See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284733552 The Internet: The Medium of the Mass Media Article · January 2011 CITATIONS READS 2 6,621 1 author: Obiageli Pauline Ohiagu University of Port Harcourt 11 PUBLICATIONS 19 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Internet Penetration Rates: A cross country analysis View project All content following this page was uploaded by Obiageli Pauline Ohiagu on 27 November 2015. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Citation: Ohiagu, O. P. (2011). The Internet: The Medium of the Mass Media. Kiabara Journal of Humanities 16 (2), 225-232. Abstract If anything is dynamic in today’s world, it is the concept and process of communication. Every aspect of it including its channels keeps evolving by the year. Despite the controversies that range on whether the Internet is a mass medium or not, the number of its audience members that keeps increasing geometrically by the day makes it undeniably one. It is a new mass medium and a forceful one too, which has become an integral part of other mass media as well as the media supporting industries- public relations and advertising. This paper presents the Internet not just as a channel for mass communication like any other technological tool used by contemporary man to transmit public messages rapidly to a large, mixed and anonymous audience, but as a unique mass medium that even stands out as the medium of other mass medium. The Internet is not only a mass medium but is also a global medium with a potential to reach everyone on the globe. It is also a unique channel for mass communication which has challenged if not altered some of the fundamental and traditional concepts of a mass medium. Introduction - Understanding the Internet The International Network commonly abridged to Internet simply means a global network of millions of computer networks. In other words, it is a network of all computer networks worldwide or plainly a network of networks. The Internet allows for instantaneous exchange of information to and from any part of the globe. Through its electronic mail often referred to as email for short, instant messaging or chat facilities, the Internet makes it possible for people to communicate with others both at the interpersonal and mass levels of communication. It also allows its users’ access to volumes of information available on the World Wide Web. Data more voluminous than any known encyclopedia can be transferred from one part of the world to the farthest part of the globe at the speed of light. Thus users can download or upload information at a startling speed. 1 A recent development of the Internet is its social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tagged, hi 5, and My Space that are excellent in enhancing the interactional and socialization dimensions of mass communication. Social media, as they are now called, are networking people into indeed one global village where everyone gets to know of what is happening in everyone else’s life even as the events unfold. Many people keep daily diaries of their life events and activities on the social media and their friends can partake or react to such posts instantaneously. For Arens (2006: 540) discussing the digital interactive media and the information highway, “the highway is the Internet and it is already the fastest growing medium in history.” The Internet as a Medium of Mass Communication If anything is dynamic in today’s world, it is the concept and process of communication. Every aspect of it including its channels keeps evolving by the year. Not too long ago many communication scholars had problem accepting the Internet as an emerging mass communication medium. But a critical scrutiny of the features of the classical mass communication media such as radio, television, newspapers and magazines shows the Internet exhibiting the same qualities. Such analysis puts the Internet on an equal platform with the old mass media if not on a higher position. A look at these attributes will drive home the point. i. Reach: A medium is said to have a good reach or coverage if it has the ability to expose a large number of people to a given mass media message within a given period. In the words of Rossiter (1997) reach is the “number of target audience individuals exposed to the advertising or promotion in an advertising circle” (p. 447). Frequencies restrict the reach of radio and television media to a limited region or territory (except if they are enabled by the Internet boundless waves or satellite orbits). The circulation of print newspapers and magazines depend on manual distribution. This is a strong limitation as newspapers from Nigeria, for example, cannot reach people in even the neighbouring countries through such vehicle –assisted distribution system. But when enhanced on the Internet, the online version has no boundaries. An electronic newspaper can be accessed from any part of the world where there is an Internet network. The Internet, on the other hand, has the potential to reach everyone hooked up to an Internet- enabled system. Its services or network can be received anywhere without any restriction through 2 any of the Internet Service Providers (ISP). That some people do not have computers or Internet connection is not a weakness of the medium, after all, some people too cannot afford TV sets and therefore cannot receive TV signals. So the Internet has the capacity to reach a large audience and even a larger audience than some conventional mass media especially print newspapers and magazines. In fact, the Internet is not only a mass medium but is also a global medium with a potential to reach everyone on the globe. Arens (2006) noted “that with an audience of some 800 million people worldwide, the Internet is also the only true global medium, providing information and commerce opportunities that are immediately accessible around the world” (p. 558). Hanson (2005) argued that “by inventing the WWW, Tim Berners Lee, the British physicist, created the software that allows the Internet to work as a medium of mass communication” (p.274). Edmund Lee (http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/charlie-sheen-verified-twitter-account- fast/149171/) on March 2, 2011 posted a shocking article retrieved March 25, 2011 on how Charlie Sheen signed up for a Twitter account and in less than 24hours more than 900,000 of his fans had connected to him. Well, it might be argued that this is not an everyday experience since Charlie Sheen is a Hollywood celebrity who cashed on his existing media popularity. Yet it is an indication of the potential of the Internet to reach a large audience almost simultaneously. President Obama of America has about... fans on his page, similarly, President Goodluck Jonathan has about…fans on his page. Even some individuals who have no previous popularity record have amassed huge contacts on their pages. The point being made here is that the Internet especially through the social networks can boast of a large reach or coverage like other mass medium, if not more. ii. Simultaneity of Reception: Another feature of the traditional mass media is simultaneity, which is the ability of the medium to transmit the message to audience members at the same time or nearly the same time. Hanson (2005) underlined that “mass communication messages are transmitted rapidly to the receivers. Audience members can receive the message simultaneously, as they would in the case of a radio broadcast; at similar though not identical times, as in the case of a newspaper or magazine; and occasionally over an extended period, as in the case of CD, movie or video ” (p.11). 3 Perhaps, the greatest weakness of the Internet as a mass communication channel lies in its poor capacity to be accessed simultaneously by the mass audience. Yet, apart from radio and television that broadcast transient messages simultaneously to the receivers, all other mass media are to some degree equally have this deficiency. Newspapers, magazines, billboards, books and the Internet cannot be accessed at the same time. Nevertheless, their permanent nature as opposed to the transient nature of radio and TV messages counters this weakness since people can access them even moments after they are transmitted. In itself, the Internet has the potential to reach everyone who is connected at the same second just as radio and TV signals can be received at once by all who tune in to the same channel. However, in reality, the possibility of many being hooked up online all at the same time, and surfing through the same website is very slim. Nevertheless, not even radio, TV and much less newspapers and magazines can hope to achieve simultaneity of reception especially with our contemporary multi-channel phenomenon. The impossibility of this is compounded by the countless number of alternative media options. In our media saturated world, what chances are there that a mass audience will all tune in to the same radio or TV station simultaneously when there are pretty too many options? So the Internet gambles for a mass audience as the other media are also forced to do in our media-saturated- era. Just as no medium or any particular media house can promise to command a mass patronage or reception of any of its messages in modern society because of the exploding media options, similarly the Internet may not easily communicate to a mass audience simultaneously. With the advent of new media technologies the possibility of a national media is no more feasible; rather most media now engage in narrowcasting, niche marketing or targeting.