Assignment Topic:
Conceptualization of Mass Communication

Subject:
Introduction to Mass Communication

Institute of Communication Studies
University of the Punjab
Introduction to Communication:
When an organization employs a technology as a medium to communicate with a large audience, mass communication is said to have occurred. The professionals at the New York Times (an organization) use printing presses and the newspaper (technology and medium) to reach their readers (a large audience). The writers, producers, filmmakers, and other professionals at the Cartoon Network use various audio and video technologies, satellites, cable television, and home receivers to communicate with their audience. Warner Brothers places ads in magazines to tell readers what movies it is releasing. But as you no doubt know—and as you’ll be reminded constantly throughout this text—the mass communication environment is changing quite radically. When you receive a piece of direct-mail advertising addressed to you by name, and in which your name is used throughout, you are an audience of one—not the large audience envisioned in traditional notions of mass communication. When you sit at your computer and send an e-mail to twenty thousand people who have signed on to a Listserv dedicated to a particular subject, you are obviously communicating with a large audience, but you are not an organization in the sense of a newspaper, cable television network, or movie studio. The availability of lightweight, portable, inexpensive video equipment, combined with the development of easy-to-use Internet video sites like YouTube, makes it possible for an “everyday” person like you to be a television writer and producer, reaching audiences numbering in the tens of millions. One useful way to do this is to think of mediated communication as existing on a continuum that stretches from interpersonal