Channels of distribution

Scholars tend to identify the various mass media by their distribution channels. Books, newspapers, and magazines are often called the “print media,” while radio and television are often called the “electronic” or “broadcast” media. Two other electronic channels of distribution are also recognized as very important: “electronic recorded” media which include CDs, cassette tapes, video tapes, and the like – these are electronic in nature but are sold and delivered much in the same way as books – and “film” or “movies” which are similar to television but which are delivered in special places.

Telephones are electronic media, but telephones have not traditionally been included in the “mass media” because telephones are used mainly in person-to-person communication. Similarly, computers, especially large computer networks, have the potential to be used as mass communication media, however, these are so new that their uses are still developing. Although they have no true category as yet, computers are sometimes referred to as the “new” media.

A mass medium’s distribution channel aims a “flow” of messages in the direction of a particular audience.

Media Access and Availability

In order to receive messages from a particular mass communication medium, an audience member must be able to “connect up” to the reception end of the channel. For example, television is not available to people who do not own television sets; CDs are useless to people who do not own CD players, and so on. The extent to which an potential audience is able to make use of a mass medium is called its availability.

Availability includes more than equipment. Language also plays a role, as does geographic location and economic class. A radio broadcast in Spanish, for example, is only available to those who speak Spanish. Similarly, printed media are only available to those who are able to read, and cable television will not be available to those who cannot afford the monthly fee.

Media access refers to the ability of members of the society to make use of a particular medium to send messages of their own. Print media is relatively more accessible than broadcast media. For example, anyone who can write can, at relatively little expense, print up and distribute a flyer or newsletter. Access to television and radio broadcast channels, however, is tightly regulated by the government. Even when a channel is provided, as with public access cable television, it is much more difficult and expensive to produce video than to produce print.

Newspapers and magazines traditionally provide public access by means of “letters to the editor” or “editorial pages.” Television and radio news do not traditionally offer this kind of access. In recent times, however, radio and television shows featuring listener and viewer “call-ins” have become popular, and this provides access to a large number of people.

As the electronic media have begun to replace the print media as the major channels for public information, critics have begun to question whether this societal availability and access will be continued. Government control of the broadcast channels limits access to these media to large corporations, and cable television is available only to those who are able to afford cost of connection.

Audiences

An audience is a group of people who are receiving or have received a particular mass communication message. In some cases all members of the audience are paying attention to the medium at the same time – as, for example, the television audience that tuned in just after the space shuttle Challenger exploded.

In other cases, however, the attention of the audience is spread out over time – the audience for a particular magazine, for example, may consist of people who read copies of the magazine at various times over the period of a month or more.

And, in some cases, the attention of the audience may be spread over a very long period of time. The audience for Shakespeare’s plays, for example, is very large and hundreds of years in duration.

In the early days of mass communication research, the audience was believed to be very passive and innocent. It was supposed that members of the audience believed whatever they read in the newspapers or heard on the radio.

As studies of the relationship between the audience and the mass communication organizations have progressed, the researchers’ view of the audience has changed. Nowadays, the audience is believed to be active and sophisticated. That is, the audience chooses the media that it attends to, and the audience is critical of the messages that are delivered to it by the media.

The Magic Bullet

The earliest theories of mass communication imagined that mass media had very strong effects on their audiences. The Shannon/Weaver model illustrates that these theories saw the media message as a kind of “magic bullet”. Sent out by the organization, the magic bullets “hit” the members of the audience in their “minds” and changed their thoughts.

One of the first pieces of evidence that the Magic Bullet Theory was too simplistic came to light during research that was conducted in the wake of Orson Welles’ famous Mercury Theatre of the Air “Martian invasion” radio broadcast in 1938. According to the theory, anyone who listened to the broadcast should have believed that invaders from the planet Mars had landed in southern New Jersey. Yet, although some did believe it, most did not, and the ways in which they came to not believe were very interesting.

Some listeners switched channels to see if the news was being carried elsewhere; some picked up the phone and called friends to see if they were listening and if so, to ask what they thought about it; some paid enough critical attention to the show to recognize that it was fiction.

It was clear from these responses that most people did not accept the media message at face value. Rather, they took it under consideration and gave it meaning by comparing it to their prior experiences, and in many cases by talking it over with their families and friends.