The social networks and digital online media have renewed our view of effective Mass Communication, which before this phenomenon grew strongly online was difficult to deal with the possibilities of two-way communication.
Previously, communicating with many meant a one-way communication and indirect communication without the possibility of reading the recipients' reaction because the communicator and recipient are not present in time and space at the same time. Now the picture is different when you get an immediate response in the digital media to what is communicated via mass communication.
Before it was possible, as with today's digital media, to be able to read the recipient's reactions directly, they used to refer to mass communication as temporarily one-way (ie one-way communication). Previously, some form of audiovisual communication was required to send some form of reminder of the possibilities of two-way communication, for example by inviting the target group to call, fax, visit a store or website.
Mass Communication is personal
All previous ideas that mass communication was impersonal do not agree at all with how mass communication today is produced, communicated, and consumed by the chosen target group via different ways of communicating online via blogs, forums, message boards, wikis, virtual words, tagging, news, online communities, images and video sharing, podcasts and collective intelligence.
The tools to accomplish this are major well-known brands themselves, which in some cases even make it profitable for the mass media communicator to use their channel to communicate to a large mass at one and the same time. Some of the most well-known platforms are: Youtube channels, and various types of social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln, Blogspot, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, WordPress and more.
One thing that still agrees with the basic theorems about mass communication is the specific characteristic that many people are simultaneously reached by a message. One might think that this would only lead to a larger number of "receiver boxes" in Shannon Weaver's communication model, but that would be far too simple.
Mass communication plays a role in contacts between people.
It is not possible to add more receiver boxes because all these different receivers are not independent of each other, but they are connected through complicated patterns of contacts, shared perceptions, and opinions. An individual recipient is constantly affected by his surroundings and this in turn affects people around him. The effect of messages in the mass media is determined in different ways by such social influences.
A person's reactions to a certain message are determined e.g., to a large extent by what environment he belongs to. Through contacts with other people, his initial reactions may change, but it may also be the case that through such contacts he influences other people to show similar reactions. The interesting thing about mass communication is thus not the number of recipients but rather the simultaneity of the reception. It can lead to content in the mass media playing a major role in the contacts between people, and such contacts reduce, change, or enhance the effect of mass communication.
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