Mass Media: My Trouble Internalizing

I like school to make sense like almost any other dumb teenager in America. So naturally, I like Journalism 1. This is mainly because Mr. Miller is very good at taking somewhat complicated concepts and connecting the dots by using his words and illustrations to make it understandable. This is greatly needed especially in subjects that have many parts to it such as mass media. 

As I was going over my notes on this topic I came to a realization... I knew a lot of this previous to the lecture. Now I'm not talking about the actual names of the processes or types (encoding, transmission, decoding, internalizing, stimulus, etc) but the ideas. Whenever I talk to a friend (individual), or a teacher is giving a lecture (group), or even when I'm on my phone watching videos in study hall (mass) I am participating in a type of communication without realizing it. The realization part occurred during journalism class.

After we learned what the three types of communication were and we discussed each, there was still something missing. I knew individual because there wasn't much to it, you have a conversation with one person, that's it. I understood group simply because it reminded me of a college lecture hall-- only some people, can't see the same lecture again (unless it's recorded but that then becomes mass media), immediate reaction from facial expressions and response, etc. etc. However, mass was kind of tricky for me...

I didn't get why sometimes certain things would be group when I was almost sure it was mass. It was extremely frustrating then something finally happened. By going over the beautifully drawn model, it finally clicked in my head the difference between group and mass communication and that was key in learning how to recognize the different types of medias on a daily basis. Mass=no feedback. Since mass media can reach everyone, anywhere, at anytime the creator cannot get immediate feedback! They can certainly get feedback but is a comment section truly immediate? No.

During this lecture Miller took a simple thing like communication, went into detail of each and every part, and connected each thing so that you are able to distinguish between types of communication.