The Rise of Mass Communications HW - Research Paper Example

With the technology that we have at our disposal now, one would expect that the start of the 20th century would have been technologically quite prosperous. But as far as mass communication media are concerned, the only mass communication medium available was newspapers (Unknown, 2000-2010). The telegram and telephone were also present at that time, which were very powerful supplements to newspapers by providing ways to send information across huge distances, instantly (Bellis, 2011). Still, newspapers were the only source of mass communication.

So, the 20th century has seen the advent of many technological advances, and with them, there have been numerous revolutions in the ways through which businesses, governments and public figures have employed, and at times exploited, mass media for their agendas. Radio was the first of the communication media inventions in the 20th century, invented by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901. Radio, combined with telegraphy, was one of the most excessively used tools (Unknown, 2000-2010), specially at the time of war.

It was extensively used as a tool of propaganda during WWI and WWII. Also, political leaders fighting for freedom from colonial rule used this as a tool of spreading their word and getting people united under the same banner, such as in the subcontinent. Radio has also been used extensively for advertisement and information broadcasting since the advent of Amplitude Modulation Radio and Frequency Modulation Radio. Television was the next major invention in the field of communication, and its global outreach opened up new paradigms of media usage.

It has proven to be the push required to spread businesses across continents by providing them the platform to advertise to global markets and extend their reach e.g. global brands, like McDonalds (McDonald’s, 2010; Stanley, 2010), have relied heavily on television for going global. With reach comes the power to influence further, and that made television a more powerful propaganda tool. The notion of sitting in a person’s home, in front of them, and talking to them with words and actions, has been exploited time and again by public figures and political leaders to lure public into believing what they want them to believe.

The false propaganda going on against Islam in recent times, showing it as a cruel and inhumane religion, has been at the heart of building animosity between people and gaining support for oppressive attacks against Muslims (Bleher, 2000). The 20th century has had many technological marvels, but nothing has been as miraculous as computer and internet. This finally provides a medium for not only transmitting your message like the television or newspapers, but also getting feedback on it instantly through dialogues, understanding different cultures and building as well as professing views.

Free information access through internet means that companies strive and pay more and more to fill the computer screens of potential customers. But, the most powerful use of internet is e-business, which needs virtually no investment, and thus no chance of a monetary loss. Companies like Amazon and others have become global internet brands and almost every company pitches its products to millions of customers, everyday through websites (Newell and Budge, 2011). The bigger they are, the bigger they are; internet has been the source of most conspiracies and