Chapter 1 - Mass Communication, Culture, and Media Literacy

Mass communication is creating shared media from a mass media producer to their audience. Mass media is defined as the transmission of a message from a source to a receiver through a medium. This message is encoded (through signs, symbols, dialogue) by a sender and decoded (interpreted) by a receiver. Throughout history media has been transferred from word of mouth and has evolved into newspapers, radio and now with the internet has allowed us to combine two forms of mediums into one, this is known as convergence. Examples of convergence would be e-books, online newspapers, and the list goes on and on. This creates a pop culture that is shared all around the world as the internet allows for this process to become instantaneous and viewed anywhere.