We explain what the types of mass media are, their characteristics, history and examples of each one.
What are the types of media?
The mass media or mass media are the set of organizations and initiatives capable of addressing a large number of citizens at the same time to send them different types of information. Newspapers, television channels, radio and internet news portals are all examples of mass media.
The vast majority of people in today's world are in one way or another in contact with the mass media, among which each person chooses the one of their preference. However, their presence and increasing importance are characteristics of the contemporary era, which is why they are known as the “fourth power” (after the three traditional public powers).
The variety of existing mass media is the greatest ever recorded in human history, and therefore there are many ways to classify them, based on various criteria. The main one, however, is the one that differentiates between the support they use to communicate with their audience, and that distinguishes between printed media (books, magazines, newspapers), radio, television, internet, cinema and social networks.
See also: Old media
Origin of the media
The mass media are a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of civilization, given that the vast majority depend on technological systems and mechanisms that were not discovered until the last two or three centuries.
In fact, if you think that The printing press was invented in the 15th century and popularized in later centuries it becomes evident that for most of history the only means of communication were the spoken word or manually copied manuscripts displayed in public.
In fact, one of the great archaeological finds of the classical world, the famous Rosetta stone from the 2nd century BC. C., contains the same text copied in three different languages: Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic writing and the Greek language, and it is known today that it was part of an information campaign for citizens of the most recent royal edict. Currently these types of announcements are made live and direct through media such as radio or television.
The 19th century and industrialization brought revolutionary technological advances that allowed the transmission of information over long distances (like the telegraph) and efficient machinery for large-scale printing of text. Subsequently, In the 20th century, the arrival of radio and then television forever changed the way we understand communication which gave rise to a mass society that could receive the latest information directly to their home daily.
But even more revolutionary was the change it brought about, At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the arrival of the internet and world 2.0. Web pages, multimedia communication and social networks quickly emerged as the main and favorite means of communication at the beginning of the 21st century.
Types of media with examples
Based on the physical support they use to communicate with their audience, the media are classified into:
Printed Word Media
These are media that use different types of paper, fabric, plastic and other materials to capture their messages and circulate them among the population. This is the most traditional form of communication, but never before in history could it be done so quickly, efficiently and massively. Examples of this type of media are:
- Newspapers and journals printed on paper, disposable once read. For example: Clarion (Argentina), The New York Times (USA), The diplomatic world (France) or The Universal (Mexico).
- Large circulation magazines which combine striking colors and papers with written content and high-quality illustrations and photos. For example: The New Yorker (USA), Ñ (Argentina) or Nature (United Kingdom).
- The publishers especially those that can afford large print runs and wide distribution of their books. For example: Planet (Spain), Random House Mondadori (Germany-Italy-Spain) or Anagram (Spain).
- The steering wheel and other forms of mass advertising that reach people on public transportation, on public roads or by mail inside their homes.
broadcasting
It is a system of transmission of sound information through the generation of radio waves in amplitude modulated (AM) or frequency modulated (FM) which can be captured at the same time by an endless number of receiving devices (terminals). The latter can then recover the voice, music and the rest of the sound information that is perceived by the user.
For example: BBC Radio (England), Radio France International (France) or Radio Caracas Radio (Venezuela).
television stations
It is one of the great inventions of contemporary humanity, which allows you to transmit not only voice and sound, as happened with the radio, but also moving and color images to those who have a device that receives electromagnetic waves (or connected to a fiber optic line, too). Thanks to television it is possible to see what is happening in other places in the world, either in real time or delayed.
For example: CNN in Spanish (USA), Al-Jazeera (Qatar) or Telesur (Venezuela).
cinematography
It involves the screening of short or feature films in a room specially designed for that. Long before people had radio and television receivers in their homes, Throughout the 20th century, cinema was one of the main spaces of mass information available.
Those who went to the cinema not only shared a fictional story and audiovisual entertainment, but were exposed to advertising, newscasts and other content of interest as a preamble to the film. Even today we can see advertising and some news in the minutes before the performance. For example: hollywood (USA), bollywood (India), or local cinema chains.
Internet and social networks
It is one of the most revolutionary inventions of recent centuries, which transformed what is understood by mass communication, since makes the transmission of both written and audiovisual content easier, faster and more powerful, and provides the capacity for interactivity of world 2.0.
In a short time, most traditional news media migrated from paper exclusively to having digital portals and a presence in the new public square of the 21st century: social networks. On these portals the exchange of information is frenetic and personalized, and it is estimated that 4.62 billion people are connected through this system. For example: Twitter (USA), Facebook (USA) or YouTube (USA).
Continue with: Journalism
References
- “Mass media” in Wikipedia.
- “Types of mass media” at the Peruvian Institute of Advertising.
- “The media” in the Government of Antioquia (Colombia).
