Mass Media
 When we speak about massmedia, we speak about press, TV, radio and the Internet.
They all bring information to mass/large audiences.
 All people in the world are curious; want to be informed about everything. That is why
they:
 read newspapers
 listen to the radio
 watch TV
 browse the WEB
Television
 Is a good medium for getting information from all the world.
 Watching TV is the most popular hobby in most countries in Europe+ America.
 + Benefits:
- it is educating, relaxing, entertaining, making sports, arts etc. more popular
 - Drawbacks:
it can make us passive ( we don’t have to think, to have our own
opinion )
it encourages us to buy things that we don’t need
it takes us away from activities ( reading, sports, conversation,
meeting friends)
it gives a false picture of society ( people watching too much TV are
more afraid of crime and they think there is more crime than there
really is )
it harms our eyes
family life suffers: we communicate less with parents, siblings...
it also influences aggressiveness
Things to watch on TV:
films, new broadcasts, news, documentary programmes, science programmes, discussion or
current affairs, commentaries on them, panel discussions, interviews with prominent people,
competitions showing the knowledge of the participants, programmes for children,
programmes of general interest, light entertainment, sport commentaries…
Newspapers
 There are 2 types of newspapers- serious and tabloid
 Serious = quality, broadsheet papers:
 they are too big (difficult to hold and read)
 there are written in a serious manner
 they are for intellectuals, students, sophisticated readers, people connected
with finance, business, art, politics
 they are with only a few photos, illustrations (black and white)
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they provide : quality reporting, accurate, honest, reliable news
they have high reputation
they are thick
e.g. The Dailies= The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Daily
Telegraph, The Financial Times
 Tabloids= popular paper
 they are less expensive, half the size of the broadsheet (easy to hold and read)
 they have large colour photos, bold letters, big headlines, not much text
 they contain human interest stories, scandals, gossips, distorted news, slander,
games, competitions
 they are about famous people, ordinary people in extraordinary situations;
furniture, fashion, pictures of naked girls, stories of film stars, crimes, lawcourt trials, paparazzi pictures
 they address the lower classes
 The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Express, The Sun, The Star,
Today
 Both in GB and the USA the freedom of press to publish whatever it wants, without the
Government interfering, is considered very important and the right to people’s privacy is
truly observed
 At present most newspapers are available on the Internet but most people still prefer to
read the printed version
 Magazines aren´t daily, are widely read by people (some of them are aimed at women,
men, young people, sportsmen, or they specialize on computers, fashion, medicine,
biology...)
Internet
 The Internet is probably one of the most important inventions of recent time. It started in
the 1960’s when some scientists were asked to design a network of computers like a
spider’s web that would work even after a nuclear attack. This was a military project and it
was called ARPANET. It was very complicated to use.
 In 1989 Tim Berners-lee came up with the idea of using links to go from one page to
another, and the World Wide Web was born. Nowadays the Internet is used for business,
news, research, and of course millions of email messages are sent every day.
 Internet is basically millions of computers that are linked by telephone line.
 They use programming language called html, which allows pictures and words to appear
on computer screens.
 The internet is perhaps the greatest invention of communicating (e-mails, chat rooms, face
book…), entertainment (games, music, videos…), shopping on-line, getting
information, getting jobs, educating, advertising, etc.
 There are some dangers with surfing the net. A few adults use chat rooms on the net to
make friends with young people, because they want to hurt them.
 Over 500 million people are online worldwide.