👉Communicative area: exploring and explaining what
mass media is
👉Active vocabulary: the (mass) media, multimedia, reach,
outreach, influence, credibility
2. Which media do you use most?
3. What do you mainly get from these media?
4. How do media affect your daily activities?
5. Which media do you find most influential or interesting?
6. How media has changed your way of communicating?
Quiz created by Veronika Bebekh with GoConqr
Mass media is used to communicate ideas, thoughts, or to inform people about different events and news in all spheres of life. Transmitting information is possible with the use of modern means of communication. Throughout history means of communication appeared as a result of advancing technologies, from pigeon post thousands of years ago to print and to the greatest inventions of the 19th – 21st centuries, such as the telegraph and the telephone, the radio and TV, text messaging and the Internet.
Read the text about mass media and explain
the meaning of the words in italics.
The Internet revolutionised our life. It appeared in the 1970s in the United States, and it became known and available to general public in the early 1990s. At the beginning of 2020, about 4.5 billion, which is more than a half of the world’s population, were Internet users. The Internet gave rise to the development of new forms of distance communication: LinkedIn – 2002, MySpace – 2003, Facebook – 2004, YouTube – 2005, Twitter – 2006, Instagram – 2010, Zoom Video Communications – 2011. In 2020 Zoom’s daily online meetings participants were over 300 million.
It’s obvious that the 21st century saw a real boom in developing various social networks, podcasts, blogs and vlogs, and a variety of platforms for distance learning, both national and international. These new forms of communication make it 127 possible for any person in the world to create their own content and place it on different websites, including their own.
Despite huge amounts of information on the Internet, the role of traditional mass media is still significant in influencing people’s minds and behaviour. At the same time, the mass media have adapted to the requirements of the new reality and every newspaper, radio station or TV channel have moved their presence to the Internet to increase their outreach through web sites, apps and podcasts. Online newspapers take advantage of multimedia possibilities, including not only images, but audios and videos as well.
At the core of the media is storytelling. Stories are told by correspondents, journalists, writers, show masters and show guests, scientists, podcast hosts, etc. Though mass media has interactive formats, such as interviews, talk shows, commenting on pieces of news, videos, social network posts, it is the author of the story who influences the minds of readers or listeners most of all. So, credibility becomes issue number one in mass media, which is two-sided: credibility of the source of information, and credibility of the storyteller.
1. What is the main purpose of mass media?
2. How has the means of communication evolved throughout history?
3. Name some of the major inventions of the 19th to 21st centuries that improved communication.
4. When did the Internet appear, and when did it become accessible to the general public?
5. Approximately how many people were Internet users worldwide at the beginning of 2020?
6. Can you list some online platforms that emerged in the early 2000s?
7. How many people participated in Zoom’s daily online meetings in 2020?
8. What new forms of communication have developed in the 21st century?
9. How do social networks and online platforms affect content creation?
10. Despite the abundance of information on the Internet, why does traditional mass media still hold significance?
11. How have traditional mass media adapted to the digital age?
12. What multimedia possibilities do online newspapers use?
13. Who are the main storytellers in the media according to the text?
14. What formats of interaction are mentioned as part of mass media?
15. Why is credibility considered the most important issue in mass media?
What is your favourite media? Why? Say 10–12 sentences
to answer this question.
