According to wikipedia, mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. So some examples of mass media are televisions, radio stations, newspapers, and magazines.
After approximately three years studying in this neighboring country, I don’t really follow the news through the provided media (read: mass media in Singapore); I really rarely watch television or reading newspapers. I guess it’s due to the fact that I’m not really interested in economics or politics growth in Singapore.
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In the late 1940s Claude Shannon, a research mathematician at Bell Telephone Laboratories, invented a mathematical theory of communication that gave the first systematic framework in which to optimally design telephone systems. The main questions motivating this were how to design telephone systems to carry the maximum amount of information and how to correct for distortions on the lines.
His ground-breaking approach introduced a simple abstraction of human communication, called the channel. Shannon's communication channel consisted of a sender (a source of information), a transmission medium (with noise and distortion), and a receiver (whose goal is to reconstruct the sender's messages).
In order to quantitatively analyze transmission through the channel he also introduced a measure of the amount of information in a message. To Shannon the amount of information is a measure of surprise and is closely related to the chance of one of several messages being transmitted. For Shannon a message is very informative if the chance of its occurrence is small.
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Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Cognitive Dissonance Theory argues that the experience of dissonance (or incompatible beliefs and actions) is aversive and people are highly motivated to avoid it. In their efforts to avoid feelings of dissonance, people will avoid hearing views that oppose their own, change their beliefs to match their actions, and seek reassurance after making a difficult decision.
Communication Accommodation Theory
This theoretical perspective examines the underlying motivations and consequences of what happens when two speakers shift their communication styles. Communication Accommodation theorists argue that during communication, people will try to accommodate or adjust their style of speaking to others. This is done in two ways: divergence and convergence. Groups with strong ethnic or racial pride often use divergence to highlight group identity. Convergence occurs when there is a strong need for social approval, frequently from powerless individuals.
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