Mass Media

After discussing the term media in class, my original ideas abut ‘the media’ were changed. I had always thought of media as being newspaper, television, the radio etc. I’m not sure ‘the media’ know what media is; Dictionary.com defines media as “the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely” (Dictionary). This is a general and basic definition, widely excepted by most people, and one I have come accustom to. I never thought outside the realm of journalists and photographers. After discussing McLuhan, and the way media affects us, I better understood the term media. The process is information or any idea that is delivered to someone. In this process the information is the content, and method of delivery is the medium. Taking this into consideration newspaper is a medium, but so is the apple you ate this morning. Both deliver some form content; the newspaper delivers the daily news, and the apple delivers the common connotations that people hold when they look at an apple. This may seem like a stretch, but everything we see carries some form of personal connotation. The apple for example, comes with religious connotations, as mentioned in class, and perhaps memories of Autumn. This shows us that an apple is a medium, just as rightly as the newspaper, and a basket of apples is the media. From this, we can re-work Dictionary.com’s definition, and make it less specific; I define media as the means of communication. After narrowing this definition, I can look more at mass media. Mass media is a medium that delivers a message to a large group of people. Within this line of thinking, I also think that this same idea applies even if the message received isn’t perceived the same by every individual it reaches.

“Media.” Dictionary.com. 05 October 2008. browse/media>