mass medium

Definitions

Any means of public communication that reaches a large audience.

Equivalents

Examples

“The Inquirer seems to be the morning paper that reaches the greatest number⟳ of the masses, but touches the classes hardly at all. The North American is second as a mass medium, perhaps, and Philadelphia authorities credit it with considerable circulation among women on account of its fashion news, furnished through the Wanamaker store.”

“It is obviously impossible to sell⟳ the average technical product to the several million readers of a big mass medium because they have⟳ neither the means nor the need⟳ for it.”

“Newspaper advertising is the backbone of our whole sales program⟳. We look⟳ upon newspapers as a mass medium having practically universal acceptance by the public.”

“The movie is to dramatic representation what the book was to the manuscript. It makes available to many and at many times and places what otherwise would be restricted to a few at few times and places. The movie, like⟳ the book, is a ditto device. TV shows to 50,000,000 simultaneously. Some feel⟳ that the value of experiencing a book is diminished by being extended to many minds. This notion is always implicit in the phrases “mass media,” “mass entertainment”—useless phrases obscuring the fact that English itself is a mass medium.”

CEFR level