Mass Communication Through the Years
Mass communication is continuously evolving, from past to present, we saw how communication changed and developed.
To simplify how mass communication evolved, here is an infographic showing the evolution of mass communication:
Major Developments of Mass Communication
1. Oral Communication: From Talking Face-to-Face to Talking Using a Telephone
People mainly attain knowledge and information through talking, given the fact that a group of people share similar language, people are able to share their habits and traditions with each other, creating culture in that society. Communicating verbally has been the lone way of our ancestors sharing knowledge, even though they started talking using sounds that relate to what they hear in their surroundings, it brought humans to continuously develop and to become civilized as an individual and as society.
Today, even though talking face-to-face is still an active and effective way of communicating, throughout the years, right after the telephone was invented, oral communication expanded its range, giving human society another way to talk with someone. One factor of why did such change occur, aside from the advent of technology, is the growth of human population. Imagine, if there is only two of you in this world, you will be just talking with each other, but since it is not the case today, as there are billions of humans in Earth, it is impossible to talk physically with all the people we are connected with in a single day, thus, it is the continuous attempt to make human lives easier and better that brought the telephone to us.
Talking face-to-face and talking using a telephone share the same concept as both of them are under oral communication. They require a speaker to deliver a message and information and a listener to receive what is being delivered and then provide a feedback after processing the message, they almost share the same model of communication. The difference is that, talking face-to-face and talking using a telephone occur in different contexts. Talking face-to-face require both speaker and listener to be in the same context, for example, students talking in a classroom wherein they are able to see the gestures, facial expressions, and a hint to the emotions of each other, on the other hand, talking through a telephone call could happen wherein the speaker and the listener are in two different areas, this limits the communicators to see each other, so, it is only the voice that could put intensity to their conversation.
The invention of telephone helped the individuals to connect with the people they love, like for example the OFWs. The use of telephone also gave the human society to deliver information faster. In terms of culture, the use of telephone caused humans to have lesser face-to-face interactions, humans adapted with it slowly until now it became a part of culture itself helping the society to share knowledge within it. Furthermore, telephone helped the society to adapt with the continuous growth of human necessities and desires.
2. Newspaper to Online News
Ancient Rome’s first types of print media were hand-copied onto boards and carried around to keep the people updated. Since knowledge could be mass-produced and processed, the way people exchanged ideas changed with the advent of the printing press.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the telegraph revolutionized print media almost as much as the printing press. Knowledge could be transmitted in minutes all of a sudden. As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, American publishers like Hearst redefined the world of print media and exerted immense power to shape national and international events.
Newspaper distribution has slowly declined since the advent and widespread use of television in the mid-twentieth century, and it has continued to decline in the twenty-first century as more people turn to internet news outlets and other types of new media to stay updated. According to the Pew Research Center, newspaper circulation dropped by 10.6% in 2009 compared to the previous year.
When newspapers fade away, news outlets become more fragmented, allowing each section of the audience to pick and choose what they want to read and what they don’t want to read.
Newspapers are increasingly going online to stay relevant. It’s difficult to predict how digital media outlets will affect how we access and process information. According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (2013), the audience for all major news magazines decreased in 2012, despite a rise in digital ad revenue. According to the same report, although newspaper circulation has remained stable at around $10 billion after years of decline, it is digital pay plans that allow newspapers to stay afloat, and the rising digital ad revenue for news magazines is not enough to compensate for the loss of print revenue in newspapers.
3. Advertising
Although the first signs of advertising are said to date back to 2000 BC with ancient Egyptian steel carvings, the first print advertisement was published in 1472 when William Caxton printed advertisements for a book and tacked them to church doors in England.
By advertising by direct mail, Sears was the first corporation to place a greater emphasis on personalization. In 1892, they started a major direct mail campaign with 8,000 postcards, which resulted in 2,000 new orders. Then there was the "Golden Age," when advertising personalization became much more common. When it came to radio and television in the early 1900s, advertising became a movement. It felt more personalized because it spoke directly to people through their radios and televisions.
On July 1, 1941, the first legal and continental commercial aired on WNBT, marking a significant turning point in the history of advertising. Even though this Bulova Watch Company commercial was short (only a 10-second spot for a simple graphic and voiceover). From the 1960s to the late 1980s was known as the "Golden Age of Advertising," a period marked by big ideas and big personalities. To create a stronger bond between viewers and brands, companies started creating characters based on their products.
That is, before the introduction of online advertisement, which brought with it a range of big game-changers in the development of advertising and personalization. When internet use exploded in 1992, when everyone immediately started using the internet for personal purposes, marketers leaped at the chance to meet customers there. They started paying more attention to digital advertising.
Following that, with the advent of cell phones, came mobile ads. In the year 2000, a Finnish news provider sent free news headlines via SMS, which became the first mobile ad. As a result, there will be more creative smartphone ads and mobile marketing campaigns in the future.
Advertising has gone through several important milestones over the years, as it has had to continually adapt and evolve to fit new mediums and audiences. Most importantly, it has become much more personalized over time. The internet, with its capacity to gather billions of data points, has had the greatest effect on the history of advertising and advertising personalization. To begin with, Facebook has 98 personal data points on its 2.2 billion users, totaling 215.6 billion. Google is even more impressive. Google gathers enough personal data from its users over a year to equate 569,555 sheets of paper between its seven distinct items, each with over 1 billion monthly active users.
A big difference in the scope and widespread of advertising evolution between printed to online advertisement, wherein, the printed ads is only limited to printed materials production and its respective users, unlike the online ads which are involved in any social networking sites and platforms that is more visible in the masses attention and it gives more clarity and emphasis on the sense that it almost interrupt and intervene the showcase presentation of content within the platform it is being included or added.
4. Messaging: Telegraph to Facebook Messenger
Before, the existence of telegraph serve as the principal means of transmitting printed information by wire or radio wave in the past century. This device or system only allows the transmission of information by coded signal over distance. But now, as the advancement in the technology continue improving, it leads to the emergence of Facebook messenger which is mobile tool that allows users to instantly send and received chat messages and information on their mobile phones.
With just an access to the internet, the instant creation of conversation with far distant place had certainly aid every individuals to have a convenient way of conveying and transmitting information and messages.
A big difference in terms of how the manner that messages and information being transferred and received among the sender and receiver. The limited scope, distance, and time upon the receiving of the messages in the features of telegraph unlike the instant, rapid and wide coverage sending and receiving of messages from the advance feature of the Facebook messenger. This make a lot and big difference among them.
5. Television to YouTube
In the traditional media before, Television serves as a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images, a system for transmitting visual images and sound that are reproduced on screens that is used to broadcast programs for entertainment, information, and education. But now, here we are in the period of media convergence, the YouTube exist on which is equipped of varieties of video and moving images contents, and where virtually all types and genres of videos are posted on the site.
This makes more convinient as it more accessible with just the aid of internet and gadget, you can watch anywhere and anytime as long as the availability of internet connection is available. Unlike the television which are just limited for home used.
Mass Communication and Its Future Evolutions
We’re still a long way from that point. We believe that by that time, communication and media types and formats would have advanced significantly. Knowing how far it has progressed, it is entirely possible for it to transform in unforeseen ways.
To be more precise, the communication technology would be a more sophisticated type of electronic telepathy. We would then be able to transfer data and knowledge directly to a computer or device through wireless chips, and in the not-too-distant future, we would be able to communicate by transmitting our thoughts directly into the minds of others through a network.
Artificial intelligence, smart assistants, and a boost in mobile video and data analytics would be present on media networks, wireless devices would be essential, and everything would be powered by data and smart cards and phones. And people will have instant access to all of the vital data in their environment with just a few clicks of a device and a thought in their mind.
References
Lumen Learning. (n.d.). Media and Technology in Society | Introduction to Sociology. Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sociology/chapter/media-and-technology-in-society/
Quick, B. T. (2021, March 15). The Evolution of Advertising & How Personalization Improved Over Time. Instapage. https://instapage.com/blog/evolution-of-advertising