Social Media Series: The end of mass media: Coming full circle | The Economist

Excerpt:

"...In January 1776 Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense”, which rallied the colonists against the British crown, was printed in a run of 1,000 copies. One of them reached George Washington, who was so impressed that he made American officers read extracts of Paine’s work to their men. By July 1776 around 250,000 people, nearly half the free population of the colonies, had been exposed to Paine’s ideas. Newspapers at the time had small, local circulations and were a mix of opinionated editorials, contributions from readers and items from other papers; there were no dedicated reporters. All these early media conveyed news, gossip, opinion and ideas within particular social circles or communities, with little distinction between producers and consumers of information. They were social media.

The rise and fall of mass communications

The invention of the steam press in the early 19th century, and the emergence of mass-market newspapers such as the New York Sun, therefore marked a profound shift. The new technologies of mass dissemination could reach large numbers of people with unprecedented speed and efficiency, but put control of the flow of information into the hands of a select few. For the first time, vertical distribution of news, from a specialist elite to a general audience, had a decisive advantage over horizontal distribution among citizens. This trend accelerated with the advent of radio and television in the 20th century. New businesses grew up around these mass-media technologies. In modern media organisations news is gathered by specialists and disseminated to a mass audience along with advertising, which helps to pay for the whole operation...."

via economist.com

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