. households.
People now had more choices than ever before. They could read newspapers and magazines, listen to the radio, or watch television. All three media types had to adapt to competition, but they all survived because they offered consumers different things even when they served the same purpose.
For instance, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Life magazine were both popular in the 1960s, but entertained people with different approaches. Broadcasters and newspaper owners had to make choices about how to situate themselves in the mass media marketplace. That meant determining what purpose they were serving and how they would serve it.
For example, the New York Times focuses on providing in-depth news with journalistic integrity. Evening news shows, like NBC Nightly News, still care about accurate information and often rely on video clips of events and more to-the-point framings of news. For us, that means the way we choose to consume news changes what we focus on and how we view it. and what we take away from the news. You're not going to get the same media experience no matter where you tune in.
If you get news from a splashy television channel with tons of breaking news alerts and bright colors, your perspective will be very different from the perspective you'd get from, say, public radio stations. That's a lot of progress since movable type, but we still haven't reached the innovation that lets me talk with you right now. In the early 1990s, the internet began gaining popularity And with it came new choices and challenges for mass media.
Now messages could be spread in the form of text with the computer as a receiver. And the person receiving the text can play a much more interactive role. Anyone with an internet connection can leave comments on someone's fanfiction or answer questions posted in an online forum.
And while the internet is used for personal communication like email or instant messages, it has also become a tool in the hands of media companies. Websites that receive millions of views every month quickly became just as influential as a television broadcaster, and often with much less regulation. Early gossip blogs like Gawker could get celebrity news out to avid readers in minutes or hours, not daily or weekly through a physically delivered newspaper.
Another change the internet brought to the world of mass media on a huge scale is how a message can spread without a central source. Social media websites like Facebook gained popularity as places to share information with tens or hundreds of people you know in real life. But these websites also enabled these localized posts to be shared much more widely, potentially reaching thousands and millions of people.
When online content gains tremendous attention by spreading rapidly person to person, it's known as going viral. Viral content reaches a mass audience without being broadcast, like the way a radio show transmitted from one station can reach thousands of listeners. Instead, a viral video reaches a huge audience through social networks, people who are socially connected and exchange information.
It's kind of like a million-person game of telephone. And when ordinary people can turn a personal story or cat video into mass media, that democratizes mass media, meaning it's more accessible to everyone. While we can still reach an audience through print publishing and broadcasting, we now have the option to get our work out to millions of people using the internet instead of, or in addition to, traditional media.
But while this democratization of mass media has given people incredible power, and often open up our access to stories that otherwise wouldn't be easy to find, there are also major downsides. When hate speech could be spread rapidly, it can harm many people rapidly, even when it's quickly taken down. When someone makes up something untrue and inflammatory, it can reach an audience before anyone can prove it wrong.
Now stories that never passed through a fact-checking process have a much wider reach than before the internet. While hateful language and inaccurate information are certainly possible with other mass media, Today, there are usually more checks and balances before a story or statement is printed in a newspaper or broadcast on TV news. This means that while websites might serve the purpose of people's self-expression, that self-expression can be harmful at scales that aren't usually possible with other mass media.
People's relationship with mass media has changed, too. Many people don't sit and read a newspaper for 45 minutes each morning. Instead, many people scroll headlines or just see the ones that people they follow on social media mention.
It's common now for people to evaluate headlines and only skim details of the news, getting more highlights than ever before, but potentially with less depth. At the same time, the instantaneous nature of internet mass media means that details are often shared as a situation unfolds, making them often incomplete and ripe for revision as more information is found. Each kind of media that's contributed to this history of mass media has shaped what news we pay attention to.
As a result, some cultural ideas have become more widespread, and the kind of people who impact our identities and preferences has evolved. For example, celebrities still set trends, but now influencers play a role as tastemakers in our society. Knowing a bit more about this history helps us work with and shape modern mass media in ways that make it more broadly accessible. We can also more selectively consume media and put messages out into the world in a medium that reaches our audience effectively. When media types are newly developed, people tend to use them clumsily and without nuance.
But when we're intentional, we can use our knowledge to reach people where they are with exactly the messages they need. Like our new friend Lillian, who works for her local sanitation department. Lillian wears many hats at the Redmonton Sanitation Department. But one of her roles is to get the word out to as many customers as possible about when their trash will be picked up and when that day changes due to holidays or scheduling conflicts. She marshals local mass media to make that happen, since she's the one who gets phone calls when trash cans are overflowing and no trucks are in sight.
She starts with a laminated direct mail schedule that goes out to residents, an example of printed media. It's not customized to different districts, but it's a great way to get the word out but it has notes of the important holidays and how the pickup days shift. It's fairly cheap to print, and because many people put it on their refrigerator for easy viewing, she springs for a special magnetic strip on the back to encourage this use. Then, she creates a simple template press release to send out to local radio and television stations. These broadcasters want to have useful things to share with their listeners and viewers, and mentioning a change in trash pickup schedules can be a nice just-in-time reminder for their audiences.
Finally, she uses electronic media. including both the City of Redmonton's social media pages and the local government's phone app to send notifications. In the phone app, residents can input their address and get a customized schedule that reminds them of their trash and recycling pickup days, along with information about schedule changes.
Though this information is personalized, it's still mass media since it's reaching many people. Despite these many ways of reaching people, there are still Redmonton residents who accidentally put their trash out on the wrong day. Even mass media doesn't reach everyone in time. But Lillian has done all she can, using mass media that serves the purpose of informing her community. The growing complexities of how we engage with mass media have created lots of jobs like Lillian's.
These are positions and organizations that are devoted to thinking through whether the organizations need print, broadcast, and electronic outlets for their message. For the right kind of person, this job poses challenges that are exciting to tackle. And they highlight how important it is to have a deep understanding of the different types of mass media and how to effectively deploy them.
It's likely that we'll all eventually have a message that we'll wish we can blare from the rooftops. And the next best thing to a rooftop is mass media. And we'll have to choose the kind of mass media based on the purpose it serves and the audience it can reach. Whether we're announcing our candidacy for county sheriff or raising awareness about an environmental issue, we'll have to make a choice about how to get our message to a lot of people. And whether we want to inform others or be informed, we have so many more mass media options than the printed pages that led us here today.
Thanks for watching Study Hall Intro to Human Communication, which is part of the Study Hall Project, a partnership between ASU and Crash Course. If you liked this video and want to keep learning with us, be sure to subscribe. You can learn more about Study Hall and the videos produced by Crash Course and ASU in the links in the description. See you next time!