The Mass Media Are Dead?

Long Live The Mass Media

Communication today has come to mean much more than the original Latin term
communis that meant ‘to make common’. With the expansion of media technology the
scope and definition of communication has undergone a rapid expansion. The same
applies to mass communication. The simplest definition of mass communication
could be – it is a process of disseminating information to an unlimited ‘mass’ of
people that is physically separated from the source of the information. Following from
this definition, mass medium would be the tool that would aid such mass
communication. The initial dominant position of the traditional mass media like print
and radio was due to the large number in which they could reproduce messages and
information. In a physically large and culturally diverse country like India, however, it
is difficult, almost impossible, for a single mass medium to reach or represent all
segments of the society at the same time and at the same degree of intensity. This
paper takes a look at how the limitations imposed on the media due to social,
economic, political, cultural, linguistic and regional differences make it necessary for
media to be fragmented and to, in turn, fragment its audiences. This paper specifically
looks at Internet as a mass medium of today.

“If the role of the mass media is to reach the masses, then Internet is today’s mass
medium.”1 The rise in the popularity of the Internet has been due to its ability to reach
an indeterminately large number of people and at the same time to allow the people to
represent themselves on the medium at the same time. Advances in communication
technologies, broadband internet connectivity and mobile phones have provided an
impetus to the growth and spread of the Internet over other traditional media, both
economically as well as structurally.

Evolution of the Mass Media

What do we perceive as a mass medium? If any medium which can communicate a

message to a large audience can be termed as a mass medium, then the public address
system and the displays at the entrances, platforms and overbridges become the mass
media through which the railway administration reaches out information to the
commuters. A month long study2 of 14 railway stations of suburban Mumbai conclude
that the daily commuters found the public information system inadequate leading to
discontent and demonstrations. The study suggested there should be large displays of
relevant information at the entrances and overbridges showing the train timings, the
platform numbers and expected time of arrival of trains were implemented by the
railways immediately. This was a clear change brought about by the discontented
railway passengers. Does this mean that the masses decide on the content and the
popularity of the medium? Does this phenomenon apply to what are known as the
traditional mass media – newspapers, radio and television? When a new medium, the
internet evolved, was it a result of the discontent of the masses? What effect did the
new media have on the older ones? This researcher shall attempt to extrapolate on
these issues.

1
The Internet as Mass Medium by Merrill Morris and Christine Ogan, Indiana University.
2
Personal Interview with Dr S K Modak, transport economist, 29 July 2007.
Mass media has evolved in what are popularly known as the four waves. The first
wave was caused by the discovery of print. As Innis, McLuhan et al have pointed out,
the print medium and its result, the newspapers, brought about a radical change in
communication and deeply impacted human society. Produced in masses, the
newspapers could reach a large number of audiences. A serious limitation of this
medium was the necessity of being literate in the language being used by the
newspaper and the financial strength to purchase a newspaper or in some way have
access to one. The second wave was caused by the discovery of the radio. This
technology overcame the limitation of literacy. The third wave was represented by the
invention of the movie camera, followed by television. The fourth wave, brought in
by the invention of the computer followed by the Internet, has so far been the most far
reaching of mass media. In his celebrated work ‘Understanding Media’, McLuhan
pointed out that a printed paper acts as an extension of our hand, radio acts like an
extension of our ears while television acts like an extension of both the eye and the
ear.3 Makoto Sei argues that the computer is an extension of the brain because it frees
the brain from doing certain computational and repetitive tasks. 4 The tools
themselves, were a result of scientific discovery and technological innovations.
Gutenberg invented the printing press, Macaroni the radio and JL Baird, the
television. These innovations became an extension of the senses of man, turning them
into tools of mass communication and because they were produced in large volumes
and could reach large audiences, they became popular mass media. With every wave
of evolution, the new mass media replaced the older one in popularity. This was
mainly due to the additional extensions that the new media provided and also due to
the inadequacies and limitations of the older media. The main limitation of the
newspapers was that it needed a person to be literate in the language in which the
newspaper was printed. The radio dispensed with the need of literacy and became
instantly popular. The television added another extension of the sense of visual. Now
a person could hear, as well as watch events unfolding in the world in the comfort of
the living room, thus replacing the radio as the popular medium of mass
communication. Thus, the radio replaced the newspaper, the television replaced the
radio and the computer is fast replacing all these traditional media in terms of
popularity. It must be stated, however, that none of the newer media have been able to
displace the older media and all have survived in the battles for popularity and
revenues.

Computers and the Internet

When invented, the computer was a huge device, used only by the scientists. With the
invention of the transistor and the miniaturization, the computers became cheaper and
the introduction of the PC (Personal Computer) by IBM made the computer
affordable and popular. Initially used only as a computational device, with the
invention of accessories like the mouse the computer became a word processor, a
gaming device. The modem enabled the networking of computers, thus enabling the
users to communicate with each other over the networks. When these networks were

3
Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man
4
Induction Design: A Method for Evolutionary Design by Makoto Sei
http://books.google.com/books?id=YpiM9VGO0dAC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA3&dq=the+computer+is+an
+extension+of+the+brain&output=html&sig=FYcN4xmXPFH0K_UeMiJsr2aN2g8
connected together all around the world, it came to be called as the Internet – an
international network of computers capable of communicating with every other
computer in the network. The networked computer is arguably the most important
phenomena which has affected lives all around the globe. The shift of the computer
from a computational to a communicating device is perhaps the most significant mass
media evolution so far. Why have the computers and the Internet become popular?
The NRS 2006 figures show that the reach of internet is growing rapidly.5 The
primary reason could be that the computers are an extension of the brain. The
computers can create on its screen whatever the user has thought of and help
distribute what is created. Thus with a word processing software, one can write and
edit text or with the calculator, one can compute and with a 3D imaging software, one
can create architectural models and special effects for films.

The internet has affected all spheres of life. Internet allows the user to voice their
opinion without the limitation of control, censorship and space on groups and
communities on Yahoo and Orkut. The chat rooms on the internet allow the users to
‘talk’ with other like minded people, forge friendships. There are numerous of people
getting married by knowing each other through chat rooms. There are websites on
almost any subject on the earth. Typing a few words on the search engines like google
or yahoo enable the user to instantly enter a virtual world of his liking. Online
learning, online examinations conducted by organizations like Microsoft, Oracle and
adobe have lent credibility to the process of online education. Business is conducted
online by e-commerce sites and even the common man who can now browse through
the bank account, pay bills online, buy garments, diamonds and grocery. One can
transfer money with a click of the mouse. Children can read books, watch cartoons
and get help with their homework from numerous online resources like
homework.com, yahooligans.com. Sports enthusiasts can keep themselves abreast of
cricket scores or football matches. The science community has loads of information
available. RSS feeds, newsgroups and the websites hosted by the newspapers and the
television channels provide the users the latest news from all over the world. The
internet does not limit the transmission of information but provides information to and
from communities and individuals all over the world. Thus you can open the
Guardian, The New York Times, The Pravda, The Times of India, at the same time on
your computer screen and compare and browse through the news happenings all over
the world. Webcasting enables large audiences to hold live conferences. Websites like
e-chaupal offer advice to farmers. The list is endless and exhaustive and this
researcher can not list all the benefits the internet has. Suffice it to say that the
Internet has done to mass communications what no other media has.

The growing popularity of the internet can be attributed to the ‘coolness’ of the
medium. McLuhan catagorised the media into ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ media. Hot media are
the ones which offer little or no interactivity from the audiences, whereas the ‘cool’
media are the ones which allow the user to get involved. Thus, the radio is a hot
medium and the telephone is a cool medium; films is a hot medium and the television
is a cool medium. Similarly, the Internet is a ‘coolest’ medium. No other mass
medium has offered as much interactivity as the Internet. Everything from piety to

5
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/pressnews/nrscnrs2006/nrs2006keyfindings/market/stocks/
article/237197
porn is represented on the internet. This allows the user to connect to like minded
people all around the globe with the click of the mouse creating huge online
communities in the virtual world. The internet has, in a way brought together the
fragmented societies.

Fragmentation of the media.

In a country like India, vast geographical, cultural and linguistic differences makes it
almost impossible for a single mass medium to cater to the communication and
representation needs of all the segments of the society. As a result, the media in India
are fragmented. The process starts from the margins of the society, from the small
local bodies who do not find representation.6 To cite a few examples, to cater to the
demands from the suburbs, The Times of India had to start the Westside Plus and
other supplements representing the suburbs of Mumbai. Mid-day launched the Mid-
day Metro to cater to individual local communities. The tremendous growth of the
vernacular press in the recent years is a clear indication of this phenomenon. Robin
Jeffrey states that the next revolution in India will be created by the power of the
vernacular press.7 When the Marathi language newspapers and books did not
represent the marginalized Dalit society, the Dalit literature and newspapers emerged
with a vengence. When terrestrial broadcast of the TV signal was the only way of
distributing radio signals over vast areas, there were huge audiences for a very small
number of channels, like Doordarshan in India. With satellite broadcast and
liberalization of the media policy, there was a humungous increase in the number of
channels, each catering to the demands of their selected sections of the population.
Star TV has recently started Star Anand and Star Maza to reach the Bengali and the
Marathi audiences, which it felt was missing. The emergence of local news channels
like Thane Varta in Thane, a town near Mumbai, 7 local newspapers like Bhiwandi
Varta which cater only to the needs of Bhiwandi, a communally sensitive city near
Thane, the local TV channels reporting on events in suburbs of Mumbai are other
examples of fragmented media. Similar changes are affecting other media. Digital
radio and podcasts are dividing the audience for audio. Completely new media like
the web and the mobile phones are competing with old media, dividing the audience
further. The mass media, while fragmenting themselves have also fragmented the
society and isolated the individuals. McLuhan believed that the ‘unforeseen
consequence of mass media was the isolation of individuals from the society’.8 One
can read a book in privacy, or can watch a movie at home, listen to music on the iPod,
MP3 player or the FM radio in a crowd. Individuals can stay in their own world, shut
off from the society while physically still being in it

In computer terminology, fragmentation means random placement of data on the

storage media. For example, when one saves a word file on to the hard disk of the
computer, the words which we see on the screen are converted into ‘computer
language’ and stored randomly on the hard disk, the storage medium. The more data
one saves on the hard disk, more and more random segments of the media are created.
6
Harold Innis
7
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/pressnews/nrscnrs2006/nrs2006keyfindings/mar
ket/stocks/article/237197

8
McLuhan Marshall, The Medium is the Massage, pub
Just as the user does not have a control over the fragment where it is saved, the media
do not have a control over where and how their programs and media are read or
watched by the audiences. There is one difference, though. The mass media find it
almost impossible to locate and bring together their audiences. However, a computer
user can use a software tool called defragmenter to bring all the data together. To
collate all the data.

The internet plays the role of defragmenting the society. Since no one controls the
information that can be passed on the internet, any person can log on to the internet
and create a forum with his or her topic of choice and start a forum.

What effect does the fragmented society have on the internet audience? Internet has
actually served to bring these fragmented societies and isolated individuals to come
together, albeit virtually. For an example, let us consider the new Marathi news
channel launched by Star TV called ‘Star Maza’. There was no way that the large
audiences which tuned in to Star Maza could communicate with each other, except by
personal phone calls, articles in the news papers or discussing it by coming together.
In today’s world, it is virtually impossible for the isolated individuals to come
together as a large gathering just to discuss Star Maza. This is where the Internet came
to the rescue. Almost immediately after the channel was launched, a community
called the Star Maza was created on the popular community website, the Orkut.
Members of this community can discuss Star Maza, bringing them together. Similar is
the case with CNN IBN.

Effects of Fragmentation.

What happens when the media is fragmented?

The Limitations of the Internet

Though the internet is today’s mass medium, perhaps it is the medium which could
lead to more marginalisation. The NRS figures showing tremendous growth of the
internet can be deceptive. 12 out of 1000 individuals have access to internet in India.
But what about the remaining 88? There is a huge gap. This gap is due to the
inadequacies and the limitations of the Internet. To browse the internet, one requires a
computer, an electric and phone connection and knowledge of English, which is the
predominant language of the internet. As per the examples given elsewhere in this
paper, how can a farm labourer earning Rs.30 daily even think of the internet, let
alone buying a newspaper? How does one expect parents of malnourished children in
the Aarey colony to buy a newspaper or visit a cyber café instead of spending on
food? Apart from money, can one expect them to be educated?

There have been attempts to rectify this situation. The MSSRF – M S Swaminathan
research Foundation works in villages like Vaiphad to provide computer education to
children of the farm labourers. n-Logue Communications, `CorDect' wireless local
loop technology and `Minnow'-Internet service provision in a box developed by
Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai are some examples.9 Sugata Misra, a scientist
9
Sustainable Internet access for the rural poor? Elements of an emerging Indian model by J. James
at NIIT Delhi launched something he calls "the hole in the wall experiment." He took
a PC connected to a high-speed data connection and imbedded it in a concrete wall
next to NIIT's headquarters in the south end of New Delhi. The wall separates the
company's grounds from a garbage-strewn empty lot used by the poor as a public
bathroom. Misra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed
any passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using a remote
computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree. What he discovered was that
the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have
only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days,
the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. 10

Yet, there are always competing forces which try to sabotage these movements. As
Jhunjhunwala recounts ““ ... egged on by competing companies, all kinds of
obstacles were put up to prevent the product from being commercially deployed in
India. One suddenly found out that the spectrum in which we were asked to develop
the product was not even available with the telecom department. Specifications were
framed for the Wireless in Local Loop product making it as different as possible from
the indigenous product. Competing (and expensive) imported products were given tax
concessions such that a locally manufactured product paid more taxes than imported
ones. Questions were raised whether the product was really Indian and investigations
were started. Court cases were filed to prevent the telecom department from placing
even a meagre order, claiming that our system was an obsolete analog wireless
technology, when in fact it was a fully digital system.” 11

This does not in any way undermine the position of the traditional media which are
growing in their circulation and viewership. However one must remember what Innis
said in his provocative essay "Minerva’s Owl," Innis suggests that the richest
flowering of an empire comes just before its decline and fall: "Minerva’s Owl begins
its flight only in the gathering dusk." Innis reasons that "a monopoly or an oligopoly
of knowledge is built up to the point that equilibrium is disturbed". Thus we learn
from Innis that all great empires are most vulnerable in the moment of their over-
reaching12.

Should we say that the traditional media like the newspapers, television and the radio
have reached their peak? Is this the beginning of the end of these media. The author
feels that it is too early and speculative to make such a prediction. Even though radio
gained popularity and television took away large chunks of audiences from the
newspapers and the radio, all these media have co-existed and growing. All new
media have affected the market forces, the strategies and audiences of their
predecessors. But none have obliterated the other. This is mainly due to the hunger of
the masses to know more, read more and to see more. Audiences too do not always
chose one medium to the other, but buy all the media when they have the means. Thus
one can expect the Internet to be another important mass medium.

10
http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm
11
A. Jhunjhunwala : Making the telecom and IT revolution work for us, in: Paper Presented at the
Technology Day, Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, 2001
12
Harold Innes
However, the Internet is poised to play a dominant role as a mass medium because of
its ability to converge all the other media within itself.

Conclusion

The primary objective of media is to dissipate information to the masses, the lowest
common denominator of the society. If Internet is the newest mass medium, it should
reach the common and the poorest of individuals. Education alone is not going to be
enough in today’s, Internet driven world. Even the urban population has experienced
this. To achieve this objective, initiatives like the MSSRF, PC in a hole, and cheap
Internet connectivity for the poor should be encouraged and promoted. The traditional
media and the new media should come together to play a role in upliftment of the
marginalized masses. If this does not happen the marginalized and the poor will
remain on the fringes. Past has shown that all the media revolutions have failed to
bring up the really downtrodden, poor in the population. If the masses are not catered
to by the media, they will have only 2 alternatives. Either create new media or take to
the streets in protest. If the society as a whole does not progress, it will lead to
anarchy, demonstrations and riots, because these will be the only means left for the
people to challenge the monopoly of the rulers and keepers of information, which will
be in a way, the failure of media, defeating the very purpose of their existence.

While Digital technology and the Internet could spread and enhance democracy, it
may only be achieved if basic literacy and information literacy is pursed as national
strategy for improving information technology access. Content, especially that created
at the federal level, will also need to be diverse and interactive to achieve this vision.13

13
Gail Feldman is a management and policy consultant in Berkeley, CA.