Popular Culture and Mass Media

The study of mass media and mass culture is now a topic that has really begun to be study into. With the help of inventions such as the radio and television, a social and culture world was born full of mass media and mass communication, and has created the popular culture we live today. In the textbook, Mass Media/Mass Culture, An Introduction, Fifth Edition, the writers begin to go into the depth of the modern Americans culture and how that has been shaped by mass media and mass communication.  Culture as they say in textbook is, "...everything the occurs in society." ( Wilson-Wilson) In this modern age, our culture has been altered and changed by mass media. They talk about popular culture or pop culture as "the culture of everyone in a society." (Wilson-Wilson) Everyone in this new society is directly related to mass media. We have begun to see how popular culture is becoming mixed up with mass media and mass communication, to the point where it is hard to distinct the three. "Most of today's popular culture is mass-produced and is disseminated through the mass media." (Wilson-Wilson)

We have now come up with the term Mass Culture which is used to refer a popular culture created by and through mass media. But we must not forget all this advanced technology is not the only one creating the popular culture, but mass media is changing communication, a big part of pop culture. This was the other large topic spoken about in the first chapter of the textbook, the effect of mass communication, like news, upon our society. What we are begin told as a culture, and when and how we see what we are begin told through mass communication, effects how we think as a mass culture.  News channels air certain news stories at certain times to change a audiences attitudes. Commercials and merchandise within movies and videos help the growth of the certain elements to catch on in our mass culture. This is what is called mass communication, "...a process whereby professional communicators use technological devices to share messages over great distances to influence large audiences." (Wilson-Wilson) Very little do we realize how mass media has become part of our society and has created our popular culture through not only the news but through other methods like the Internet, to create a complex society balanced on the modern humans need for technology to the point where Culture, Popular Culture, Mass Communication and Mass media, have all become part of our society to form Mass culture.