Foundations of Mass Communication

Introduction

Communication is the foundation of social life. Families coordinate activities through communication, organizations make decisions through communication, governments explain policies through communication, and media institutions connect events, ideas, and cultural meanings with large and dispersed audiences. For students of Mass Media Management, communication is not merely the transmission of information. It is a social, cultural, technological, economic, and managerial process.

Mass communication is especially significant because it enables messages to travel beyond face-to-face settings. Newspapers, radio, television, cinema, websites, social media platforms, podcasts, and mobile applications allow institutions and individuals to reach audiences across geographical and social boundaries. However, communication is never completely neutral or automatic. Messages are selected, shaped, encoded, distributed, interpreted, and sometimes contested. Technology expands reach, but it also introduces problems of noise, misinformation, unequal access, surveillance, and concentrated ownership.

This chapter establishes the conceptual foundation for studying mass communication. It defines communication, media, mediation, gatekeeping, feedback, and noise; distinguishes major forms of communication; explains important communication models; and traces the historical development of print, broadcasting, and digital media.

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Define communication, mass communication, media, mediation, gatekeeping, feedback, and noise.
2. Explain communication as a process involving senders, messages, channels, receivers, interpretation, context, and consequences.
3. Distinguish interpersonal, group, organizational, and mass communication.
4. Apply major communication models to practical media situations.
5. Trace the historical development of print, broadcasting, and digital media.
6. Analyze the professional, ethical, and managerial implications of media selection and gatekeeping.

1. Communication as a Social Process

Communication may be defined as the process through which people create, convey, interpret, and negotiate meaning using symbols. Symbols may be linguistic, visual, auditory, bodily, or digital. Words, photographs, gestures, headlines, musical sounds, colours, emojis, and interface designs can all communicate meaning.

This definition contains several important ideas. First, communication involves meaning rather than simple movement of data. A signal becomes a message when it is interpreted. Second, communication is usually reciprocal: even when one person speaks and another listens, the listener’s facial expression, silence, questions, or later response can influence the exchange. Third, communication occurs within context. The meaning of a statement depends on the situation, relationship, culture, time, and medium in which it appears.

Communication has at least four closely related dimensions:

• Transmission: the movement of information from one point to another.
• Meaning-making: the interpretation and negotiation of symbols.
• Relationship: the creation, maintenance, or alteration of social relationships.
• Coordination: the organization of collective action.

A news report, for example, transmits information about an event, frames its meaning, positions the audience in relation to institutions, and may encourage action such as voting, donating, or changing behaviour.

Elements of communication

Although communication is dynamic rather than mechanical, introductory analysis commonly identifies the following elements:

Communication is therefore better understood as a process than as a single event. Meaning may change as a message moves through several people, institutions, and technologies.

2. Media, Mediation, and Representation

The term media is the plural of medium. A medium is a channel or technological form through which communication takes place. Media may include print, radio, television, film, websites, social platforms, podcasts, outdoor advertising, and mobile applications. Media can also refer to institutions and industries that produce and distribute content.

Media perform several social functions:

1. Information: reporting events and providing knowledge.
2. Interpretation: explaining, contextualizing, and framing events.
3. Education: transmitting skills, values, and cultural knowledge.
4. Entertainment: providing pleasure, relaxation, and emotional experience.
5. Surveillance: monitoring institutions, risks, and social conditions.
6. Cultural transmission: preserving and circulating languages, narratives, and traditions.
7. Mobilization: encouraging public participation or collective action.
8. Commercial exchange: connecting producers, advertisers, consumers, and audiences.

Media are not transparent windows onto reality. They select and organize reality. A television bulletin has limited time; a newspaper has limited space; a social-media feed uses an algorithmic ranking system. Consequently, media content is shaped by professional routines, technical formats, ownership structures, legal rules, economic incentives, and cultural assumptions.

Mediation

Mediation is the process through which a message, event, or social relationship is shaped by a medium and by the institutional and cultural conditions surrounding that medium. When a protest is reported in a newspaper, broadcast on television, streamed live, and discussed on a social platform, it is not simply reproduced. Each medium emphasizes different aspects of the event.

For example, television may emphasize visual drama and live presence; radio may emphasize sound, interviews, and descriptive language; a newspaper may provide background and analysis; a social platform may enable rapid circulation and audience commentary. Mediation affects what becomes visible, how it is interpreted, who can participate, and how quickly information travels.

The concept is important for media managers because selecting a channel is also selecting a form of presentation. A communication strategy should therefore ask not only, “What message should be sent?” but also, “How will this medium shape the message and the audience’s interpretation?”

Representation

Representation refers to the way media construct versions of people, events, groups, places, and ideas. A representation is not identical to the thing represented. A headline, photograph, interview, documentary, or advertisement offers a particular selection and perspective.

Representations can influence public attitudes toward gender, class, race, nationality, disability, religion, and age. Ethical media practice therefore requires attention to accuracy, context, fairness, diversity, and the avoidance of harmful stereotypes.

3. Mass Communication

Mass communication is the organized production and distribution of messages through technological or institutional media to relatively large, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed audiences. Traditional examples include newspapers, radio networks, television stations, cinema distribution, and news agencies. Contemporary examples include streaming services, online news portals, podcasts, video-sharing services, and social-media systems.

Mass communication differs from ordinary communication in several respects:

• It usually involves organizations, professional roles, and specialized technologies.
• The audience is large and often dispersed.
• Communication is commonly public rather than private.
• The relationship between producer and audience is often indirect.
• Messages may be reproduced and distributed at scale.
• Gatekeeping and institutional routines influence content.
• Feedback may be delayed, partial, quantified, or technologically mediated.

The traditional distinction between mass communicators and audiences has become less rigid. Digital users can comment, remix, share, livestream, and produce content themselves. Nevertheless, major platforms, broadcasters, publishers, and advertisers continue to control substantial infrastructure, visibility, data, and resources. Digital participation has therefore expanded without eliminating institutional power.

Functions of mass communication

The social functions of mass communication have been discussed by scholars such as Harold Lasswell and Charles Wright. These functions include surveillance of the environment, correlation or interpretation of social events, transmission of culture, and entertainment. In democratic societies, media may also facilitate public debate and hold powerful institutions accountable.

These functions can conflict. A commercial broadcaster may seek high audience ratings while a public-service broadcaster emphasizes education and cultural diversity. A news organization may balance speed against verification. A platform may promote engagement while public-interest communication requires accuracy and restraint. Media management involves recognizing and negotiating these tensions.

4. Major Forms of Communication

Interpersonal communication

Interpersonal communication occurs between individuals or among a small number of people who can respond directly to one another. It may be face-to-face or mediated through telephone, email, messaging, or video calls. It is usually characterized by relatively immediate feedback, personal knowledge, and the possibility of adapting a message during interaction.

Interpersonal communication is important in interviewing, client relations, newsroom supervision, public relations, sales, and conflict resolution. Its limitations include misunderstanding, emotional pressure, unequal participation, and the influence of status or power.

Group communication

Group communication occurs among three or more participants who share a task, identity, or purpose. Examples include a production team, editorial meeting, classroom, campaign committee, or community association.

Group communication supports brainstorming, problem-solving, decision-making, and social belonging. However, groups may experience conformity pressure, domination by outspoken members, conflict, information overload, or “groupthink,” in which the desire for agreement discourages critical evaluation. Effective group communication requires clear roles, inclusive participation, evidence-based discussion, and procedures for disagreement.

Organizational communication

Organizational communication is communication within and between structured institutions. It includes upward communication from employees to managers, downward communication from managers to employees, horizontal communication among colleagues, and external communication with clients, regulators, audiences, and partners.

A media organization depends on organizational communication to coordinate editorial, technical, commercial, legal, and administrative work. Communication failures may produce missed deadlines, inaccurate reports, duplicated work, reputational damage, or legal liability. Formal systems such as editorial meetings and written policies coexist with informal communication networks.

Mass communication

Mass communication addresses broad publics through institutional and technological systems. It is less personal and often more one-to-many than interpersonal communication, although digital platforms support many-to-many interaction. Mass communication usually requires production routines, financial resources, distribution systems, audience research, and content regulation.

These categories overlap. A journalist may conduct interpersonal interviews, participate in an editorial group, communicate within an organization, and contribute to a mass-media report during the same assignment.

5. Models of Communication

Models simplify complex processes. They are analytical tools, not complete descriptions of reality.

Linear models

The linear model presents communication as movement from sender to receiver through a channel. Lasswell’s formulation asks: “Who says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect?” This model is useful for planning a public-information campaign because it identifies the source, content, medium, target audience, and desired outcome.

Its limitation is that it may treat audiences as passive and feedback as absent. It also underestimates interpretation, context, and power.

Shannon–Weaver model

The Shannon–Weaver model distinguishes an information source, transmitter, signal, channel, receiver, and destination. It also emphasizes noise. Originally developed for technical communication systems, it is useful for understanding signal distortion, transmission problems, and channel capacity. In human communication, however, noise includes more than technical interference. It can be semantic, psychological, cultural, organizational, or political.

Interactive models

Interactive models add feedback. A receiver responds, and the original sender can adjust subsequent communication. A customer complaint, audience survey, phone-in programme, or comment section illustrates this pattern.

Transactional models

Transactional models view communication as simultaneous and relational. Participants are senders and receivers at the same time, and meaning is shaped by context, identity, power, and previous interaction. This model is particularly useful for social media, live broadcasts, public meetings, and crisis communication, where audiences interpret and respond while content is still developing.

6. Gatekeeping, Feedback, and Noise

Gatekeeping

Gatekeeping is the process by which information is selected, emphasized, altered, delayed, or excluded before reaching an audience. The term was associated with Kurt Lewin and later applied to journalism by David Manning White.

Gatekeeping occurs at several levels:

• A reporter chooses sources and details.
• An editor selects stories and headlines.
• A producer determines running order and duration.
• A platform algorithm ranks and recommends content.
• An owner or regulator influences institutional priorities.
• Audiences share, ignore, or amplify material.

Gatekeeping is not necessarily censorship. Selection is unavoidable because time, space, attention, and resources are limited. The ethical issue is whether selection is transparent, accurate, proportionate, and accountable. Gatekeeping can serve the public by filtering unreliable information, but it can also reproduce bias, silence marginalized voices, or privilege commercial and political interests.

Feedback

Feedback is a response to a message that provides information about audience interpretation, satisfaction, disagreement, or behaviour. Feedback may be direct, such as a question during an interview; indirect, such as circulation figures; or algorithmically measured, such as clicks, watch time, shares, and completion rates.

Feedback is valuable but must be interpreted carefully. High engagement does not necessarily mean public benefit, credibility, or comprehension. A sensational headline may generate clicks while damaging trust. Media managers should combine quantitative indicators with qualitative research, complaints analysis, audience interviews, and editorial judgment.

Noise

Noise is any factor that interferes with the creation, transmission, reception, or interpretation of meaning. Major forms include:

• Technical noise: poor audio, broken links, weak signals, or unreadable images.
• Semantic noise: jargon, ambiguous terms, translation problems, or unfamiliar symbols.
• Psychological noise: prejudice, anxiety, distraction, or selective attention.
• Cultural noise: differences in values, codes, assumptions, and conventions.
• Organizational noise: unclear responsibilities, conflicting instructions, or bureaucratic delay.
• Information noise: excessive volume, repetition, misinformation, and competing messages.

Reducing noise requires accessible language, accurate translation, appropriate design, source verification, technical testing, and awareness of audience diversity.

7. Historical Development of Media

Oral and manuscript cultures

Before mechanical media, societies relied heavily on oral communication. Stories, laws, religious teachings, genealogies, and practical knowledge were transmitted through speech, performance, memory, and ritual. Oral cultures developed sophisticated methods for preserving knowledge, but communication was limited by human memory, distance, and the availability of performers.

Manuscript cultures expanded the storage and circulation of information. Writing enabled records, administration, scholarship, and religious preservation. Manuscripts, however, were labour-intensive to produce and were often controlled by religious, political, or educational institutions.

The printing press and print culture

The development of movable-type printing in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century transformed communication. Printing reduced the cost and increased the speed and consistency of reproducing texts. It contributed to literacy, religious controversy, scientific exchange, bureaucratic administration, and the growth of newspapers and books.

Print culture developed gradually. Early newspapers depended on postal systems, urban markets, political conditions, and commercial advertising. By the nineteenth century, industrial presses, cheaper paper, railways, telegraphy, and rising literacy supported mass-circulation newspapers. News agencies enabled newspapers to share reports across regions and countries.

Print media established professional practices that remain influential: regular publication schedules, headlines, editorial selection, source attribution, corrections, advertising departments, and separation—though never complete—from commercial and editorial functions.

Telegraphy, telephone, and news speed

The telegraph introduced near-instant long-distance transmission of coded messages. It separated communication speed from the physical movement of people and printed objects. News could be transmitted rapidly from distant locations, although it required translation into written reports and depended on telegraph networks and financial resources.

The telephone enabled interactive voice communication over distance. It strengthened interpersonal and organizational coordination and later became an essential infrastructure for broadcasting, mobile communication, and internet access.

Radio broadcasting

Radio developed as a significant mass medium during the twentieth century. It could reach audiences across wide areas at relatively low cost and did not require literacy. Radio became important for news, music, education, political speeches, emergency alerts, and entertainment.

Broadcasting introduced the idea of scheduled, one-to-many communication supported by scarce spectrum and centralized infrastructure. Regulation therefore became a major issue. Public-service, state-controlled, and commercial models emerged in different countries. Radio also demonstrated the importance of sound design, voice, timing, music, and immediacy.

Television

Television combined moving images, sound, scheduled programming, and domestic reception. It became a powerful cultural and political institution after the Second World War. Television news, drama, sports, advertising, and live events shaped public attention and national identity.

Television production required substantial capital, specialized labour, transmitters, studios, and distribution networks. This encouraged concentration of ownership and strong gatekeeping. At the same time, television created new professional roles in production, reporting, directing, programming, sales, audience research, and regulation.

Cinema and recorded media

Cinema developed as a visual mass medium based on the recording and projection of moving images. It created forms of storytelling, celebrity, documentary, propaganda, and advertising. Recorded music, videocassettes, compact discs, and later digital files further weakened the connection between media consumption and fixed schedules or locations.

Digital media and the internet

Digital media encode information in computational form. The internet enables rapid global distribution, searchable archives, interactive communication, multimedia content, and networked participation. Websites, email, blogs, online journalism, streaming, podcasts, social platforms, and mobile applications have transformed the relationship between producers and audiences.

Digital communication has several distinctive characteristics:

• Interactivity: audiences can respond and participate.
• Convergence: text, audio, video, graphics, and data operate within shared digital systems.
• Personalization: content can be tailored to users or selected through recommendation systems.
• Portability: mobile devices enable continuous access.
• Persistence: content may remain searchable and replicable.
• Speed: publication and circulation can occur almost immediately.
• Datafication: user actions can be recorded, measured, and analyzed.

These benefits create risks. Digital systems can spread misinformation rapidly, intensify polarization, expose personal data, and reward emotionally engaging content. The digital divide means that access, skills, language, affordability, disability, and infrastructure remain unequal.

Platformization and algorithmic mediation

Contemporary mass communication increasingly occurs through platforms that organize visibility using data and algorithms. Algorithms may recommend, rank, filter, moderate, and target content. This is a new form of gatekeeping, although it operates alongside human editorial decisions and commercial policies.

Algorithmic systems can improve relevance and help users manage information abundance. They can also produce opaque decisions, reinforce existing preferences, facilitate micro-targeted persuasion, and make accountability difficult. Media managers must understand platform dependence, data governance, content moderation, cybersecurity, and the risks of synthetic or manipulated media.

8. Professional, Ethical, and Regulatory Implications

Mass communication has consequences because media influence knowledge, reputation, public debate, and social behaviour. Core professional principles include accuracy, verification, fairness, independence, transparency, accountability, privacy protection, and correction of errors.

Ethical challenges include publishing graphic material, identifying vulnerable sources, reporting on minors, covering conflict, accepting sponsored content, using artificial intelligence, and distinguishing news from advertising. Regulation may address licensing, ownership concentration, defamation, copyright, privacy, broadcasting standards, election communication, consumer protection, and platform responsibilities. Laws vary across jurisdictions, but legal compliance does not replace ethical judgment.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used for transcription, translation, recommendation, automated production, audience analysis, and content moderation. It may improve efficiency but can reproduce training-data bias, generate inaccurate material, obscure authorship, and create convincing synthetic audio or video. Responsible practice requires human oversight, disclosure where appropriate, source verification, protection of personal data, and clear accountability for published content.

9. Applied Case: A Public-Health Message Across Media

The following is an illustrative case.

Background

A city health department wants to increase vaccination among young adults. Previous printed leaflets reached older residents but had little effect among mobile-first audiences.

Problem

The department initially plans one television advertisement for all audiences. Research shows that young adults use short-form video, messaging applications, podcasts, and peer networks. Some distrust official institutions and encounter conflicting information online.

Analysis

The campaign team identifies several communication issues. The source must be credible but not distant. The message must avoid technical jargon. Channel selection is a mediation decision: television can establish legitimacy and broad reach, while social platforms can support interaction and rapid sharing. Gatekeeping will occur through editorial review, platform moderation, influencers, and users’ own sharing decisions. Noise may arise from misinformation, low health literacy, poor translation, and competing messages.

Approach and solution

The team develops a coordinated campaign. A short television segment introduces the public-health issue. Vertical videos explain common questions in plain language. Local health workers participate in live online sessions. A website provides evidence, appointment information, accessibility features, and corrections. The campaign uses subtitles and multiple languages. Comments are monitored, but genuine questions are answered rather than simply deleted. All medical claims are reviewed by qualified experts.

Feedback is collected through audience questions, website analytics, surveys, and community organizations. The team distinguishes reach from effectiveness: views indicate exposure, whereas appointment enquiries and vaccination records provide stronger evidence of behavioural outcome, subject to privacy safeguards.

Outcome

The campaign reaches more young adults than the original leaflet strategy and identifies recurring misconceptions. Some sensational posts generate greater engagement than official content, requiring rapid correction and trusted community partnerships.

Learning points

1. Communication strategy must connect source, message, audience, channel, and desired effect.
2. Media choice changes how a message is experienced.
3. Feedback is useful only when interpreted critically.
4. Gatekeeping occurs in institutions, communities, and algorithms.
5. Ethical communication requires accuracy, accessibility, transparency, and respect for privacy.

Challenges and Limitations

No communication model captures the full complexity of human interaction. Linear models may obscure feedback and power; interactive models may underestimate structural inequality; transactional models may be difficult to operationalize. Audience measures such as clicks and ratings are valuable but incomplete. Historical accounts can also become technologically deterministic if they imply that a new medium automatically produces social change.

Media do not act independently of political economy. Ownership, advertising, labour conditions, technology companies, regulation, education, and audience practices all shape communication. A balanced analysis therefore examines both the possibilities created by media and the institutions that control access, visibility, and resources.

Best Practices for Media Professionals

• Define the communication objective before selecting a channel.
• Identify the intended and unintended audiences.
• Use clear, inclusive, and accessible language.
• Verify information through reliable and independent sources.
• Anticipate technical, semantic, cultural, and psychological noise.
• Make gatekeeping decisions transparent and accountable.
• Treat audience metrics as evidence, not as the sole measure of value.
• Protect privacy and obtain informed consent where required.
• Distinguish editorial, sponsored, and promotional content.
• Correct errors promptly and preserve public trust.
• Combine human judgment with technological tools rather than surrendering responsibility to algorithms.

Chapter Summary

Communication is the social process of creating, conveying, interpreting, and negotiating meaning. It involves sources, messages, channels, audiences, context, feedback, noise, and effects. Media are channels and institutions that organize communication, while mediation describes the way media and their social conditions shape messages and interpretations.

Interpersonal, group, organizational, and mass communication differ in scale, relationships, feedback, and institutional structure, although they often overlap. Linear, interactive, and transactional models provide different ways of analyzing communication. Gatekeeping selects and shapes information; feedback indicates audience response; and noise interferes with meaning.

The history of mass communication extends from oral and manuscript cultures through print, telegraphy, radio, television, cinema, and digital networks. Digital media have increased interactivity, convergence, speed, portability, and datafication, while also creating problems of misinformation, privacy, inequality, algorithmic opacity, and platform power. Effective media management requires strategic channel selection, ethical judgment, critical awareness of mediation, and responsible use of technology.

Key Terms

Communication: The process of creating, conveying, interpreting, and negotiating meaning.

Mass communication: Institutional production and distribution of messages to large, dispersed audiences through media technologies.

Media: Channels, technologies, and institutions used to produce and circulate communication.

Medium: A specific channel or form through which communication occurs.

Mediation: The shaping of messages and social experience by media, institutions, and cultural conditions.

Representation: The way media construct versions of people, events, and ideas.

Encoding: Converting an idea into communicable symbols.

Decoding: Interpreting a message.

Feedback: A response that provides information about audience interpretation or behaviour.

Noise: Any factor that interferes with communication.

Gatekeeping: Selecting, emphasizing, altering, delaying, or excluding information.

Interpersonal communication: Communication among individuals with relatively direct interaction.

Group communication: Communication among members of a small or task-oriented group.

Organizational communication: Communication within and between structured institutions.

Broadcasting: One-to-many distribution of scheduled audio or audiovisual content.

Digital media: Media that encode and distribute content in computational form.

Convergence: The integration of different media forms and functions in digital systems.

Platformization: Increasing dependence of communication on digital platforms and their infrastructures.

Algorithmic mediation: The use of computational systems to rank, recommend, filter, or moderate content.

Public sphere: A social space in which matters of common concern are discussed and debated.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. Define communication and identify four major elements of the communication process.
2. What is mediation, and why is it important in media analysis?
3. Distinguish interpersonal communication from mass communication.
4. Explain the meaning of gatekeeping.
5. Identify three forms of noise and give one example of each.

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain the major functions of mass communication and discuss how these functions may conflict.
2. Compare linear, interactive, and transactional models of communication.
3. Trace the historical development of print media from manuscript culture to industrial newspapers.
4. Discuss how digital media have changed the relationship between media producers and audiences.
5. Explain the ethical and managerial responsibilities of media organizations in an environment of algorithmic mediation.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A news website receives many clicks on sensational headlines but declining audience trust. Use the concepts of feedback, gatekeeping, mediation, and noise to analyze the problem and recommend a response.
2. Design a communication strategy for a university emergency alert. Specify the audience, message, channels, likely noise, feedback mechanisms, and ethical safeguards.
3. Compare how the same public protest might be represented on television, radio, a newspaper website, and a social-media platform. Explain how mediation could influence audience interpretation.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which statement best defines mass communication?

A. Private conversation between two people

B. Organized distribution of messages to large and dispersed audiences through media

C. Communication that occurs only inside government institutions

D. Any message delivered without technology

Correct Answer: B. Organized distribution of messages to large and dispersed audiences through media

Question 2

What does mediation refer to in media studies?

A. The elimination of all interpretation from a message

B. The shaping of messages by media, institutions, and cultural conditions

C. The measurement of newspaper circulation only

D. The replacement of human communicators by machines

Correct Answer: B. The shaping of messages by media, institutions, and cultural conditions

Question 3

Which example best illustrates gatekeeping?

A. A viewer turning up the volume

B. An editor deciding which story leads a television bulletin

C. A reader remembering a headline

D. A microphone converting sound into an electrical signal

Correct Answer: B. An editor deciding which story leads a television bulletin

Question 4

Which form of communication normally involves a small group sharing a task or purpose?

A. Group communication

B. Mass communication

C. Broadcast communication

D. Intrapersonal communication

Correct Answer: A. Group communication

Question 5

A poor internet connection that interrupts a live interview is an example of:

A. Cultural noise

B. Psychological noise

C. Technical noise

D. Semantic feedback

Correct Answer: C. Technical noise

Question 6

Which feature is especially associated with digital media?

A. Inability of audiences to respond

B. Permanent dependence on printed paper

C. Interactivity and datafication

D. Complete absence of gatekeeping

Correct Answer: C. Interactivity and datafication

Question 7

Why was the printing press historically important?

A. It ended the need for literacy

B. It increased the reproducibility and circulation of texts

C. It made all communication instantaneous

D. It eliminated political control over information

Correct Answer: B. It increased the reproducibility and circulation of texts

Question 8

Which is an example of feedback in mass communication?

A. A transmitter encoding a signal

B. An audience survey responding to a programme

C. A newspaper selecting a headline

D. A camera recording an event

Correct Answer: B. An audience survey responding to a programme

Question 9

What is a major limitation of a purely linear communication model?

A. It includes too much emphasis on audience participation

B. It cannot describe the existence of a message

C. It may treat communication as one-way and understate feedback

D. It applies only to digital communication

Correct Answer: C. It may treat communication as one-way and understate feedback

Question 10

A media manager uses television for broad legitimacy and short-form video for audience interaction. This decision primarily recognizes that:

A. All media shape messages in exactly the same way

B. Channel selection is also a decision about mediation

C. Feedback is irrelevant to campaign design

D. Gatekeeping occurs only in newspapers

Correct Answer: B. Channel selection is also a decision about mediation