The Media of Mass Communication

The Media of Mass Communication - Books and Magazines Research papers take a vast amount of time to outline and write. Here is a suggestion on how Paper Masters lays out an assignment like that.

To write a paper on the media of mass communication, answer the following questions. Please answer in order and write the questions out into the paper. Make it simple, to the point; you do not need to elaborate much on the questions you see below. A few sentences, but some may need more than others in order to answer completely.

1. How did the mass-produced written word fundamentally change human history?
2. What is the ownership trend in book publishing?
3. What are the main categories & subcategories of books?
4. How have book format changes affected the influence of books on the culture?
5. How do book concepts come to be?
6. What are the pros and cons of the growing influence of marketing in the book industry?
7. How can the worthiness of books be judged?

1. How have magazines contributed to U.S. culture?
2. How have magazines been innovative as a journalistic and as a visual medium?
3. How do sponsored magazines and trade journals differ from the consumer magazines available at news racks?
4. Why are most magazines edited for the special interest of targeted audiences?
5. What is the status of demassification in the magazine industry?
6. Are magazines losing their influence as a shaper of the culture? Explain.
7. Why do elitists criticize magazines that are edited for niches of consumers?

Mass communication involves the spread of a particular message to a large, diverse audience by a limited group of people. The message is spread by any number of media types, including newspapers, movies, television and radio. Mass communication impacts members of society by legitimizing a particular point of view through the means of repetition. A mass communication theory holds that continuous repetition of the same message results in the public perception that the message must be true. This perception holds regardless of whether or not the message violates societal norms and customs. Over a period of time, the repeated message begins to outweigh previous beliefs and values as the repetition translates the message into a new accepted norm.

The power of repeated mass communication to outweigh current values and beliefs is proven by history. For example, Hitler was able to persuade the otherwise loving, caring, and law-abiding citizens of Germany to commit inhumane acts or to support his army in the commission of these acts by way of public speeches and flyers distributed to the masses. Today, the power of the mass media is used to teach citizens popular attitudes concerning sex, fashion and social behavior. Individuals adopt their attitudes from those expressed in the most popular television shows and select their wardrobes according to what the stars are wearing.

The power of the mass media to impact the attitudes, beliefs, and lifestyles of individuals is a basic component of George Gerbner's Cultivation Theory and his belief that levels of violence on television are directly related to levels of aggressiveness in children.