Demassification

Demassification. According to dictionary.com, demassification is to cause to be less centralized. But I think in order to really understand what demassification really is, you must be familiar with what is classified as a mass media. 
   
To be a mass media, a medium must fill these 3 criteria: 

1. You must have the potential to reach a mass audience. 
2. Must you some form of technology. (Remember books and magazines use technological tools too.)  But something has to be going on so that it can transmit.
3. You cannot receive immediate feedback (ie: clapping, body language.) This is because the audience is on the other side of the transmission.

Now that you understand what a mass media is, we can begin to discuss demassification. Understand this: demassification does not just happen to one company or conglomerate, it happens to an entire medium. All the magazines. All TV stations. All the radio channels. Next, demassification happens when a medium loses one of the following: audience or advertising. Because shortly after you lose one, you lose the other. So once those are lost you are forced to demassify. That's right, forced. A medium doesn't want to demassify. If you're reaching a broad audience, why would you want to narrow it? You wouldn't. Demassification forces the medium to target specific, "niche" audiences. They are smaller so their needs must be specifically catered to. 

So why do mediums lose advertisers and audiences? Easy. Something bigger and better comes along to take them away. Magazines and radio were demassified by TV, which in  turn was demassified by the internet. I know, I'm leaving out books, newspapers, and the internet. Books were technically never demassified because they never really had to be. I mean, they started off being about religion and keeping records, but branched off naturally. Speaking of, the internet, by nature was already demassified. Similar to books, computers were once just used to spread military information, but the internet is different. Websites are designed to separately and specifically cater to the needs of the  individual. Ergo, the process of demassification never really needed happen.

Then what about newspapers, are they demassified? Yes and no. While newspapers have differentiated themselves into categories, they haven't started to fully demassify. There are newspapers like The Wall Street Journal which is geared toward businesspeople. They tell the news, but with a twist that keys in stockbrokers and investors. Also you have unbiased newspapers, which can lean either right (conservative/Republican) or left (liberal/Democratic.) But why are there still clear-cut sections to the news? (ie: features, sports, metro, comics, etc.)

That's what I think we should focus on in class, because it is clear that the lack of demassification is causing monetary issues.