The Demassification of Communication
Today, communication happens as fast as we can touch a few buttons, and with the Internet we have the ability to choose what information we receive and from where. Because of technology, the content we receive and the media form it takes is more personalized and individualized than ever.
Where as in the past, few producers aimed to appeal to a wide audience, we are now seeing many producers creating content for smaller niche audiences and individual interests. And it’s not only the elite that are producing content. Thanks to the Internet and cheaper technology, we have seen consumers becoming producers, and many other changes as well.
I take a look back at an article call the The End of Mass Communication written in 2001 to gain some inside on this media transformation. Authors Chaffee and Metzger delve into what they call, the demassification of communication in this profound study of the media we use to communicate and how technology has transformed this.
FROM SENDER TO USER
In the early days, according to Chaffee and Metzger, “Centralized control of media content by professional and typically wealthy gatekeepers quickly characterized most mass communication.” This centralized power over media led to fears that producers could use media to control the masses. Everyone watched the same news station, television shows, and everyone received information from one source. If that source told you that overeating was healthy, you believed them because you had no other sources to compare it to.
However, because of advances in technology, the way we receive information is no longer centralized around certain elite media groups. We now have thousands of different media outlets or sources of information, and with the Internet these sources are growing daily.
As Chaffe and Mettzger had suggested, the control has shifted from the sender to the user, and from the few to the many. We, the many users, have total freedom to choose the type of information we receive and the form that it takes, and even at what time of day we want to receive it.
Today, everyone goes to their favorite radio or TV station or website to find the information that they consider credible and they can also cross check information because there are so many different outlets of information.
We are no logner stuck hanging onto, and believing every word that the only broadcast station in our city was saying. We have new media options, but with the introduction of new media, what happens to old media. Chaffee and Metger say that control by elite groups would be harder, but old media like TV and radio would never die out.
NICHE MARKETS
They were right. In fact, today more people watch TV than ever before, one of the main contributors being the freedom we have in choosing when and where we want to watch a specific TV show. Another contributing factor being related to niche markets and the thousands of different TV shows that appeal to those niche markets.
This ability to be so selective in the media we want to see or hear has created certain niche markets that Chaffee Metzger refer to as well. Once a niche market has been created, a new producer of content, like a TV station, will corner that market and continue producing content progressively more relative to that niche interest. The Internet has made the possibility for niche markets endless.
Since the article by Chaffe and Metzger was written, we have seen the rise of Facebook and Facebook advertising. The genius that is Facebook gives the creators access to your “likes” or personal interests and uses this information to advertise more relative products to you. Some feel this is appropriate and even beneficial while others feel like they are being used and its an invasion of privacy. read more (Information at the cost of advertising)
AGENDA SETTING
In terms of news, the number of news sources continues to grow, so there is no longer one centralized media source. “The problem is that the public will not be able to come together over common issues because there will not be any issues that they share in common.” Chaffe and Metzger refer to an example of how centralized media helped provide assistance to millions of starving people in Africa during the 1980s.
So as our news becomes less centralized around the elite broadcasting stations, (Fox, CNN) do we lose the ability to unify as a nation, in order to achieve one common goal? At first I thought, yeah we are less unified, but at the same time since this article was written, media has progressed even further to the point of instant notification. So the opposite might be true.
Even though we don’t all huddle around the same news station at the same time of night anymore, we are constantly informed by notification systems set up on our SmartPhones, for example. This allows us to react even sooner than if we saw it on the news. Eveyone knew about Whitney Houston’s death, for example, in a matter of minutes. This is not as important at the example in Africa, but it shows how quickly we can react as a nation together.
ONE WAY COMMUNICATION TO TWO-WAY INTERACTIVE EXCHANGE
“The increased bandwidth of the Internet further enhances users’ ability to become content producers and to produce material that is fairly sophisticated at low cost.”The exchange of information is no longer unidirectional, as Chaffee and Metzger point out.
The film industry is a perfect example of this phenomenon. In the early days, few elite studios such as MGM and Warner Bros ruled the film industry, but as technology advanced and became cheaper, more and more studios started popping up. These days technology is much more available and easy to use. Anyone can buy and camera and begin producing, or for that matter a smart phone and begin recording and producing content to share.
Look at youtube. It totally revolutionized the way we watch videos and share content. It has only been within the last ten years, that we as consumers of movies, have had this ability to film, edit, and produce our own movies to share with the world.
NYU Professor Clay Shirky discusses this new ability to share at a 2010 TED Conference. Shirky presents a population study, which shows that young people with access to fast, interactive media such as the Internet and youtube, are shifting their attention away from media solely for consumption, such as TV, and using this time instead, to produce and share.
Chaffee and Metzger state that, “The real problem for anyone producing content in the new media environment will be in figuring out how to capture people’s attention amid the plethora of competing options.”
As we can see today, Chaffee and Metzger were very accurate in their observations about the future of mass communication. The world of mass communication that we once knew has been ‘demassed’ and personalized for the individual consumer. Our media options have expanded drastically in the last decade, allowing everyone total freedom to choose where their information comes from and at what time.
