NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY, KEFFI

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

JAMBO MIYUTA ISAIAH

0219069003121

COURSE CODE:

COURSE TITLE:

Mass communication is the process of imparting and exchanging information through mass media to
large segments of the population. It is usually understood for relating to various forms of media, as its
technologies are used for the dissemination of information, of which journalism and advertising are part.
Mass communication differs from other types of communication, such as interpersonal communication
and organizational communication, because it focuses on particular resources transmitting information
to numerous receivers. The study of mass communication is chiefly concerned with how the content of
mass communication persuades or otherwise affects the behavior, the attitude, opinion, or emotion of
the people receiving the information.

Normally, transmission of messages to many recipients at a time is called mass communication. But in a
complete sense, mass communication can be understood as the process of extensive circulation of
information within regions and across the globe.

Through mass communication, information can be transmitted quickly to many people who generally
stay far away from the sources of information. Mass communication is practiced multiple mediums, such
as radio, television, social networking, billboards, newspapers, magazines, books, film, and the Internet.
In this modern era, mass communication is being used to disperse information at an accelerated rate,
often about politics and other charged topics. There are major connections between the media that is
being consumed, via mass communication, and our culture, contributing to polarization and dividing
people based on consequential issues.

1.Newspapers: Specialists and journalists with high and specialised training in journalism and mass
communication are appointed in the newspaper industries to keep a regular flow of messages received
from public and informal meetings, conferences workshop etc. arranged in different parts of the
country. The messages of the public meetings are, thus, communicated throughout the world through
the newspapers.

Sometimes newspapers bring out special issues on the achievements of a particular government when
elections are nearer. Similarly, supplimentaries are printed on a particular e, like gender bias, family
planning, status of women, economic policies, attitude towards minorities and backward classes to draw
the attention of the public towards such issues. Special care is taken about who writes these articles.
Usually people with prestige, reputation and recognition in the society contribute the articles so that the
mass would believe what they say because of prestige suggestion. Sometimes for the purpose of
propaganda the messages are printed in small pamphlets or leaflets and distributed free of cost.

We find that religious books or books carrying the message on certain human values advanced by a
community are distributed in a very nominal price. Newspapers communicate the views of Govt,
through various leaders holding Govt, offices in high places. Newspapers play a vital role in determining
public opinion and in communicating messages to far wide places.

2. Radio, Motion Picture and TV: To build up certain new ideas or to change existing ideas and public
opinions electronic mass medias like radio, TV and motion pictures play permanent and determining
roles in the existing social set up, besides providing entertainment and education. Messages are
received and then transmitted throughout the nation or country through these mass communication
networks. In a very short time latest informations are transmitted to large number of audiences or
viewers. They have tremendous impact on the public and people believe the informations flowing from
these sources as they not only hear, but view or witness the occurrences and incidents.

Both Radio and TV function under the Govt, control. Many documentaries are also produced by the
Government. So people tend to believe the informations communicated through these agents and
consider them reliable and valid. In the modern civilisation, electronic media has a very powerful,
intense and dominating impact on the audience and viewers. Before or during election in various
countries, many systematic studies and opinion polls are conducted by electronic medias and
transmitted for the awareness of the public. While radio is merely audio, TV being an audiovisual aid has
relatively greater impact on the viewers.

Motion pictures also transmit ideas, values, attitudes and opinions of people to other people as a agent
of mass communication. Various commodities and consumer goods and dress designs are advertised in
the small screen to build favourable attitude of the viewers towards these goods. Fashion shows are
arranged and telecast taking beautiful and handsome participants (female and male respectively) with
eye catching dresses.

3. Billboard: Advertising has grown increasingly popular as an object of academic inquiry, a field of
professional practice and an index of modern business. It has come to assume the centre of modern
marketing and it is one of the major forms of promotion in product and service marketing. Billboard
advertising has assumed a wider and prominent position in product promotion in recent times in
Nigeria. Despite electronic media, billboard advertising got product promotion on the increase.

This new discovery in product promotion has not only given rise to advertising agencies that specialized
only in billboard advertising, and also a strong association of billboard advertising in Nigeria which is
recognized by advertisers as a subsidiary of the advertising practitioner Council of Nigeria APCON. But
as has been articulated by Adeyemi (1969), the constitutional provision on freedom of expression can be
said to amount only to an ordered freedom of which cannot be used as a license to spread
communication that debased public morality. However, many of these ethical principles have in the
course of time grown to become statutory regulation codified laws. Decree 55 of 1988 among other
provisions provides that APCON show regular and control the practice of advertising in all its aspects and
ramifications. It is in exercise of this immense and wide power conferred on it, that APCON developed a
code of ethics to guide and regulate the practice of advertising in Nigeria.

The evidence increase in billboard advertising under sources the effectiveness of billboard in project
promotion. Billboards ensure frequent and repeated exposure to the advertisement. Billboards are
usually located at points with higher vehicular and human traffic.

Consequently, users of such points are regularly exposed to the advertisement in the board. Secondly,
billboard, also offer a high degree of locational flexibility. In other words, the boards can be placed
where the advertisers actually intended them to be. In addition, they tend it has lower cost per
thousand that most of the other media. They are usually more cost efficient, especially for the
advertiser with a small budget. Billboard offers the advantage of very good colour reproduction and at
the same time it is an effective reminder medium offer servicing as a catalyst for buyer who buy io
impulse. The greatest problems encountered by advertisers and their agencies with regard to billboard
are site monitoring. Monitoring is usually difficult and so when posters get torn or washed out, it takes
a while to discover and repost. This is because the sites are usually scattered around very far
geographical locations.

The posters used on the boards are usually tedious to print and post especially when the number of sites
to be covered are too many. In other to be covered are too many. In other words, boards make intense
creative demands on the agency. Because they are usually seen in a fleeting second, they have to be
powerfully executed so as to intrude on the passers-by’s consciousness. In this case they tend to
function better as reminder media and therefore cannot serve well as the primary and sole medium for
an advertising campaign. Aside its cost efficient contributes to environmental aesthetic and enduring
feature of landscape of towns, in the country. Although the voice of the street vendor in Nigeria grows
fainter with each passing year, it is still possible to hear the mournful call and tinkling bell of the old
clothes and junk man, the call of the itinerant fruit peddler with his pushcart, or the street corner
vendor of hot chestnuts. And what will a football game be without the kids hawking peanut and soft
drinks? Much the same call in a different language, echoed in the street.

Again, if you will glance down the length of the street in Enugu metropolis, you will notice that the
storekeeper around the town have taken some pains to make sure they are not unobserved just as the
market keepers did in Ogbete main market so you can see that broadcast advertising (Billboard) have all
been around for a long time. But it wasn’t until the middle ages, with the world shaking advent of the
printing press and moveable type, the advertising began to take the firm most familiar to us today.
Winstan Fletch, (1979), identifies the following determinant of the strength of a billboard advertising,
such as, the number of posters put in any given area the size of the poster, the specific sitting of the
poster and the length of the campaign. Because of the problem of more boards in a given area, the
greater the problem of dotter, many authorities regulate the sitting of boards as to prevent their
indiscriminate location poster come in standard sizes referred to as sheets. The dimensions of a single
sheet are usually expressed in inches for easy handling and processing. A single limit of sheet is usually
20 inches wide by 30 inches deep. The most commonly available poster formats are 16 sheets, 32
sheets and 48 sheets.

In addition, there is the painted board or bulletin boards, which are hand-painted (instead of printed
posters) and typical sizes are 14 feet by 48 feet. Posters sited at busy locations or junctions with high
human and vehicular traffic are often more effective than those at less endowed locations.
Furthermore, the longer the duration of a campaign the more impact it tend to have.

Outdoor advertising has become a major advertising firms in Enugu metropolis and an indispensable
source of revenue for Enugu State Government. While advertisers buy space in Newspapers and
magazines, for outdoor they rent sites. In Enugu metropolis, renting a site centers on an advertiser the
right of having his poster displayed on the site. To do this, advertiser or his agency will retain an
outdoor advertising company. The advertising companies will have to usually built and acquire a
particular site it wants or chooses from the ones the billboard company supplies. It pays the outdoor
agency for the production of the posters as well as rental fee for the sites. Its media and client service
monitor the posting to ensure that all the sites are constantly and clearly posted throughout the
duration of the campaign.

For all the media enumerated, management of the advertising operation is very delicate task, since in
most cases, advertising represents a significant source of corporate profitability. For billboard
companies particularly, the key task will entail keeping a tab on advertising agencies and solicitation so
that they can use the billboard firm for their campaign. Other task include monitoring of sites to ensure
that posters are in good order and properly posted, invoicing agencies for sites created and posted,
ensuring prompt payments and prompt payment of rental charges to the state government via local
authorities.

4. Social networking: A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an
online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who
share similar personal or career content, interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.Social
networking sites allow users to share ideas, digital photos and videos, posts, and to inform others about
online or real-world activities and events with people within their social network. While in-person social
networking – such as gathering in a village market to talk about events – has existed since the earliest
development of towns, the web enables people to connect with others who live in different locations
across the globe (dependent on access to an internet connection to do so). Depending on the social
media platform, members may be able to contact any other member. In other cases, members can
contact anyone they have a connection to, and subsequently anyone that contact has a connection to,
and so on. The success of social networking services can be seen in their dominance in society today,
with Facebook (renamed as Meta on October 28, 2021[5]) having a massive 2.13 billion active monthly
users and an average of 1.4 billion daily active users in 2017. LinkedIn, a career-oriented social-
networking service, generally requires that a member personally know another member in real life
before they contact them online. Some services require members to have a preexisting connection to
contact other members. With COVID-19, Zoom, a videoconferencing platform, has taken an integral
place to connect people located around the world and facilitate many online environments such as
school, university, work and government meetings.

The main types of social networking services contain category places (such as age or occupation or
religion), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and a recommendation
system linked to trust. One can categorize social-network services into four types:

a) socialization social network services used primarily for socializing with existing friends (e.g., Facebook,
Instagram)

b) online social networks are decentralized and distributed computer networks where users
communicate with each other through internet services.

c) networking social network services used primarily for non-social interpersonal communication (e.g.,
LinkedIn, a career- and employment-oriented site)

d) social navigation social network services used primarily for helping users to find specific information
or resources (e.g., Goodreads for books, Reddit).

5.Let's begin by understanding why books are important in mass communication. We can actually begin
this discussion by first comparing and contrasting books with, but what else, Twitter and tweets.

a. Books take a long time to produce. Tweets take, what? Seconds?

b. Books have a greater permanence to them. A tweet can be deleted easily.

c. Books provide in-depth information. Twitter is filled with one-liners.

d. Books have a lot of thought, exploration, and development behind them. Some tweets might too but
not the ones about your cousin Joe having yet another toothache.

e. Books don't have ads. Twitter has plenty.

f. Books are written by professional communicators (including ghostwriters). Your cousin Joe can write a
tweet without thinking about it.
So why is this important with respect to mass communication? Well, because a lot of labor goes into
producing a book, they provide more valuable information and information that can't be deleted.
Furthermore, the revenue from the book is a major incentive to publish, not ads. Ads may skew the
content of the books towards an advertiser's favor.Now, we are generalizing of course. Some tweets can
be very informative and powerful, and some books are quasi-ads for services. Nevertheless, the general
rules of thumb we discussed above are true.The one major parallel to Twitter is that books (especially
electronic books) can be transmitted to a wide and diverse audience in order to spread a potentially
impactful message.