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AL AKHAWAYN UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
COMMUNICATIONS STUDIES
1. Mass Communication and Mass Media
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Mohammed Ibahrine
based on
DeFleur and Dennis’s Understanding Mass Communication
Structure of the Lecture
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1. Mass communication in Contemporary Society
 1.1 Problems posed by media
 1.2 Explaining the process and effects of the mass
media
2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
 2.1 The Development of Language
 2.2 Sharing Meaning with Verbal and Nonverbal
Symbols
 2.3 A Basic Model of Human Communication
 2.4 Communicating Accurately
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Structure of the Lecture
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3. The Mass Communication Process
 3.1 Developing A Concise Definition
 3.2 Which Media Are Mass Media
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4. Comparing Face-to-Face and Mass Communication
 4.1 The Consequences of Using Any Medium
 4.2 The Consequences of large and Diverse Audiences
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1. Mass Communication in Contemporary Society
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1.1 Problems Posed by Media
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People are concerned about how media content influences us both
individually and collectively
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Citizens want to understand
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how media operate
what influences they have on both children and adults
whether they are ethical and responsible in what they present
How much control society actually have over their content
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Portrayal of violence
Excessive sexual depiction
The use of vulgar language
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1. Mass Communication in Contemporary Society
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To understand the complex questions concerning the influences of
the media, we should address three important questions:
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1. How were present media shaped by events, trends and
policies
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2. How do media function today to select, process, and
disseminate various categories of content
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3. What assumptions and forecasts can we make about media we
will have in the future and what they will offer to their audience
in the coming yeas?
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1. Mass Communication in Contemporary Society
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1.2 Explaining the Process and Effects of the Mass Media
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Media as they exist today have been shaped by a number of
social, political, economic and cultural and technological
influences from the past
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Media were introduced into the society as innovations
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1. Mass Communication in Contemporary Society
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1.2 Explaining the Process and Effects of the Mass Media
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Social scientists Everett Rogers and Eloyd Shoemaker have
developed a very useful theory that describes and explains
the process of the adoption of innovation
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Adoption innovation Theory is important for the study of
mass communication for two reasons:
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1. Each of our major mass media was originally an innovation
2. The media are responsible for bringing new items to the
attention of people , who eventually will adopt it
(Please read the summary in the Box in P.6)
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1. Mass Communication in Contemporary Society
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What is the Innovation Adoption Curve?
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The innovation adoption curve of Rogers is a model that
classifies adopters of innovations into various categories
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It is based on the idea that certain individuals are inevitably
more open for adaptation than others
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It is also called: Multi-Step Flow Theory or Diffusion of
Innovations Theory
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Innovation Adoption Curve categories
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Innovators. Innovators are very important communication mechanisms
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Early Adopters. Opinion leaders try out new ideas, but in a careful way
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Early Majority. Thoughtful people accept change more quickly than average
people do
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Late Majority. Skeptic people will use new ideas or products only when the
majority is using it
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Laggards. Traditional people are critical about new ideas and will only accept
it if the new idea has become mainstream
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1. Mass Communication in Contemporary Society
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Usage of Innovation Adoption Curve
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The adoption curve of Rogers for innovation is useful
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You should not try to quickly and massively convince the mass of a
new idea
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It is better to start first with convincing the innovators and the early
adopters.
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1. Mass Communication in Contemporary Society
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1.2 Explaining the Process and Effects of the Mass Media
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To trace the development of mass communication and the
adoption of the several media
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We should look at the fundamental process of human
communication as it takes place between human beings at the
impersonal level
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Mediated communication is interpersonal communication
aided by technology
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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What are the fundamentals of face-to-face
communication?
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We communicate with some form of learned
shared verbal and nonverbal language
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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The Development of language
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Language is a flexible system for storing,
recovering and disseminating information
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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Sharing Meaning with Verbal and Nonverbal Symbols
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We still communicate by using verbal and nonverbal
symbol
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A symbol is a word, an action, or an object that “stands for”
and arouses standardized internal meanings in people
within a given language community
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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A Basic Model of Human Communication
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Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver developed a complex
mathematical formulation, however it contained some very
basic and linear view of human communication
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The basic linear model is useful for analyzing the
communication process, breaking it down into its distinct
stages to understand what happens at each
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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A Basic Model of Human Communication
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What the basic linear model (BLM) did not include was the
idea that communication has an effect
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The BLM of the human communication oversimplifies what
actually takes place
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The human conversation that we engage in with people
around us are transactional not linear
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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A Basic Model of Human Communication
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Communication is a simultaneous back-and-forth, or
interactive process
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People are not merely passive and linear senders and
receivers
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They respond to the content of others' meanings, ask for
clarification, and indicate agreement
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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2.4 Communicating Accurately
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The meanings intended by communicators and
those interpreted by receivers may not be
perfectly parallel
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In that case, the communication has suffered a
loss of accuracy
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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2.4 Communicating Accurately
Definition of accuracy
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“The lower the level of correspondence
between the intended meanings of the sender
and the interpreted meanings of the receivers,
the less effective an act of communication will
be in achieving either mutual understanding
or an intended influence“
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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2.4 Communicating Accurately
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In interpersonal communication there are two effective
ways:
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One is by the receiver’s providing feedback
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The other by the sender’s engaging in role-taking
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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2.4 Communicating Accurately
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The Feedback Principle:
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In such a face-to-face situation, the sender is ever alert to
observable verbal and nonverbal signals coming back from the
receiver
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The communicator takes feedback into account to try to increase
communication accuracy
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Feedback leads to greater accuracy in communication
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2. The Interpersonal Communication Process
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2.4 Communicating Accurately
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The Role-Taking Principle:
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Role-taking can be defined as the sender’s use of feedback to judge
which words and nonverbal cues will work best to arouse the
intended meanings in the receiver
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Some people are better at role-taking than others
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Some situations are better suited for it than others
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Role-taking can be most effective in close, personal and intimate
situations where the communication parties know each other
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3. The Mass Communication Process
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Only human beings can transform meanings in their heads into
such signals, or as receivers, decode them back into a similar
internal experience
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Using media that can reach huge audiences more or less
simultaneously adds additional complexities
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3. The Mass Communication Process
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1. Do all the media operate according to the same
underlying principles of communication or is
each medium unique in some way?
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2. In what ways are the principles underlying
mass communication different from those for a
face-to-face conversation between two people?
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3. The Mass Communication Process
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3.1 Developing a Concise Definition
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1. Mass communication begins with senders who are “professional
communicators”
They decide on the nature and goals of a message to be presented to an
audience via their particular medium
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2. The intended meanings are encoded by production specialists (a
news team, a film company, a magazine staff)
The encoding process includes not only the selection of verbal and
nonverbal symbols, but the special effects that possible with a
particular medium (sounds, graphics, color)
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3. The Mass Communication Process
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3.1 Developing a Concise Definition
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3. The message is transmitted as information through the use of
specialized media technologies characteristic of print, film or
broadcasting to disseminate it as widely as possible
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4. Large diverse (mass) audiences of individual receivers attend to the
media and perceive the incoming information, decoding it into
message of conventionalized verbal and nonverbal symbols
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3. The Mass Communication Process
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3.1 Developing a Concise Definition
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5. Individual receivers selectively construct interpretations of the
message in such a way that they experience subjective meaning that are
parallel to those intended by the professional communicators
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6. As a result of experiencing these meanings, receivers are influenced
in some way in their feelings, thoughts, or actions
That is, the communication has some effect
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3. The Mass Communication Process
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3.1 Developing a Concise Definition
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Each of the six stages we have described must be part of
succinct definition of mass communication
With these stages in mind, we can define the process in the
following terms:
 “Mass communication is a process in which professional
communicators design and use media to disseminate
messages widely, rapidly, and continuously in order to
arouse intended meanings in large, diverse, and
selectively attending audiences in attempts to influence
them in a variety of ways”
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