Quotes & Sayings About Mass Communication

You can only make art that talks to the masses when you have nothing to say to them. — Andre Malraux

The reason why she had chosen journalism was because of those who had done so before her. Stalwart women and men who reported stories in the days before the Internet. Before it was fashionable to learn Mass Communication. A long time before being a TV reporter and calling up your family to see your face beamed to their homes was an in thing. They were those who had left their families behind as they pursued the truth, opting to go to jail when the government hounded them to reveal their sources. Men and women that would rather quit than write editorials the management wanted them to write. Journalists who never wrote a word they would have to disown. Journalists who took their last breath as they wrote an article was true to what they believed in. They would never sit down and take stock of the stories they had covered and written saying, So what if twenty of these are non-stories, I at least had five I believed in. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

Please, what are public relations?" said Khashdrahr. "That profession," said Halyard, quoting by memory from the Manual, "that profession specializing in the cultivation, by applied psychology in mass communication media, of favorable public opinion with regard to controversial issues and institutions, without being offensive to anyone of importance, and with the continued stability of the economy and society its primary goal. — Kurt Vonnegut

If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator
the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts. — Herbert Marcuse

Mass communication
wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued
presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73) — Rollo May

Mass communication, in a word, is neither good nor bad; it is simply a force and, like any other force, it can be used either well or ill. Used in one way, the press, the radio and the cinema are indispensable to the survival of democracy. Used in another way, they are among the most powerful weapons in the dictator's armory. — Aldous Huxley

In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin ... In socialist areas, it is enough to recall that the means of social communication are the monopoly of the party. — Helder Camara

I really think that music itself, being one of the greatest possible vehicles for mass communication, should be probed to its extremes, to see how effective it can actually become, which is one of the reasons why I became also interested in presenting political points of view. — Ruben Blades

Advertising and the free society are closely connected. Advertising helps to make a free society remain so by increasing competition, and by helping to maintain the freedom of the mass media themselves. The free society is one where advertising and advertising agencies are likely to be in considerable demand, though it is true that even in a totally centralist society there would still be a need for organisations and people to have access to mass communication media. — John Treasure

Today's Darwinists will tell you that the task of humanity is to take charge of evolution. But 'humanity' is only a name for a ragtag animal with no capacity to take charge of anything. By destabilizing the climate, it is making the planet less hospitable to human life. By developing new technologies of mass communication and warfare, it has set in motion processes of evolution that may end up displacing it. — John N. Gray

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language. — Walt Disney Company

Mass communication communicates massively: its language lacks precise articulation and avoids demanding terms; it argues for the kind of behavior in life which will make a "good program": ethic equals showbiz. — Frederic Raphael

I think that all money can do is to get your message out. Unfortunately, we live in a world where you have to use mass media to communicate with the people, and it just costs an awful lot of money. — Michael Bloomberg

The artist may rightly venture the opinion that he does not convey ideas, does not preach, nor does he intend to convert people by using mass communication techniques ... Better than handing out all kinds of wise advice, he could show life itself; he could awake forces lying dormant in everybody. He could launch an invitation to create direct and personal experiences. — Antoni Tapies

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation. — Walt Disney Company

Advertising is in essence simply a means of communication through mass media which is available to anyone who can pay for it. It is, in this sense, rather like electricity, which can be used to work a refrigerator or a dentist's drill. — John Treasure

I think there certainly was a milestone in the '90s with regards to the Internet achieving critical mass. There were several magical factors that came together: the creation of HTML by Tim Berners-Lee, the drop in the price of communications, and all the PCs out there that you could put this software into. — Bill Gates

With communication technology in general, there's a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world's entire population using one communication technology, that's a big deal. It's beyond the theoretical at this point. The people who think it's a fad have probably not been paying that much attention. — Ben Horowitz

Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning. — Alan Kay

This ... Godless society operates in an extremely efficient manner at least in its higher levels of leadership ... It follows a perfectly mapped out strategy. It holds almost complete sway in international organizations, in financial circles, in the field of mass communications; press, cinema, radio and television. — Pedro Arrupe

Mass communication can aid in personal evangelism and the development of Christians, but it cannot be a substitute for the world seeing the truth lived through us. — Erwin W. Lutzer

I never even wanted to be an actress. I studied mass communication and wanted to study law in Newcastle, for which I even got a scholarship. But by then, I had started modelling. So, I took a year off to decide what to do. But once you are used to working, it's difficult to get back to studies. — Esha Gupta

I think regionalism was a little easier before mass communication was made possible. This is not to say that regionalism doesn't exist anymore. I think it does. — Jimenez Lai

Today, comics is one of the very few forms of mass communication in which individual voices still have a chance to be heard. — Scott McCloud

Before Gutenberg, there was this really very strong oral storytelling culture where being able to relay stories from person to person was sufficient. And then, with the introduction of printing and mass communication, suddenly somebody had a lot of authority invested in the idea of a single canonical expression of a document or a piece of communication. — Khoi Vinh

These days, everybody is supposed to be so intelligent: 'Isn't it terrible about Nixon getting elected?' 'Did you hear about the earthquake in Peru?' And you're supposed to have all the answers. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, like, 'What is bugging you, mister? Why can't you make it with your wife? Why do you lie awake all night staring at the ceiling? Why, why, why do you refuse to recognize you have problems and deal with them?'
The answer is that people have forgotten how to relate or respond. In this day of mass communications and instant communications, there is no communication between people. Instead it's long-winded stories or hostile bits, or laughter. But nobody's really laughing. It's more an hysterical, joyless kind of sound.
Translation: 'I am here and I don't know why. — John Cassavetes

I really love newspapers. They are disposable. They are recyclable. They fall apart so easily. They are not like iPads or Kindles that can't be disposed of and end up on some third-world shore. And I love the heritage of them, the whole history of mass communication. Newspapers changed the world from being a really class based, feudal system to people being able to cheaply get information that informed them. — Stanley Donwood

As one might expect in a society with mass communications and mass markets, the pseudo-ethic says that whatever is popular, is right. Where the traditional ethic derives its sanction from the superiority of a few, the pseudo-ethic derives its sanction from the inferiority of a great many. The pseudo-ethic is keyed, not to the spiritually gifted, but to the spiritually ungifted. — Margaret Halsey

The growth of the mass media of communication and their use in politics have brought politics closer to the people than ever before and have made politics a form of entertainment in which the spectators feel themselves involved. Thus it has become, more than ever before, an arena into which private emotions and personal problems can be readily projected. Mass communications have made it possible to keep the mass man in an almost constant state of political mobilisation. — Richard Hofstadter

I suspect, though I cannot prove, that in part this is the consequence of living in a world, including a mental world, so thoroughly saturated by the products of the media of mass communication. In such a world, what is done or happens in private is not done or has not happened at all, at least not in the fullest possible sense. — Theodore Dalrymple

Mass amateurization of publishing makes mass amateurization of filtering a forced move. — Clay Shirky

The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other. — Marya Mannes

Three important characteristics of propaganda are that ( l ) it is intentional and purposeful, designed to incite a particular reaction or action in the target audience; (2) it is advantageous to the propagandist or sender which is why advertising, public relations, and political campaigns are considered forms of propaganda; and (3) it is usually one-way and informational (as in a mass media campaign), as opposed to two-way and interactive communication. — Nancy Snow

People are self-absorbed. I think that the mass ability of communication now probably allows individuals to meet more self-absorbed individuals. It has certainly changed the way that people meet. — Nicholas Sparks

(Howard Dean) is proving that the Internet is a better, cheaper, and faster way to raise money than the old glad-handing of special interests and fat cat donors. He's also about to demonstrate that the Internet is a better place to spend campaign dollars than are TV stations and media time buys. The fact that Internet communications is free makes one-on-one retail politics more effective, more rapid, and less costly than mass communication. — Dick Morris

Without television and mass communication, that knowledge wouldn't exist. So I think it actually has the possibility of turning people into more understanding and more empathetic people. — John Warnock

Paul Revere's ride is perhaps the most famous historical example of a word-of-mouth epidemic. A piece of extraordinary news traveled a long distance in a very short time, mobilizing an entire region to arms. Not all word-of-mouth epidemics are this sensational, of course. But it is safe to say that word of mouth is-even in this age of mass communications and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns-still the most important form of human communication — Malcolm Gladwell

The mass communications that could enable our politics for good have instead turned it into a bland conglomeration of stinted opinion cloaked in the occasional media frenzy of blame or denial. — Sara Sheridan

You can't say A is made of B or vice versa. All mass is interaction. — Richard Feynman

Instantaneous and mass communication is the mother of mass naivety. Should we then lose hope? Is there any hope? But to lose hope is as dangerous as to nurture false hope. Where then can we find hope that is responsible? — Tariq Ramadan

The automobile, practical since 1906, was proceeding to disintegrate and stamp anew the pattern of communication, manners, and city life in the United States, by 1918; before long, men would begin to see that the automobile, and the mass production techniques which made its possible, could alter the national character and morality more thoroughly than could the most absolute of tyrants. As a mechanical Jacobin, it rivaled the dynamo. The productive process which made these vehicles cheap was still more subversive of the old ways than was the gasoline engine itself. — Russell Kirk

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection. — Eugenio Montale

Nowadays, truth is the greatest news. The mass media are the wholesalers, the peer groups, the retailers of the communications industry. — David Riesman

More than the divides of race, class, or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, our culture has been carved up into radically distinct, unbridgeable, and antagonistic entities that no longer speak the same language and cannot communicate. This is the divide between a literate, marginalized minority and those who have been consumed by an illiterate mass culture. — Chris Hedges

Because systems of mass communication can communicate only officially acceptable levels of reality, no one can know the extent of the secret unconscious life. No one in America can know what will happen. No one is in real control. — Allen Ginsberg

Reagan's easy slippage between movies and reality is synechdochic for a political culture increasingly impervious to distinctions between fiction and history. — Michael Rogin