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| “For most adults,…the mass media constitute the only advanced education they receive after high school or college. It is obvious that the media offer every American a continuous course in modern world history. But it is not so obvious, perhaps, that the very basics of community living come to us through the media: births, weddings, deaths, weather reports, traffic accidents, crimes, sales, elections” [1].
Not only does media constitute the basis for community, it also constitutes the basis for democracy. Without it,
“Citizens would learn of new legislation only after it passed, and then only if they visited their representative in Washington. Incumbents would probably serve for life, because no challenger could make himself known to the electorate. Corruption would go largely unchecked. News of foreign affairs would remain the monopoly of the President and his State Department. And on the local level, mayors would be free to run their cities as personal fiefdoms” [1].
Information is power. Without the media to deliver the information, people would be powerless.
Media, plural for medium, is a means for carrying a piece of information from one person to someone else. A medium can be just about anything. It could be a piece of paper carrying a love note from one person to another in a class, a book carrying a story that an author wrote to share with anyone who wanted to read it, or a television broadcast enabling a producer to air his program to whoever wishes to watch.
Each medium has its own defining characteristics, its own functions, and its own limitations. A newspaper, for instance, is always expressed visually. A radio, on the other hand is always expressed aurally. Radio may have a larger distribution than a newspaper, but because of the programs radio generally contains, it is often seen as much less credible. These are just a few of the differences and limitations that are characteristic of different kinds of mediums. And such differences, expressed in the list below, give clues as to how to design the spaces in which the several types of media will be contained, displayed, and expressed.
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