Mass Comm Final Paper

Mass communication is typically recognized as the process of producing and distributing information, ideas, opinions, values and entertainment from a single, but regularly difficult, organization or source, through print or electronic channels, to large numbers of people. Mass communication channels or media include newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, film, sound recordings and the Internet. Over the past four centuries mass communication has gained in importance and influence. It is an essential building block in the construction of human culture and civilization. Communication is essential for nourishing and transmitting culture, sharing knowledge, entertaining, envisioning futures, and motivating action. From the emergence of our earliest ancestor Australopithecus Africanus about five million years ago in Africa, the human species has used its ability to communicate to survive in harsh environments and populate planet Earth. The ability to communicate facilitated the sharing of information on food sources, contributed to the security of the species, and provided tools for articulating relationships between and among different groups of humans. Archeologists and anthropologists have concluded that the development of signs, signals and speech among proto-humans and early humans was in response to the need to store memory and distribute knowledge – a prerequisite for the survival of the species. Communication is essential to social and political organization, and it is influential in the construction of individual and collective identities. These attributes, which have been evident from the earliest forms of human communication, have been amplified by the mass communication channels and the associated