Month: February 2020

1. Define Culture, Mass Media and Mass Communication and explain their interrelationships:

Culture: Symbols of expression that individuals, groups and societies used to make sense of daily life and values.

Mass Media: Cultural industries that produce and distribute songs, video games, TV shows, movies, novels, newspapers and internet services.

Mass Communication: Designing cultural messages and stories and delivering them to large and diverse audiences through mass media.

All three of these terms are related in ways in which they build upon each other. First let’s start with mass media. What mass media does is it intertwines values specific to a certain culture such as symbols, beliefs and aspects that make up what that culture represents, into the songs, TV shows, movies, novels, newspapers and internet services that they produce and distribute. The role that mass communication plays in regards to mass media is that mass communication is how mass media is then distributed. As seen in the definition, mass communication is distributed THROUGH mass media therefor creating association and and intertwined relationship between those 2 terms. Mass communication helps large and diverse audiences hear the cultural values.

Culture is what serves as the content that allows mass media to produce. Mass communication is then what delivers it. All of these terms have a relationship because of the piggy back role they play off of one another.

What initially drives my interest in media and what draws me to want to learn more is the curiosity I have regarding how media affects our society as a whole and individuals within it.

Of all the different ways information is presented within the media today, are there certain forms that have more of an effect on our society as a whole, as well as individuals within society, compared to others? Big picture wise, what types of media shape our society and have the biggest influence? Music videos, songs, news articles, commercials? Do different types of media affect different generations in different ways? For example, maybe our parents and grandparents are not as influenced by the same forms of media that younger generations are. Zooming in, within the different ways’ information is presented to the world through media, I am curious to learn if there are certain approaches and tactics that have more of an effect on people.

When individuals are constructing something to publish to the media world, are there certain ways to go about the structure of it in order to accomplish a specific goal in regard to the effect it’s going to have on someone? For example, let’s say a group of people are constructing a commercial and are aiming for it to make the viewers of it feel a certain way or it have a certain effect on them after watching it. What I want to explore is how they go about accomplishing that and if there are certain approaches that will help them succeed in doing this.