How Technology and Convergence Has Changed The Face of Mass Communication

Mass communication is the process of dissemination of information on a one-to-many model through using a technological channel. The technology used to carry information to a large number of people is known as mass media. Examples of mass media are television, radio, newspapers and the internet. Mass communication has features that it is associated with. These features are mass medium which is the technological channel for transmission, presence of gatekeepers who scrutinize and critic the information being spread, delayed feedback, limited sensory channels and impersonal versus personal communication. (Campbell, Martin, & Fabos, 2017)

It is quite clear that without mass media then there cannot be mass communication. Mass media has gone through a number of changes since its beginning. Most recently has been the media convergence. This is the bringing together of all components of mass media, i.e. radio, television and print media under a common digital medium for example, the internet. However, before media convergence came about, mass media underwent a series of transformations. Mass media is mainly divided into print, radio and television; each of these underwent development journeys of their own.

Before even print in itself was developed, in most early societies, information and knowledge first circulated slowly through oral traditions. According to Campbell, Martin and Fabos, what we recognize as modern printing did not exist until the middle of the fifteenth century. On the other hand, paper and block printing developed around 100CE and 1045 respectively. It was at this time in Germany that Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the movable metallic type and the printing press ushered in the modern print era. (Campbell, Martin, & Fabos, 2017)

In relation to the book by Dominick, Messere & Sherman, radio is the wireless transmission and reception of electric impulses or signals by means of electromagnetic waves. The basis of radio was formed by the Theory of Invisible Waves published by Clarks Maxwell in 1855. It was in the late 19th century that physicists such as James Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic radiation; this is basically energy waves that travel through space. (Dominick, Messere, & Sherman, 2012)

These authors go ahead to explain the process by which radio developed. Guglielmo Marconi had seen a demonstration of the mysterious radio waves while still in college and this inspired him to start experimenting with radio transmitters and receivers. He was eventually able to send a radio signal more than a mile away. He was granted patent for his wireless telegraphy system by the British in 1896 and formed his own company (The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company) to manufacture and sell his new device. He intensively worked towards strengthening his signals and was finally able to transmit a wireless signal across the Atlantic in December 1901 though only in Morse code which is in form of dots and dashes. (Dominick, Messere, & Sherman, 2012)

The authors state that nobody had yet to send the human voice via radio waves but Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian-born engineer sought to do so. He built a high speed alternator and tested it in 1906. Wireless operators on ships up and down the eastern coast of the US were able to hear his voice through their headphones as he explained to them what was going on and they were amazed. He then wished his audience a Merry Christmas and signed off making this officially the first radio broadcast hence the beginning of a new age for radio. (Dominick, Messere, & Sherman, 2012)

According to this book, by 1910 the most popular way of receiving radio signals was through a crystal set which was cheap and easy to assemble but had one big defect: It could not amplify weak incoming signals. It was quite clear that if radio was to become a mass medium, it needed a receiver that would boost the level of weak signals making radio listening easier. During his experiments with something called the Flaming valve, Lee De Forest found a solution. The Flaming valve was a device that looked like a light bulb. It consisted of a plate and a thin wire and was used to detect radio waves. He discovered that when a small wire grid was inserted in between the plate and the wire, it acted as an amplifier that boosted the weak radio signals until they were easily detected. Putting together two or three of such devices could amplify signals millions of times better. He called this device the audion and recorded in his diary that he had “discovered an Invisible Empire of Air.” The audion moved radio into the electronic age and greatly contributed to the improvements in transmission as well as reception. It was later reformed into the vacuum tube which formed the basis for all radio transmissions until the 1950s when it was replaced by the transistors and solid-state electronics. (Dominick, Messere, & Sherman, 2012)

Television is described as the transmission of visual images by means of radio waves. (Dominick, Messere, & Sherman, 2012) According to Dominick, Messere & Sherman, the foundation of TV is dated back to 1817, with the discovery of selenium by Jacob Berzelius. In 1845, American Physicist Michael Faraday and Kerr in 1877 had demonstrated the effect of a magnetic field on polarized light. Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone brought about the development in the late 19th century of the “magic mirror of fantasy” (as TV was then called) through which faraway events could be glimpsed. In 1879, The Punch, a British magazine published a picture by artist and writer George Du Maurier which depicted a couple watching a remote tennis match via a screen above the fireplace using Edison’s Telephonoscope. This was the beginning of a new age for television. (Dominick, Messere, & Sherman, 2012)

The book tells us that in 1884, a German, Paul Nipkow, invented his famous scanning disk, the Nipkow Disk. This was a round disk with perforations arranged in a spiral pattern. When the disk rotated, a beam of light passing through the perforations would cause pin-points of light to perform a rapid scanning movement on some opposite surface similar to the back and forth movements of the human eye, across a printed page. (Dominick, Messere, & Sherman, 2012)

According to Dominick, Messere & Sherman, this is how television finally had its breakthrough:

In 1923, John Baird in Britain and Charles Jenkins in America were both busy carrying out experiments using mechanical methods of scanning which led to the transmission of shadows in 1925. In 1926, real images were transmitted short distances and in 1927 the American T & T Company demonstrated transmission of a picture by wire over a distance of 250 miles, and later repeated by wireless. A step forward was made in 1929 when the B.B.C (British Broadcasting Corporation) came. By 1946, RCA (Radio Corporation of America) was already selling TV Sets (black and white) across the US. Bars, inns and taverns etc. all installed TV sets and managed to pull in big crowds. The year 1947 saw the televising of the opening of the US Congress for the first time ever. In Russia, a TV broadcasting studio using the Nipkow disk was introduced under the leadership of P.V Shmakov, who, beginning 1st October 1931 in Moscow City’s 25th October Street, began TV transmissions. (Dominick, Messere, & Sherman, 2012)

In reference to the book by Campbell, Martin and Fabos, the term ‘convergence,’ has two aspects to its meaning and so does media convergence. (Campbell, Martin, & Fabos, 2017) The first meaning basically involves the merging of the components of mass media under one digital or technological platform. The second meaning, also known as cross platform by media marketers, involves bringing together various media holdings such as phone services and internet access among others, under one corporate umbrella. The goal of this is not to offer consumers more options in choice of media but to better manage resources and maximize profits.