The Mass Media Institution

Despite changing technology, the mass media phenomenon persist within the framework of the mass media institution. This refers broadly to the set of media organization and activities, together with their own formal or informal rules of operation and sometimes legal and policy requirements set by the society. These respect the expectation of the public as a whole and of other social institutions (such as politics, governments, law, religion, economics and religion). Media institutions have developed gradually around the key activities of publication and wide dissemination of information and culture. they also overlap with other institutions, especially as these expand their public communication activities. Media institutions are internally segmented according to type of technology (print, film, television, etc.) And often within each type (such as national versus local press or broadcasting). They also change over time and differ from one country another. Even so, there are several typical defining features, additional to the central activity of producing and distributing ‘knowledge’ (information, ideas, culture) on behalf of those who want to communicate and its response to individual and collective demand. The main features are as follows.

·       The media institutions is located in the ‘public sphere’, meaning especially that it is open in principle to all as receivers and senders; the media deals with public matter for publics purposes – especially with issue on which publics opinion can be expected to form; the media are answerable for their activities to the wider society (accountability take place via laws, regulations and pressures from state and society).

·       By virtue of their main publishing activity on behalf of members of a society, the media are institutionally  endowed with a large degree of freedom of economics, political and cultural actors.

·       The media institutions is formally powerless (there is a logical relation between this absence of power and media freedom).

·       Participation in the media institutions is voluntary and without social obligation; there is a strong association between media use and leisure time and a dissociation from work and duty.