Communication and mass media

development stages

Introduction

“Man is a social animal”1. The philosopher Aristotle, starting from

this assumption, stressed the need for men to live and communicate
with others.

This is the reason why throughout the centuries men have created
societies that have become much more advanced and demanding day
by day, where the need to communicate went hand in hand with the
sociological evolution of man.

The choice of this subject derives from my will to give an explain

communication, focusing on how mass media have changed during
the years.

Technology is part of young people’s life, while older generations still

find it hard to interact with innovative technologies.

First and foremost, in the first part of this thesis I shall cover the
concept of communication and the difference between verbal and non-
verbal communication. In the second part I will move on to analyze
the most significant mass media, that have contributed to change
man’s life and in the third part I shall pay attention to the role played
by television, which is considered the most common one.

I will start with its origins to end up with the ways technology has
changed television as a whole. I will also approach the theme of

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Aristotle (Politics)

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digitization that has made possible the development of all
communication media.

Finally I will analyze the fact that the increasing number of TV

programs in the modern society does not make the quality any better
compared to those of the past.

What does communicate mean?

Communication occurs when a subject communicates with another

one. Sometimes this consists in transmitting some information,
thoughts or feelings.

Here is a simple scheme that summarizes the act of communication:

Q1 Q2

Q1 is a social actor and in this case it represents the source who says
something to another subject, that is Q2 who represents the receiver.
Therefore it is possible to affirm that communication is a rational
action. The subject rationally chooses the best resources in order to
reach his/her purpose in a particular circumstance.

However, this concept is strongly linked to that of interest and

involvement. In fact during a conversation the interest could be
temporary and decrease quickly; therefore it is vital that at the
beginning the interest turns into involvement in order to make the
conversation longer.

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In this case it is necessary that the themes treated are interesting.

When it comes to communication, rationality does not only depend on

the subjects involved but also on the environment and the cultural
contest.

It was previously maintained the fact that communication exists when

Q1 says something to Q2, however this represents only the starting
phase.

In order to create a real communication Q2 must receive the message,

decode it and send it back to the sender.

Therefore the communication require both the sending and the

reception of a signal.

In this case the scheme will be as follow:

Q1 Q2

Verbal and non-verbal communication

To classify the various components of human communication, this can

be divided into two major sections, verbal and non-verbal.

By definition, verbal communication includes not only oral

discussions, but also written messages and even mediated
communication.

Verbal communication components include speech, intonation, tone,

clarity, emphasis, repetition, sound and translators, who are more and
more used in day-to-day verbal communication. For example, when

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 two persons are having a conversation, the air is the medium,
language is the encoder/decoder, and the persons are the source and
the receiver. However, if one person speaks Italian and the other
person speaks English then a third person, that is an Italian to English
translator, will act as the decoder and encoder.

Non-verbal communication or body language includes all those

messages that create or represent meaning. When we interact with
others, we continuously give and receive countless wordless signals.
All of our nonverbal behaviors - the gestures we make, the way we sit,
how fast or how loud we talk, how close we stand, how much eye
contact we make - send strong messages.

The way you listen, look, move, and react shows to other person
whether or not you care about the conversation. The nonverbal signals
you send either produce a sense of interest, trust, and desire for
connection or they generate disinterest, distrust, and confusion.

In particular, in human conversations this kind of communication

could be produced by different channels:

1. Facial expression

2. Body movements

3. Gestures

4. Personal space

5. Paralanguage

1. Facial expressions usually communicate emotions and they also tell

the attitudes of the communicator.

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 Researchers have discovered that certain facial areas reveal our
emotional state better than others. For example, the eyes tend to reveal
happiness or sadness, and even surprise, while the lower part of the
face can reveal happiness or other feelings. In fact a smile can
communicate friendliness and cooperation. But, at the same time the
lower part of the face, brows, and forehead can also reveal anger.
Mehrabian2 believes verbal cues provide 7 percent of the meaning of
the message; vocal cues, 38 percent; and facial expressions, 55
percent. This means that, as the receiver of a message, you can rely on
the facial expressions of the sender because his\her facial expressions
are the best indicator of the meaning behind the message of his\ his
words.

Eye contact is also a direct and powerful form of non-verbal

communication. Person who is speaking tends to maintains eye
contact longer than the listener. Downward glances are generally
associated with modesty while eyes rolled upward are associated with
fatigue.

2. Body language includes the way people walk and how they stand.
In other words, everything shown by a person's body attitude or
movement. For example, when a boy is sad he may droop his head
and walk slowly. On the other hand, if he/she is feeling happy, he/she
might run and jump or stand up straight and raise his/her hands in the
air.

2
Albert Mehrabian (born in 1939 in an Armenian family, currently Professor
Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA), has become known for his publications on the
relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages.

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3. While we are speaking our hands are continuously in movement
and this represents an ongoing transmission of non verbal signs. The
intensity of these movements may differ from person to person, but it
is strongly influenced by the different cultural practices. In fact
Mediterranean gestural character is much more evident compared to
those who come from Scandinavia.

4. People often refer to their need for “personal space,” which is also
an important type of nonverbal communication. The amount of
distance we need and the amount of space we perceive as ours is
influenced by a number of factors including social norms, situational
factors, personality characteristics, and level of familiarity. For
example, the amount of personal space needed when having a casual
conversation with another person usually varies between eighteen
inches to four feet. On the other hand, the personal distance needed
when speaking to a crowd of people is around ten to twelve feet.

5. Paralanguage signals are considered as the components of the vocal

production that create our speech, so that this category includes a
number of sub-categories:

Inflection (rising, falling, flat...)

Pacing (rapid, slow, measured, changing...)

Intensity (loud, soft, breathy,... )

Tone (nasal, operatic, growling, wheedling, whining...)

Pitch (high, medium, low, changes...)

Pauses (meaningful, disorganized, shy, hesitant...)

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Another semi-linguistic element is the dialect, which can also be
subtle and part of the culture and it could suggest class, age and
sophistication. There is also the problem of understandability, which
applies not only to people from other cultures or nations, but also
inter-generationally.

History and origins of mass media

We shall now move on to the most significant mass media, starting

with the first one: the press.

It was Johann Gutenberg who found out in 1450 the convergence of

different technologies that belonged to the first phase of the
industrialization era. For example, the metallurgy laid the foundations
for the fusion of the alphabetic characters while the chemistry’s
evolution led up to new kinds of ink.

As a consequence, an intelligent combination of different resources

made the creation of this important instrument possible. But due to the
high cost of paper and illiteracy among people, this did not prosper.

The following years were characterized by the birth and the ongoing
spread of the cinema mixing and matching the various kinds of
Victorian age entertainment.

On march 22nd March 1895 the Lumière brothers, Louise and

Auguste, were invited to show their first movie “Arroseur et arosè” in
which short scenes of a guy who made fun of a gardener were
represented.

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However at the beginning, marrying the image with synchronous
sound was not possible for inventors and producers, since no practical
method was devised until 1923. Thus, for the first thirty years movies
were silent, although accompanied by live musicians and sometimes
sound effects and even commentary spoken by showmen or
projectionists.

Due to the great success of this new medium, since 1905 movie
theaters were created in order to satisfy people’s increasing demand of
new films.

However, the confluence to this kind of entertainment was

concentrated only on Sundays and holidays due to the cost of the
tickets that few people could afford.

Therefore in 1920 a new communication medium was introduced: the

radio. It was considered the first form of broadcasting in the world
right from the beginning. Radio owes its development to two
inventions: the telegraph and the telephone. All three technologies are
closely related.

Radio technology began as "wireless telegraphy". Its name was

adopted during a conference held in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 and it
derives from “radiation” referring to the electromagnetic waves that
have the capacity to transmit invisibly music, speech, pictures and
other data through the air.

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Radio communications are
the result of the
cooperation and
discoveries made by many
scientists and technicians
from different countries,
among whom Guglielmo
Marconi, an Italian

inventor who proved the

Marconi with a first model of radio
feasibility of radio
communication.

He sent and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895. By 1899 he
flashed the first wireless signal across the English Channel and two
years later received the letter "S", telegraphed from England to
Newfoundland - in the eastern part of Canada.

This was the first successful transatlantic radiotelegraph message in

1902.

Radio-telegraphy consists in sending Morse code messages by radio

waves. Transmitters at that time were called spark-gap machines. It
was developed mainly for ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship
communication. This was a way of communicating between two
points, although it was not public radio broadcasting as we know it
today.

Wireless signals proved to be effective in communication for rescue

work when a sea disaster occurred. Consequently a number of ocean
liners installed wireless equipment until 1899, when the United States
Army established wireless communication in Fire Island - New York.

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Two years later the Navy adopted a wireless system. Up to then, the
Navy had been using visual signaling and homing pigeons for
communication.

However one of the main limit of the Marconi’s invention was that it
could only transmit messages in Morse codes. That’s why in
December 1900 Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian scientist, invented
the modulation of radio waves and the fathometer which allowed the
reception and transmission on the same aerial without interference.

In 1915, a speech was first transmitted across the continent (from

New York City to San Francisco) and across the Atlantic Ocean
(from Naval radio station NAA at Arlington, Virginia, to the Eiffel
Tower in Paris), while the first real public radio station was
inaugurated in Pittsburgh on 2nd November 1920, by Frank Conrad
who started with a series of public transmissions from his garage.

Soon after, the appliance was spread all over the world; particularly in
the US and in the Northern Europe, due to its capacity to reproduce
sounds in real-time. The listener had the sensation to be right there.

So that people had the possibility to listen to the radio without going
out while movies were unreeled in public places, mainly during the
week- ends. It was a fire agreement since the cinema lacked in sounds
while the radio lacked in imagines.

Thus, since the 1920s, new experiments were made in order to solve
the main problem of the radio.

The idea to potentiate this appliance with images’ transmission led up

to another invention during the years between 1945 and 1955: the
television.

It was soon considered the first real broadcasting or rather the

transmission of audio and video signal, which enabled the common

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people to go to places where they had never been before, such as
during the coronation of Queen Elisabeth in Westminster Abbey.

However, during the first years, live broadcast made outside television
studios were scarcely used because of their high coasts.

Television

In the world over than one billion and one hundred million of families
watch television in their own houses. No one can count the actual
number of these appliances, since in Western countries each family
owns more than one TV, without considering all the big screens
installed in the public places and the computer and cell phone displays
used as videos.

That of television is a 20th century phenomenon. During the 1930s in

different countries such as the United States, Italy and Germany were
made experiments that led to the first public transmissions, ensuring a
huge production of television appliances at a reasonable price, until
the Second World War broke out.

At the end of the 1940s the television existed only in four countries,
the War winning powers: the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet
Union and France.

However, despite the high costs of the appliance, in a few years it was
sold at affordable price. Consequently throughout the years, the
number of TV channels increased offering the possibility to choose
among many different programs. In the weekly schedule there were
programs addressed to everyone, even children had their own
programs during the afternoon.

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In 1956 in US was invented the first magnetic videotape recorder and
from that moment people had the possibility to repeat or cut scenes
over and over. In Europe the color transmission started only at the end
of 1960s, later than in USA.

The first model of tv color

Experts’ opinions

The success of this new medium caused a series of debates throughout

the world especially in the 1950s, when the television had just been
launched and was considered synonymous of progress and
civilization. According to some experts this appliance was used for the
benefit of the upper class and the manipulation of the lower classes.

For example the Frankfurt School, a sociological research center

located in Weimar, Germany, found out that during the Second World

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War Nazism used all the different types of media, particularly the
recently invented radio, to make Nazi propaganda, whipping up
support and inciting hatred against their enemies.

Forced to leave Germany and the invaded Europe too, Frankfurt

School’s scholars took refuge in the US.

It was there that some of the

scholars, among which
Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer, argued that also
in that country mass media
were used as commercial
propaganda. Advertising men
and producers made use of
media to influence people’s Theodor Adorno (on the right) and Max
Horkheimer (on the left). Heidelberg 1965
minds, just as Nazism did in
Germany.

The fact that television was linked to political and economic power
led to disputes about the fact that commercialized television culture
was not free. In fact, this medium is accused to be a conditioning
instrument used to lead television viewers to buy and consume
unessential goods, by means of different forms of persuasion, such as
subliminal messages. Something similar was also denounced in
George Orwell’s novel “1984” which was set in a dark and totalitarian
future, where every house was provided with a screen, from which the
dictator - the Big Brother - could speak to people and spy on them.

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Television and children

Since the birth of television, it has been made clear that this new
media has a strong influence on children. In Europe some pedagogical
programs during the afternoon were dedicated to them. On the
contrary, in the United States the commercial nature of television soon
included children in its public, so that in the weekly schedule there
were programs for children in the early morning, before school
started, as well as in the afternoon and in the week-end. In the 1960s
the United States were swept away by a racial wave of violence and
many authorities blamed television for its influence on children,
charges that previously had been addressed to cinema and comics.

This is why nine years later, in order

to guarantee a television broadcasting
without any kind of reference to
violence, PBS (Public Broadcasting
Service) was set up.

Soon also in Europe the programming

for children was upset by the private
television, particularly in Italy where the government did not intervene
immediately.

The availability of low cost Japanese cartoons filled up the daily

schedule with questionable programs without any caution for children,
so that in the following years it was spread out a critical movement
that led to the introduction of protected viewing times.

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 Cable and satellite television

During the 1950s in the United States large community antennas3

were constructed and cables were connected from that point to
individual homes in order to send the signal also in those areas where
over-the-air reception was limited by distance from transmitters. In
time, cable television became common also in Canada and Europe.
Cable television marketed its services by offering additional
programming that was not available on network television. In addition
to the basic cable channels, viewers could pay for other premium
channels, such as movies, sport and cartoon stations.

In the 1960s it was the turn of the satellite television, which was
delivered by means of communications satellite and received by a
satellite dish and set-top box. The first one was called Telstar and it
was situated over North America, but it transmitted the signal only
half-hour per day. Therefore in 1964 in order to overcome this limit,
geostational satellites located at
36.000 kilometers from the Earth were
realized.

Telstar, the first satellite

3
Community antenna (MATV system) may be defined as antenna installation where compensation
of network attenuation is performed by one (central) set of amplifiers.

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The Teletext

The teletext system was first designed in the early 1970s by engineers
from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Independent
Broadcasting Authority (IBA), who initially worked independently
and later in team. Teletext allows viewers to display a large number of
pages containing information about news, current events, weather,
traffic, travel information, stock market, etc. It is transmitted along
with standard TV signals. At the beginning the BBC and the IBA
systems were slightly different. The BBC version, which was
originally called Teledata and later changed its name to Ceefax (See
Facts) was based on a page containing 24 rows of 32 characters per
row while the IBA version, called ORACLE (Optional Reception of
Announcements by Coded Line Electronics), allowed the transmission
of 22 rows and 40 characters per row. When they finally demonstrated
that in this way the transmission of data was feasible, the two different
standards were combined to create the system that now we know as
teletext. The best features of both systems were employed, resulting in
a page consisting of 24 rows with 40 characters per row. The speed at
which the pages were transmitted was also increased (from about one
per second with ORACLE and two per second with Ceefax) to four
per second. The Teletext system finally became operational in 1976,
following some alterations to the standard in order to add more
facilities. Soon after, this system was spread also in Holland, Germany
and Austria.

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 21st century television

Umberto Eco4, an Italian writer and literary critic, dubbed the 20th
century television “Neotelevisione”, describing it as a self-referential
medium that transmits a variety of programs and offers choice to the
viewer. People receive constantly lots of news, problems and different
situations that involve them.

During the modern TV programs the host consults the public trying to
overcome the one-way communication of TV with different
expedients, such as the presence of a public in the studio, phone vote
via SMS or phone calls etc.

A very popular kind of program is the talk-show. It’s a television

show put forth by a talk show host where one person or group of
people discuss about different topics such as alcoholism, family
relationships etc.

Sometimes, talk shows host a panel of guests, usually a group of

people who have great experience with the subject being discussed in
the show.

During the first talk-shows, only experts were asked to participate,

while nowadays even people without any particular competence are
invited in the show. In this kind of programs, in fact what really
matters is to have a sparkling and ironic conversation.

From this show derives the infotainment, which is a combination of

information and entertainment. Political debates belong to this
category.

4
Umberto Eco (born 5 January 1932) is an Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary
critic, and novelist, best known for his novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose, 1980).

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Another type of radio or television program is the game show where
members of the public or celebrities play a game which consists in
answering to questions, usually in order to win money or different
prizes such as cars or trips. In certain shows contestants play alone
while in others they compete against other players.

The host is the guests’ confident, he/she asks them why they have
chosen to participate and how they want to invest their possible
gambling gains.

The public and famous people’s involvement in television’s programs

lead to the creation of another kind of show: the reality show. It’s a
genre of television programming that presents dramatic or humorous
unscripted situations, depicts actual events, and usually features
ordinary people instead of professional actors. The participants are
often placed in exotic locations or abnormal situations in a contest
where a prize is awarded.

Reality television reached global popularity in the summer of 2000,

with the success of the program “Big Brother” in which a group of
male and female participants lived together in a house isolated from
the outside world and were continuously spied on by cameras. The
first Big Brother broadcast was in the Netherlands in 1999 on the
“Veronica” TV channel and then it was chosen by many others
countries.

In the 1980s a new TV program made up of episodes and very popular

in Latin America was introduced in Europe: the telenovela. The word
combines “tele”, short form of “television” (Spanish word for
television), and “novella”, a word that Latin literary studies associate
with medium-span romances and a Spanish word for "novel". In the
new “telenovelas”, themes that were once considered as taboo- such as
urban violence, racism, and homosexuality- began to appear.

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Technology

To be complete, the research on mass media development stages must

include technology, which represents the main interface with the
world. The communication media such as press, radio, telephone have
offered us new ways to manage and spread information. Today we are
living in an unprecedented reality if we consider the lashings of
media. Between 1993 and 2001 a great number of new products - such
as digital television, cellular phones,
Internet, the construction of wireless
communication lines and many
others - have been launched on the
market.

New communication media are

increasingly multimedial/convergent
thanks to digital system; that’s to say the conversion of different
information, such as text, sound, image or voice, into a single binary
code characterized by two numbers: 0 and 1.

Digitization permits a faster data processing, that’s why nearly all

recorded music have been digitized and special effects in cinema have
improved.

At the end of the 1970s, digitization was used only for the production
of programs, while their transmission remained in analog format until
the beginning of the 1990s. Therefore, people had to change their
television set or buy a set top box that allowed to decode the signal
and transform it into an analog one.

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The convergence process is blurring the difference between media,
even between point-to-point communications – like post, telegraph
and telephone - and mass communication such as press, radio and
television. A single physical means- be it wires, cables or airwaves-
may carry services that in the past were provided in separate ways.
Conversely, a service that was provided in the past by any one
medium- be it broadcasting, press or telephony- can now be provided
in separate ways. So the one to one relationship that used to exist
between a medium and its use is eroding. For example, the cellular
phone, which became famous in the 1990s, can also be used as radio,
TV, camera, etc.

The paradox of abundance

The most common manuals on communication deal with the

importance and the influence that mass media have on our society.

Nowadays we daily receive the same amount of information that our

grandparents received during the whole course of their lives. This
stream of facts is often bigger than our real need.

This is the reason why, in this last paragraph, we want to focus on the
three-stages process which has occurred in the last sixty-five years.
We have passed from an initial phase of poverty (soon after the II
World War) - during which the desire to have “more and more” was
prevalent - to a second phase of “more and better”, where quantity and
quality went hand in hand. Today we are living in the third phase, in
which the concept of quantity is becoming negative. Due to the
passivity of the system, which tends to be more repetitive and
homogeneous, the hierarchy of information is even more centralized.

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News, programs, comments revolve around a unique model of
language, culture and contents.

Due to the recent “congestion of information”, people are obliged to

choose the most appropriate medium and the ways to use it.

According to the Enlightenment followers, the 19th century was

supposed to be the Age of Reason. In fact, it was the century of the
Industrial Revolution, civil wars and national independences. The 20th
was supposed to be the century of progress, bringing about the defeat
of obscurantism, but in fact it did not .

When it comes to our century only the future historians will be able to
say if this is was the Age of information, communication and freedom
of the press.

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