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CONTENT

Mass Communication and Its Digital Transformation

any Netflix subscribers eagerly await the release of the
newest season of its most popular, award-winning
series Orange Is the New Black, about prisoners in a
minimum-security women's prison in Connecticut.
Based loosely on Piper Ke rm a n's 2010 memoir
Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's
Prison, the TV comedy drama covers the lives and
back stories of the various inmates while it cri
LEARNING OBJECTIVES >> Define convergence.
tiques larger social issues such as the consequences
of privatizing prisons, guard and prisoner relations,
and the difficulties ex-convicts face in reinte grating
into society. Netflix itself became a crime victim when
hackers intercepted ten epi sodes of season 5. Netflix
refused to pay a ransom, so hackers released the
episodes more than a month before the planned June
9, 2017, release date. The hacker or hackers, which go
by the name darkoverlord, claim to have episodes
from other networks, such as Fox, ABC, and National
Geographic. The material seems to have been stolen
from Larsen Studios, a production facility, in 2016.
Streaming services like Netflix have become
increasingly popular, challenging traditional television
networks and cable services and their advertising-
based business models with a subscription business
model that can be watched via the Internet. Some may
consider it poetic justice that an industry disruptor like
Netflix is, in turn, being disrupted by an illegal activity
like hacking, but the example shows just how much
convergence has blurred the lines between traditional
media, the Internet, and social media. Furthermore,
the hack does raise issues oflnternet security as it
reminds us of how interconnected we are and how
even one weak link in our on line net work can affect a
much greater number of people and companies.
Although Netflix executives no doubt hope that
darkoverlord may one day be wearing an orange prison
jumpsuit, the chances of finding the hacker or hackers
and bringing them to justice is slim, especially if they
are overseas. >> Discuss the main types of
convergence and t heir implications for
communication. >> Explain the eight major changes
taking place in communication today because of
convergence. >> Define mass communication. >>
Describe the basic theories of mass communication.
>> Identify the basic components and functions of the
mass communication process. 3 4 PART 1 >> THE
CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE
www.oup.com/us/pavlik The media of mass
communication have long played a fundamental role
in peo ple's lives. The media inform, educate,
persuade, entertain, and even-or perhaps especially-
sell. Media can provide personal companionship and
public scrutiny. They can shape perception on matters
great and small. They can function in count less and
increasing ways as extensions of one's self, and play a
fundamental role in shaping our identities. We will
examine the nature of mass communication and how
it is changing in the digital and social media age when
people are connected globally by electronic networks.
Specific technological advances are producing
widespread societal, cul tural, and economic changes
as media producers and consumers face a new world
of media symbols, processes, and effects. Few
communications technologies better encapsulate the
fundamental aspects of convergence than two
seemingly very different devices: the telephone and
the television. We will first look briefly at the history
and evolution of the telephone as a communications
device because it touches on almost every important
issue that we are dealing with today regarding the
Internet and digital media. Furthermore, the phone
continues to be at the heart of some of the most
innovative changes taking place in how we
communicate with each other and how we interact
with the world and with media. At the end of the
chapter, we will take a brief look at televi sion, how it
continues to be at the forefront of convergence, and
how it is changing our relationship with the media.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Keep a diary for a day of
the media you consume (and create). Note the
sources of your news, the types of on line
communication you use with friends and family, and
the frequency of your phone use (talking and texting).
What did you learn from the diary? Telephony: Case
Study in Convergence Although nowadays we may
take the portability of our cell phones for granted, this
mobility has important repercussions for many
activities. First, we are no longer tied to a specific
place when making or answering a phone call. The
question "Where are you now?" when calling a friend's
landline need not be asked-your friend is obviously at
home; otherwise, he would not have answered the
phone. By being able to communicate anywhere and
anytime, you are able to coordi nate with others with
greater spontaneity than in the past. Prior to
widespread use of cell phones, if you had a sudden
change of plans (or change of heart) regard ing a
meeting with someone, you had very limited ways to
let the person know you would not show up.
Coordinating meeting times and places among several
people in a group took much more effort and did not
allow for last-minute changes. Also, consider how
much more we use a phone we carry, as opposed to
when you had to travel to the location of the phone
(e.g .• home, a phone booth). This makes us more
likely to call or text to share information on the spot-
sometimes to the annoyance of those around us as
we communicate with distant others and ignore
people nearby. Our familiarity with the phone belies
its revolutionary character from a com munications
standpoint. Before the phone, people could not talk
directly to others whom they could not physically see.
In an emergency, the only way to inform the CHAPTER
1 >> MASS COMMUNICATION AND ITS DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION proper authorities was to
physically go where they were and let them know. The
phone played a major role in chang ing our patterns of
communication with each other and thereby changing
social relations. But it was the telegraph, created
more than thirty years before the telephone, that first
revolutionized our speed of communication. The
telegraph was the first means of electronic com
munication, using a series of taps on a keypad that
repre sented dots and dashes to spell out words.
These signals were transmitted over telegraph wires
connecting one loca tion to another. Telegraph
operators were specially trained to code and decode
messages, and the result was a thriving new industry
that grew during the mid- to late nineteenth century.
This innovative form of instantaneous communi cation
led to entirely new kinds of business enterprises,
including personal messaging services and
"newswire" ser 5 As the telephone network spread,
telephone lines started to cluner the landscape. vices
such as Reuters and the Associated Press.
Telephones adopted the principles discovered with
telegraphy but allowed voice to be transmitted.
Although Alexander Graham Bell is the inventor of
record for the telephone in 1876, others were also
working on how to transmit voice elec tronically
through wires; and there is some evidence that Bell's
invention may have borrowed liberally from existing,
similar patents. Still, after years of lawsuits, it was Bell
who won out. This parallels the many suits and
countersuits seen today as companies claim patent
infringement on Internet or software inventions and
technologies (e.g., Nokia and Apple's 2016 suits
against each other regarding in fringing patents).1
Regardless of who can claim credit for inventing the
telephone, it was easier for the general public to use
than the telegraph. Even so, it was not immediately
thought of as an interpersonal communication device,
largely because it was expen sive and difficult to
connect every single household to the telephone
network. This parallels the "last mile" issue in twenty-
first-century broadband, or high-speed, Internet
connections coming directly into homes and touches
on the importance of networks in our communication
environment. It also highlights how seemingly obvious
uses for new communications technologies become
apparent only much later. How they may be used or
adopted is very much an open question that relies not
only on the technology alone but on a range of
economic, social, and cultural issues at the time.
Despite the dramatic changes it would bring to
communications, the phone was initially either
ignored or thought of as simply a novelty. With
subsequent technological improvements that made it
easier to hear and to increase the number of voices
that could be carried on a single wire, the telephone
became more widely accepted. The ring of the
telephone was a death knell for most telegraph
compan ies, just as later media technologies rendered
earlier technologies obsolete and changed entire
industries in the process. Initially, especially in
Europe, the telephone acted as a kind of early radio.
Wealthy patrons paid a fee to listen to music
performances that were sent along the wires, and
some public venues would pipe in sermons or
performances for their pa trons.2 For several years in
Budapest, Hungary, Telefon Hirmond6 delivered news
over the telephone, with subscribers dialing in at
certain times to listen to someone reading the news of
the day. A similar service was also tried in 1911 in
Newark, New Jersey, but lasted for only a few months
before closing. 6 PART 1 >> THE CHANGING MEDIA
LANDSCAPE www.oup.com/us/pavlik Delivering news
over telephone wires is not something new with the
Internet, and it also shows a public desire for
information and entertainment "on demand," much
like we get our media through online streaming
services. What was still missing at that time was an
economic model that could support a business such
as telephone newspapers. This issue is commonly
dealt with today by media compa nies that need to see
a return on investments before they are willing to
experiment with new ways of doing business. The
decision whether to make the telephone a
government-run agency or a private enterprise was an
important crossroad, and the choices made in Europe
(government) differed from those made in the United
States (private enterprise). Even into the twenty-first
century, these choices have had profound
repercussions for the actual and perceived
development, use, and control of the Internet. And it
continues to be the case that new technologies often
inherit the baggage of polit ical or social decisions
made much earlier. Leaving the early development of
American telephone systems to private en terprise
resulted in many incompatibilities among competing
systems. Local tele phone companies sold their own
telephones, which would often not work with other
telephone systems. The issue of compatibility
between systems is still seen today in the form of
competing computer operating systems, gaming
systems, Internet browsers, and other electronic
devices, including ebooks and tablet computers.
During the formative years of the telephone industry,
the U.S. government sought to eliminate such
incompatibilities in the phone network by granting one
company, AT&T, a monopoly on the telephone system.
This, too, had important repercussions for later
developments in telecommunications. Just as the mo
nopoly telegraph company, Western Union, had done
in the late 1800s when it became apparent the
telephone was a threat to its business, AT&T in the
1960s and 1970s tried to hamper the development of
a new kind of network that would potentially hurt its
business. The network needed to develop the Internet
was not compatible with the AT&T system. Even
though AT&T realized the new network was more
efficient, the telephone company feared losing
dominance and initially refused to adopt it.
Government regulation or private enterprise,
monopoly powers, and business interests at the
expense of the public interest are issues still very
much with us today. How much we pay for services,
how services are bundled and how they set up
payment plans, and a variety of other business
decisions are influenced by the laws and regulations
that have been created, often as a result of industry
lobbying efforts. Just as economic factors may
influence how we use the telephone, such as what
types of data plans we have, social and cultural
factors play an equally important role in determining
whether a technology is adopted. Initially, people do
not know how to act or interact with a new technology.
Consider the classic story of the farmer, for example,
who in the early days of the telephone went to town to
place an order for supplies. The store clerk told him to
place his order directly with the company over the
phone, so the farmer dutifully wrote out his order,
rolled it up carefully, and then jammed the rolled note
into one of the holes of the phone handset and waited.
If this seems too silly to be true, recall your own
reactions when you have to use an unfamiliar TV
remote control. The variety of functions seen in
phones today stretches its very definition compared to
even twenty years ago. Young people today in much of
the world would consider a phone that does not take
pictures or play video games or provide an address
book a dinosaur. In short, the phone contin ues to
evolve as a multifunctional communications device.
The smartphone connects us to our friends and to the
world of information and entertainment through the
CHAPTER 1 >> MASS COMMUNICATION AND ITS
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Internet via almost one
billion mobile applications (apps). It provides a nearly
seamless interface between interper sonal and mass
communication, as we access via a favorite app a
review of a restaurant and then subsequently snap a
photo of our meal to share via Instagram. We might
even wirelessly post our own review on the spot, after
which it can be seen by potentially millions of people
worldwide. All these aspects of the development and
use of the phone-ranging from the technical, legal,
and regulatory to the economic, social, and cultural-
touch on the notion of media convergence. But as we
will see, convergence is a debated concept and has
multiple layers of meaning. As we explore this
phenomenon, we will unpack its many layers and
reveal how they encompass some of the most
dramatic transformations taking place in
communications today. Three Types of Convergence
Convergence is known broadly as the coming together
of computing, telecom munications, and media in a
digital environment. It is important to study and un
derstand convergence because what might first seem
like wholly technological or media issues profoundly
influence our economic, social, and cultural lives as
well. There is some disagreement among scholars
over a single definition of conver gence, an indication
of the far-reaching consequences of the changes
taking place in ~ . Today's cell phones typically have a
variety of functions that have nothing to do with the
traditional functions of the phone. convergence 7 The
coming together of computing, telecommunications,
and media in a digital environment. mass
communication today. Indeed, many transformative
forces for which we have still to develop adequate
descriptions are in play, changes whose effects are
also un certain. For now, the term "convergence"
seems to come closest to encompassing many of
these forces. Some argue that convergence has
already occurred, and in many respects you could say
that is true. But we believe that convergence is an
ongoing and dynamic phenomenon that continues to
shape the world of traditional media. We can look at
three main categories of convergence as in Figure 1-1
as ways to frame our understanding of the changes
taking place today in the media indus tries:
technological convergence, economic convergence,
and cultural convergence. As you will see, these three
categories actually overlap in many respects.
TECHNOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE Perhaps the most
easily visible aspect of convergence is the rise of
digital media and online communication networks.
Technological convergence refers to specific types of
media, such as print, audio, and video, all converging
into a digital media form. Such types of convergence
are easily apparent in news organizations-for
example, where today's journalists often need to be
able to tell stories using text, audio, video, and even
interactive media. Digital media often change the very
nature of their traditional counterparts and affect how
we use and perceive them. For example, although you
can look at an ebook on a Kindle as simply digital
print, the fact is that a Kindle ebook alters the reading
experience. One obvious way is that because of its
storage capacity, you can easily carry many books in
one device. Furthermore, you can change the text size
to make reading more comfortable, look up words,
annotate and index sections, and even purchase new
books on the spot through a wireless Internet
connection. ~ 8 PART 1 >> THE CHANGING MEDIA
LANDSCAPE www.oup.com/us/pavlik F1GuRE1-1
Three Types of Convergence and Their Influence on
Media Technological Convergence Media changes
Media audience changes Media profession changes
Culrural Convergence Attltude/va lue changes Media
organization changes Economic Convergence
Precisely because users can alter the look and size of
the text they are reading, the notion of page numbers
also becomes meaningless on a Kindle-much to the
chagrin of students who realize they need to cite
quotations taken from a book. You can even share
your highlighted passages with others, making book
reading a collaborative experience, much like it was in
the early days of books when reading was generally
done aloud. Most of these activities, such as looking
up an unfamiliar word in a diction ary, already occur
with printed books. The significant difference,
however, is that a single device now allows for all
these actions, eliminating the need to carry a sepa
rate dictionary or permanently mark a book. Activities
that used to be separate or cumbersome are now
easier and folded into the media experience. Not
simply a matter of convenience, these changes
fundamentally alter how we interact with our media.
We may be far more likely to look up a word on a
Kindle than if we had to walk to the shelf to get the
dictionary, for example. The music, television, and
film industries, which we will look at in later Ebook
readers such as the Kindle and the Nook have
transformed the reading habits of people around the
world, not to mention the book Industry.
CRIDCALTHINKJNGJ QUESTIONS: How do you
thinkebooks are influencing the otion of books and
readin 7 Are ebooks better or more useful than
traaitional booksZ.Whlcfi wouli:l you rather ead and
whylt chapters, provide other examples of how our
media use changes thanks in large part to changes in
technology. This form of convergence, although highly
relevant for to day's communications professionals, is
not the only way to think of convergence. The changes
that come from new technologies also affect business
models and established industries, which often see
the upstarts as threats to their dominance. These
fears can be val.id, as sometimes these new
companies become larger and more powerful than
established ones. Google, founded in 1998, is a case
in point. Started as a search engine, today it generates
much of its revenue from advertising due to its popu
larity as a search tool. Even so, in August 2015 Google
itself an nounced that it would change its company
name to Alphabet, with Google simply being one part
of a corporation. Today you can see Google expanding
into the field of self-driving cars, for example, and in
many other areas not directly related to media or
online searches. CHAPTER 1 >> MASS
COMMUNICATION AND ITS DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION ECONOMIC CONVERGENCE
Economic convergence refers to the merging of
Internet or telecommunications companies with
traditional media companies, such as Comcast with
NBC Universal. Traditional media companies have
grown fewer and much larger in the past fifty years
through mergers and acquisitions, a process we
define as consolidation, not convergence. Economic
convergence occurs when formerly independent
media enterprises further the success of one another
because they fall under the same corporate umbrella.
Entertainment companies may own news stations;
large cor porations traditionally outside of the media
business, such as GE, may purchase media
companies like NBC. This can result in conflicts of
interest when corporate parents don't want some
aspects of their businesses covered in the news or
when a consolidation 9 A process whereby traditional
media companies have grown fewer and much larger
in the past fifty years through mergers and
acquisitions. news outlet gives prominent coverage to
a movie produced by a studio also owned by the
corporate parent. Economic convergence also has
important repercussions for the nature of the media,
telecommunications, and computing industries. A
telecommunications company that also owns a media
company can speed the transmission of its own
content and slow the content from competing
companies, thus influencing cus tomers to watch
more of its own material. It could also control the type
of content its customers see by blocking material from
certain websites.
The Internet is not causing this type of behavior: There
are numerous his torical examples of media owners
censoring content or blocking public access. But what
makes this issue more significant and prominent is
the combination MEDIA PIONEERS Oprah Winfrey You
may be surprised to learn that Oprah Winfrey, known
as "the Queen of All Media" and considered in some
rankings to be the most influential black woman in the
world, came from very humble beginnings. Born to a
teenage single mother in 1954, Orpah Winfrey lived in
poverty during her childhood and claims to have been
molested as a child and early teen, resulting in
pregnancy at fourteen. Tired of people
mispronouncing her name as ·oprah· rather than
Orpah, she finally just let it become Oprah. Oprah
started in radio at nineteen, and helped develop a
more confessional style of radio and later television
talk show t hat Phil Donahue had pioneered. The
Oprah Winfrey Show, which was nationally syndicated
from 1986 to 2011, was the highest rated show of its
kind in television history. The popularity of The Oprah
Winfrey Show created some thing called the.Oprah
effect;which referred to her popular book club
segment on the show. When she discussed a book on
the segment, even obscure titles quickly became
bestsellers. Oprah's power as a media personality and
business can be seen in the way she has successfully
bridged t raditional media and online media. She has
launched several magazines, including 0, The Oprah
Maga zine, and published a memoir in 2017. She also
had a satellite radio contract and continues to appear
on television regularly. Although not necessarily an
Internet pioneer in the sense of creating new on line
business models, products, or apps, her website
oprah.com attracts 6 million users a month,
complementing and expanding her media empire.
That media empire has propelled her to become North
America's only black multibillionaire, and the richest
black person in the United States. She has also been
generous with her wealth: She was named as one of
America's top philan t hropists by Businessweek in
2004. ~ 10 PART 1 >> THE CHANGING MEDIA
LANDSCAPE www.oup.com/us/pavlik of consolidated
media giants and ever larger audiences. Despite the
explosion of channels and media content, our choices
may be narrower than they appear. Con sider the
increasingly frequent temporary blackouts of
channels as cable compa nies and media
conglomerates fight over "carriage rights": agreements
to broadcast a company's signal. In 2012 over 20
million DirecTV subscribers were blocked by Viacom
(owner of CBS, Comedy Central, and MTV, among
many others) as the two companies negotiated fees.
In late 2014 and into early 2015, satellite provider
DISH Network stopped carrying Fox News and Fox
Business channels because of disagreements over
licensing charges. It is difficult to determine a true
winner in the court of public opinion, as the
agreements tend to lead to higher cable bills for
consumers, who are encouraged by the companies to
apply public pressure but who seem to have limited
clout. How ever, in a cultural shift, the relationship
between the audience or public and media producers
is changing, and here we are able to see greater
disruption. CULTURAL CONVERGENCE Digital
technology has allowed more people to create
professional-quality videos and other media content.
Culture refers to the values, beliefs, and practices
shared by a group of people. It may refer to a
population at large, such as Americans, or to various
subgroups within a larger group who may share
certain ethnic, social, or professional tradi tions and
practices, such as Irish Americans, video gamers, or
corporate attorneys. A powerful aspect of cultural
convergence occurs through the globalization of
media content when, for example, crime procedural
dramas like CSI, NCIS, or Crim inal Minds are top-
ranked shows in several European countries; or when
Japanese anime, or animation, finds popularity in the
United States. The popularity of such shows across a
variety of nations speaks to some aspect they possess
that foreign audiences identify with or aspire to. On
the downside of cultural convergence, how ever, a
significant concern is the impact of global media on
multiculturalism, or the diversity of culture, especially
internationally. But we can also look at cultural
convergence from the perspective of how we
consume, create, and distribute media content. The
shift from an audience that was forced to be largely
passive and silent, simply consuming content
produced by large-scale media companies to a public
that can now produce and share content with others
cheaply and easily is one of the major themes of this
book and a crucial component of cultural
convergence. Although mass communication will
continue, in the sense that media companies and
others will continue to produce messages for large
audiences, a significant trend involves more
personalized and frequent messages tailored to the
needs of individuals. Furthermore, what was
traditionally considered interpersonal
communication, such as email, can also be widely
distributed by individuals through online networks,
making the dividing line between interpersonal and
mass communication increasingly hard to distinguish.
The ability of companies to better target people with
person alized advertising and messages by tracking
their online activities raises important issues of
privacy, consumer rights, and media busi ness
economic models. Whether people will become more
active in media production and more engaged in civic
or political activi ties than in the past remains open to
debate, with some scholars taking an increasingly
critical look at how media corporations and CHAPTER
1 >> MASS COMMUNICATION AND ITS DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES A
''Comedy'' of Cultural Convergence Given the current
tensions between North Korea and the United States,
the release of the Seth Rog en comedy The Interview in
late 2014 and early 2015 almost seems like a comedy
in its own right. The movie seemed an unlikely
candidate to spark an international incident that
became a cause celebre for free speech, increased
fears about cyberwarfare between nations, and led to
U.S. sanctions against North Korea, but that is exactly
what happened. This curious chain of events also
highlights-often unexpectedly-just how much digital
media has trans formed mass communication. North
Korea was vocal in its displeasure about the planned
Christmas Day release of the comedy The In terview in
which Regen and James Franco play a pair of celebrity
tabloid-show producers chosen by the CIA to
assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. On
November 24, Sony Pictures, distributor of the film,
learned that its computer systems had been hacked.
In the days that followed, sensitive corporate data
including a string of embarrassing emails between ex
ecutives, early versions of screenplays, and executive
salaries-were leaked to the public. Sony and some cy
bersecurity experts, including those in the FBI, blamed
a North Korean group, while other experts were
doubtful. On December 17, after receiving threats that
the aters showing The Interview would be blown up,
Sony cancelled its theatrical release, an executive
decision widely criticized as a blow to free speech.
Less than a week later, Sony reversed itself and
announced that the movie would play in theaters that
still supported it and be available to rent on video-on-
demand (VOD). Just before New Year's, several cable
and satellite companies announced deals with Sony
to show The Interview for pay-per-view, on iTunes,
Xbox Video, YouTube Movies, Google Play, and other
on-demand services, long before t he usual three-
month window between theatrical re lease and airing
on cable or DVD. Between December 24, 2014, and
January 4, 2015, The Interview earned $31 mil lion,
making it Sony's number 1 on line film.' Several ironies
make this fiasco worthy of its own comedy feature
film. First, it was not government that t hreatened free
speech but corporate interests, ranging from Sony
Pictures itself to theater owners who refused to show
the movie. Second, the United States issued more
sanctions against North Korea in early January, even
though cybersecurity experts were still debat ing who
was actually responsible for the hack. Third, it showed
that even when confronted with a legacy of ar t ificial
constraints from an earlier mass-communications
era, convergence will prevail, especially when there
are other distribution channels available such as
home en tertainment systems. companies, in general,
are turning online public participation to their
advantage through online tracking and targeted
advertising. In one future, there is an en gaged public
who uses digital media and online networks to further
interactivity and democracy prevails; and in another,
there are established media conglomer ates and
technology companies that hijack public interests for
their own ends, including stifling political dissent or
unpopular opinions. Such tensions and concerns will
shape the nature of the Internet and digital media use
far into the 11 twenty-first century.

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