The aim of this article is to set out the approximate sequent of development of the present-day set of mass media – to indicate major turning points and to tell briefly something of the circumstances of time and place in which different media acquired their publics definitions in the sense of their perceived utility on role in society. These definitions have tended to form early in the history of any given medium and to have become ‘fixed’ by circumstances as much as by intrinsic properties as means of communication. As time has passed, definitions has also changed, especially by becoming more ‘complex’ and acquiring more ‘options’, so that it eventually becomes difficult to speak of a single, universally current and consistent definition of a medium.
In summarizing the history and the characteristic of different media, as a further step typifying mass communication, a convergence on an original Western (European) form tends to be assumed. This does some violence to the diversity of media in the world, but can also be justified on grounds of the similarity of many global media phenomena.
In the history of mass media we deal with four main elements: a technology; the political, social, economic and cultural situation of a society; a set of activities, functions or needs; and people – especially as formed into groups, classes or interests. These four elements have interacted in different ways and with different order of primacy, sometimes one seeming to be the driving force or precipitating factor, sometimes another.
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