The media refers to any means of communication. In this entry, we will focus on the phenomenon of the mass media. Mass media are communication systems that use industrial technologies to distribute information and entertainment to large, geographically dispersed audiences. They developed significantly from the late nineteenth century through newspapers, magazines, and film, followed by radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s. From the 1980s onwards, new forms such as cable and pay TV, video, CD-ROMs, mobile phones and the Internet expanded media communication. Today, mass media are widespread and deeply integrated into everyday life, although access remains unequal, particularly in less developed societies. Commercial profitability is an important characteristic of modern media, closely linked to the growth of mass advertising and consumer culture. Media also play a major role in socialization and in shaping how people understand and interpret social reality. Their messages have cultural, political, and economic significance because they function both as commodities and as sources of social meaning. Consequently, mass media are widely studied across disciplines such as communications, cultural studies and social psychology.

                                 Forms of Mass Media

Newspapers - Newspapers were among the earliest forms of mass media. During the 19th century, advertising helped create a cheap popular press, while newspaper chains reduced costs through economies of scale. Powerful owners such as Lord Northcliffe, William Randolph Hearst, and Joseph Pulitzer developed large press businesses and introduced styles aimed at mass audiences, attracting advertisers and increasing profits. Throughout the 20th century, mass-produced broadsheets and tabloids remained important, largely supported by advertising revenue. Newspaper ownership became increasingly concentrated, with examples including Northcliffe’s empire and, more recently, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Newspapers have survived competition from radio, television, and the Internet by adapting to change. Although commercial pressures have sometimes been criticised for lowering journalistic standards, quality newspapers have continued to survive.

Radio – Radio broadcasting began in the 1920s and quickly attracted mass audiences. In the United States, stations relied on advertising, helping the advertising industry develop persuasive techniques to promote the growing range of consumer products. In Britain, however, the BBC operated as a publicly funded monopoly with responsibilities focused on public service. Music played a central role in early radio, influencing the music industry as broadcasters used live performers and later recorded music. This close relationship between radio and music continued despite technological changes. Although radio faced competition from television, innovations such as portable and car radios, along with targeted programming for specific demographics, helped maintain its popularity and advertising revenue. By the late twentieth century, deregulation, corporate concentration, and increasing pressure to maximize profits significantly shaped radio broadcasting.

Movies – Movies emerged as a form of mass entertainment in the late nineteenth century, developing through technological advances in the US and Europe. By the twentieth century, Hollywood studios dominated the industry, with major companies controlling film production, distribution, and exhibition. The introduction of sound in 1927 ended the silent-film era and contributed to Hollywood’s golden age during the 1930s and 1940s. American cinema became internationally dominant because of its financial investment, diverse content, and high production values. However, it faced criticism over violence, sexuality, racial representation, and American cultural influence. The industry adopted the Production Code in 1930 to regulate content. Television posed a major challenge in the 1950s, but cinema adapted by cooperating with television and expanding across media. Today, US cinema remains influential, alongside successful national industries such as Bollywood.

Television - Television broadcasting began on a limited scale during the 1930s in Germany, Britain, and the United States. However, the outbreak of World War II in 1939 slowed its development, and it was not until the 1950s that television became a widely used mass medium. In the United States, the existing networks—NBC, CBS, and ABC—dominated television broadcasting, just as they had dominated radio. Television quickly attracted the attention of advertisers and became an important source of commercial revenue. Although there was initially some competition between television and Hollywood, the two industries eventually developed a profitable relationship. Films became a regular part of television programming, while Hollywood studios began producing successful television series.

By the 1970s, American television networks had become highly profitable. They increasingly focused on audience ratings in order to attract greater advertising revenue. In 1986, a fourth major network, Fox, which was part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, entered the market. The development of television in other countries followed different models. Some adopted the American commercial approach, while others developed a combination of public-service and commercial broadcasting. In many countries, television also remained subject to significant government control.

Television continues to be a powerful mass medium, although its development has been influenced by changing social and economic conditions and by changes in patterns of media ownership. The growing influence of free-market ideas, deregulation, and the pursuit of profit by large media conglomerates that acquired television networks have all contributed to these changes. Commercial pressures have also blurred the distinction between advertising and television programming, as seen in the increasing use of product placement. At the same time, inexpensive formats such as talk shows and reality television have become increasingly common.

New Media - A wide range of new media technologies developed from the 1980s onward. These included video recorders, home videotape players, CD-ROMs and DVDs, the Internet, and social networks. However, the development of the Internet and social media also introduced new challenges, such as increased piracy, greater invasions of privacy, and easier access to dangerous, violent, and pornographic content.

                      Critical Research of the Media

The Frankfurt School argued that the mass media was used to control the masses. In the book Dialectics of Enlightenment (1947), co-written by Theodore Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, the authors claim that mass culture and mass media spread conformism and control social consciousness. They called this form of control over the masses "culture industry." The culture industry dominates all forms of mass culture; the mass media sell artistic values ​​as commodities; democracy is characterized by parties that control the masses through their programs and propaganda; consumer products are standardized and eliminate the need for individual consumer tastes. In Western culture, as a consequence of the Enlightenment, the instrumental form of formal rationality dominates, and the goal of that rationality is to achieve control over human action and society through dehumanized science and technology. Capitalist societies, through the culture industry and dehumanized science and technology, destroy any real opposition by either assimilating or neutralizing it. In these societies, all models of social communication become monolithic and lead to cultural indoctrination. Modern society is becoming an iron cage of total administration, consumerism, and resignation.

Researchers at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham examined how cultural texts, particularly media, reflect and shape ideas about class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. They were pioneers in studying how audiences respond to newspapers, radio, television, film, and other forms of popular culture. Their work focused on how media produce representations and meanings, paying particular attention to stereotypes involving class, gender and sexuality, and race and ethnicity. At the same time, they connected these representations to broader issues of power and ideology. The researchers also explored how different audiences interpret and use media in different social and cultural contexts. They argued that audiences are not simply passive recipients of media messages but can understand them in contrasting ways. Stuart Hall’s influential concept of “encoding/decoding” emphasized that audiences may accept the preferred meaning of a text, reinterpret it differently, or actively oppose the dominant ideology.

Mark Gottdiener, in New Forms of Consumption (2000), examines the growing influence of media and consumer culture on identity formation through new “spaces of consumption,” such as shopping malls, airports, entertainment parks, and the Internet. Drawing on neo-Marxist, semiological, and other theoretical perspectives, he argues that these spaces combine diverse cultural influences that shape contemporary identities. Gottdiener highlights their themed and spectacular nature, evident in places such as Nike Town, Hard Rock Café, and Planet Hollywood. The shopping mall, in particular, exemplifies these new consumption spaces by offering a wide range of commodities through which identities are expressed and constructed.

Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1986), argues that television—and entertainment-driven media more broadly—can weaken public discourse by turning serious subjects such as politics, education, and news into entertainment. Postman contrasts this with the earlier culture of print, which encouraged sustained attention and logical argument. His central warning is that the danger is not censorship, but a society becoming so accustomed to entertainment that it loses the ability to engage seriously with important ideas.

Ian Ang, in Desperately Seeking the Audience (1991), presents a "structured interpretive model" of the analysis of the relationship between the media and their audience. The messages sent by the media can be interpreted in different ways, but there is always one way of understanding the message that the media themselves impose as the most important and preferred. On the other hand, it is wrong to look at the whole audience uniformly, because there are different segments of the audience that have their own needs and preferences. These segments differ in age, gender, class, geographic region, religion, or belonging to a particular subculture. 

In the book Personal Influence (1955), Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld present the results of research they conducted together. They concluded that different people have different levels of information on political issues and that voting behavior is greatly influenced by social contacts. The ability and willingness to accept the message sent by the media are influenced by many factors: personal education and ideological commitment, as well as the emotional strength, form, and language of the message itself. Even more than radio or the press, voting behavior is influenced by "opinion leaders", people who have a great influence on people close to them, because they, in their environment, are the ones who share the most information and opinions about politics.

In The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Marshall McLuhan studies how the printing press and printed books rearranged culture, consciousness, and sensibilities after the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg. This book introduced two new concepts – “global village” and “Gutenberg galaxy”. Global village refers to time and space distances losing their significance due to the development and spread of printing technology. This new technology allowed for mass communication that shaped contemporary culture and created a village-like mindset all over the world.  Gutenberg galaxy is a globally accumulated body of intellectual and artistic works, which is contained in all printed materials over the centuries.  

McLuhan, influenced by the work of Canadian political economist and communication theorist Harold Innis, wrote the book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), which focuses on a new way of understanding media. McLuhan sees a medium as any extension of humans that allows them to communicate. That includes technologies usually considered as media –television, radio, and newspapers – but also cars, electricity, and language itself. While conventional studies of media focused on its content, McLuhan instead sees the real meaning or message of media to be its ability to amplify and accelerate existing processes, which introduces a "change of scale or pace or shape or pattern into the human association, affairs, and action", in that way changing society, culture, and individual psychology.

This intricate process is subsumed in McLuhan’s famous idiom "the medium is the message." An example of this process is a printing technology that enabled the dissemination and formation of national symbols and national languages. In the same book, McLuhan introduces the distinction between two types of media: “cool media,” which involves active users connected to the media on a deeper level, and  “hot media,” which doesn’t connect users with media on a deep level and makes users passively consume the content. Electronic media changed the perception of time and space and permitted the development of cool media. Electronic media truly brought the age of the global village and rendered national forms of identification irrelevant.

In the book Laws of Media: The New Science (1988), McLuhan and his son and coauthor Eric introduce four invariable laws that govern the actions of all media. Those laws are: 1) all media extend or amplify some process, 2) in doing so, it makes established media obsolete, 3) but it also returns to surface some older obsolete media in a new form, 4) and that media finally reverts to previous characteristics when it is pushed to the limit.

In his book Media Culture (1995), Douglas Kellner explores how film influences the construction of ideology and identity, especially concerning issues of race, ethnicity, and sexuality. The products of media culture like radio, television, film, and others produce materials that shape people’s identities, worldview, values, and the sense of self. Media create symbols, myths, and resources that create common culture and provide a way for individuals to become part of it. Media legitimize the political power of the elites and indoctrinate the powerless to accept their place and oppression. Media serve as a form of pedagogy that shapes how people feel, think, behave, what they desire, and what they fear. Understanding this vast influence of media, what Kellner calls „critical media literacy“, can give people resources to resist media manipulations and empower them to control their cultural environment.

Noam Chomsky, in the books Manufacturing Consent (1988), Necessary Illusions (1989), Deterring Democracy (1991), and Letters from Lexington (1993), critically examines the relationship between US foreign policy, media, and propaganda. In Manufacturing Consent, he analyzes how the mass media manipulates public opinion and perpetuates the interests of those in power. The book, written by Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, was first published in 1988 and has since become a classic in the field of media studies.

The book argues that the mass media in the United States and other Western countries operate as a "propaganda model," in which a small group of powerful corporations and individuals control the flow of information and shape public opinion to align with their own interests. This is achieved through a combination of censorship, self-censorship, and the creation of a "filter" that screens out information that is inconvenient or contradicts the dominant narrative. Chomsky highlights five of those types of filters: ownership, advertising, sourcing, "flak", and "anti-communism".     

One of the key components of the propaganda model is the "ownership" filter, which refers to the fact that a small number of large corporations control the majority of media outlets. These corporations have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and promoting policies that benefit their bottom line, and they use their control over the media to shape public opinion in their favor. Another important component of the propaganda model is the "advertising" filter, which refers to media outlets relying heavily on advertising revenue to survive. This leads to a bias in favor of content that is friendly to advertisers, and a reluctance to report on stories that might be seen as critical of their interests. The "flak" filter refers to how powerful individuals and groups can use their influence to shape the media narrative. This can include things like threats of legal action, pressure from advertisers, or even direct censorship. The "anti-communism" filter refers to how the media has been shaped by the Cold War, particularly in its focus on the threat of communism and its portrayal of the Soviet Union as an enemy of the United States.

Pierre Bourdieu explored the academic world in the books Homo Academicus (1984) and State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power (1998, in French 1989). He examines the relationship between fields, habitus, and different forms of capital within the French university system. Special attention is paid to sociology as a discipline and its key authors. Bourdieu studies the social origins of these sociologists, what they published and where, their political engagement, the institutions with which they are connected, their media appearances, etc. This helped him make a map showing the forms of capital used, as well as how power and conflict take place within a French university. Bourdieu also studied the field of television, above all, television journalism. He singles out two opposite types of television journalism: "pure" (autonomous) and commercial. Pure journalists organize their work autonomously, in accordance with ethical and professional principles. The work of commercial journalists is aimed at creating content that will increase the rating, viewership, and income from advertisements, all to achieve the economic and political interests of corporate media owners. The commercial approach to journalism is becoming dominant, and one of the consequences of that trend is the depoliticization of news, which is increasingly focused on human stories, sensations, and public scandals, and, at the same time, increasingly neglects socially and politically important topics. Television can also serve as a place where actors from other fields (science, culture), and those who have failed in their fields, can find refuge and a place for self-promotion if they are suitable for television.

In books, Simulacra and Simulation (1981) and Fatal Strategies (1983), Jean Baudrillard describes the social world as dominated by the media and the explosion of the image. In modernity, copies or models represented real objects or events, while in the postmodern era, that is, in the era of "simulacrum", the copy or simulacrum produces reality, objects, and events. The performance of the representation is abandoned. Television and marketing are invading all the intimate processes of our social life, while reality collapses into hyperreality. "Dedifferentiation" means that there is no difference between news and entertainment, marketing and culture. Society consists of a large, phantasmagoric superstructure of signs and images with which the individual has neither an objective nor an alienated relationship.

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), Jürgen Habermas studies the change of the public sphere from the time of feudalism, through its various forms in civil society, and concludes with his presentation of the disintegration of the public sphere in the modern age. The public sphere refers to a free and open debate on social and political issues, which takes place in public. The beginning of the public sphere appears in the salons and taverns of large cities in Europe at the beginning of the modern age. The media, and especially the press, initially played a significant role in the emergence and development of the public sphere. However, over time, the state, the private sphere, and economic monopolies have merged, leading to the commercialization of the media and their abuse, in order to achieve the interests of specific classes or groups. All this caused a rapid decline of the public sphere and led to its "refeudalization". The decline of the public sphere caused the loss of individual freedom because the state and institutions gained supremacy over individuals.

Stanley Cohen’s book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) examined subcultural groups such as ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’ to understand how moral panic and social control by police and the media defined and punished crime and deviance. He examined how media labelling can amplify deviance, using the clashes between mods and rockers in 1960s Britain as a case study. Cohen showed that minor incidents were exaggerated by sensationalist media reporting, creating public fear and portraying youths as dangerous “folk devils.” This moral panic led to increased attempts at social control, which ironically drew more attention to the subcultures and made them more popular, sometimes escalating disorder. Cohen argued that such exaggerated reactions do not simply report deviance but help to create and intensify it, illustrating the paradox of social control.

In the Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord studies the transformation of society from one organized around the production and consumption of goods to a society organized around the consumption of spectacle. The society of the spectacle is created by the hegemonic integration of the media and consumer culture. In that society, institutions socialize people and produce artificial social relationships through images. In this created world, there is a void between consumers and producers, while the social world can only be experienced through the accumulation of spectacle. The spectacle becomes fully present in social life and loses its connection with goods. In the society of the spectacle, life is reduced to consumption, and social status becomes tied to certain logos and brands.

The spectacle exercises social control, not by force, but by destroying creativity and creating consensus on collective desires. Financial institutions, corporations, urban planners, and architects, as well as marketing experts, use magazines, advertisements, films, and other media, through which they create images and spectacles that produce conformism and normalize domination. To overcome the society of the spectacle, it is necessary to destroy that society and replace it with a more humane alternative. This new society will be characterized by creativity and organic relationships between people. Squatting, writing graffiti, and taking over public and abandoned spaces are tactics for fighting against the society of the spectacle.

The Relationship between Media and Politics

Mass media have had a profound impact on politics by creating new ways for politicians to communicate with national audiences. They play an important role in agenda setting by selecting and interpreting information and influencing which issues receive public attention. However, critics argue that television often emphasizes image and presentation rather than policies and ideas. The 1960 US presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon demonstrated the growing importance of political image.

Contemporary media are also criticized for giving less attention to traditional news values, investigative journalism, and serious current-affairs programs. The boundary between politics and entertainment has become increasingly blurred, resulting in the widespread growth of “infotainment.” Media-driven political campaigns can also require substantial financial resources, particularly in the United States, potentially restricting the range of candidates who can compete.

The rise of new media has created both opportunities and concerns. Greater access to information can encourage political participation, individual empowerment, and democratic engagement. At the same time, governments, politicians, and public relations agencies increasingly use image management and “spin.” Concerns also remain about the digital divide and unequal access to media, as well as the political significance of online communities.

During wartime, media have been used to promote patriotism, maintain public morale, and conduct psychological warfare, sometimes through the demonization of opponents. During the Cold War, the US and Soviet governments used media to spread their competing ideologies. Similarly, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, US media largely reflected nationalist and patriotic perspectives.

Globalization and Mass Media

The globalization of media industries has led to greater ownership concentration, fewer independent media sources, risk avoidance, and reduced investment in less profitable areas such as investigative journalism and documentaries. This transformation has been driven by technological developments, especially information and communication technologies (ICTs), and by the rise of global media conglomerates.

From a political economy perspective, key concerns include media hegemony, cultural and media imperialism, concentrated ownership, the influence of market forces versus public-service values, and the growing standardization of media products. The spread of the Internet has renewed debates about whether new media can empower local communities or instead promote global cultural homogenization.

The growth of major media corporations such as News Corporation, AOL Time Warner, and Disney has reinforced the view of media as profit-driven businesses. Researchers also examine how global media may spread Western consumer culture and influence audiences’ attitudes, lifestyles, and values, as well as how much power media organizations have over public discourse and how audiences can resist or reinterpret dominant media messages.

In the article Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy (1990), Arjun Appadurai studies the globalization of consumption and introduces the concept of “global cultural economy,” which refers to the “complex, overlapping, disjunctive order" that breaks the center-periphery model of the global economy. For Appadurai, globalization implies multiple processes of circulation, or as Appadurai calls them ‘‘flows’’ or “scapes”: 1) mediascapes (flow of information via mass media and the Internet), financescapes (flow of capital inside the global financial system), technoscapes (flow of technology), ethnoscapes (flow of people, as immigrants, refugees or tourists), and ideoscapes (flow of ideas and ideologies). Migrations of people create “global consumption”, that is, “deterritorialized” versions of cultures that originated in the country where people emigrated from. All over the world, consumers can buy versions of cultural products introduced by immigrants that are interesting for immigrants because they are familiar and have sentimental value, while, at the same time, serve as a chance for locals to try exotic products in their countries from a different culture. Appadurai states that, instead of cultural homogenization and Americanization, globalization introduces ‘‘heterogenization’’ and hybridization. That means that globalization introduces more variety in what can be consumed in any country and creates an interplay between world markets, international corporations, local cultural identity, and changing consumption patterns.

Ulf Hannerz argues that a "global ecumene" is being created in the world through the processes of "Creolization". Creolization, in his opinion, is a process in which, more and more, the culture of the center and the periphery are coming closer. The periphery produces some cultural products that are sold on the global market. Global ecumenism denotes a concept similar to what some authors call "glocalization." Global culture is always consumed at the local level and follows local patterns, so there is a mixture of global and local culture at four organizational levels: state, market, social movements, and lifestyles. The complex relationships of global and local cultures create diverse "habitus of meaning".

Leslie Sklair argues that one of the transnational practices that has the greatest influence on capitalist globalization is what he calls the  "culture-ideology of consumerism." He introduces this notion to emphasize the breadth and importance that the practice and values ​​of the culture-ideology of consumerism have on the economy, politics, and everyday behavior of people. The media and retail chains are key players in the spread of consumerism. The mass media implant the cultural ideology of consumerism in the minds of individuals while they are still children. The mass media blurs the boundaries between information, entertainment, and product promotion to sell the products they advertise to customers, but also to spread a consumerist view of the world. Retail chains, primarily through shopping malls, create places where the experience of buying goods merges with the experience of going to an amusement park. The final effect is the creation of a cultural need, fully internalized by individuals, for products created by capitalist corporations.

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