mass media

noun

plural of mass medium

: forms of communication designed to reach many people : the newspapers, radio and television stations, websites, etc., through which information is communicated to the public

—used in singular or plural constructions

The twentieth century had been dominated by media that delivered the same material to millions of people at the same time—radio and newspapers, movies and television. These were the kinds of one-to-many, top-down mass media that Orwell's Big Brother had used to stay in power. Now, however, Americans were catching sight of the internet. They believed that it would do what earlier media could not: it would allow people to speak for themselves, directly to one another, around the world.

—Fred Turner

… the country had a really robust history of regulating media in the public interest, a really strong conviction that mass media were so important to—not just the economy—but to politics.

—Gary Gerstle

In countries where mass media information is unreliable or heavily controlled, social networking sites serve to communicate the truth.

—Hitoshi Mitomo

Film festivals and Hollywood movie studios alike have been racing to keep up with the trends in mass media, where cell phones, video games, and subscription streaming services are changing the ways consumers engage with screens and stories.

—Noel Murray

Because of these changes in mass media and also the emergence of radio, this was the first time when the entire country could really obsess together over a scandal out of Washington, D.C., in nearly real time following each day's developments.

—Carolyn Kellogg

also : the information or content so communicated

In her 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argued that a tyrannical regime, wielding bureaucracy and mass media, could achieve permanence by conscripting the citizenry's consciousness.

—George Will

There were various advantages in point-to-point communication—particularly as new forms of transportation arose—but radio also came to be seen as a way to transmit mass media.

—Vince Guerrieri

Examples of mass media in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The images of Mangione belong to a genealogy of crime drama that extends back to the nineteenth century, a decisive period of evolution for both law enforcement and mass media. —Sarah C. Schaefer, Artforum, 1 Mar. 2025

No recent movie reflects so substantially the aesthetic of Antonioni, evoking a world under the influence of mass media. —Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2025

There is also an underlying appreciation for Black political consciousness and fluidity, a welcome contrast to the mass media depiction of a monolithic voting bloc. —Ken Makin, The Christian Science Monitor, 16 Jan. 2025

Trump and Musk own social media platforms Truth Social and X, respectively, both of which play a major role in media and information circulation as Americans' trust in mass media has dropped to record-low numbers. —Ross Rosenfeld, Newsweek, 26 Feb. 2025

State of play: U.S. trust in mass media hit a historic low last year, and Monday's report echoes low ratings of TV and newspaper reporters. —April Rubin, Axios, 13 Jan. 2025

Thompson: Most surprising has been the antipathy of the mass media. —IEEE Spectrum, 18 Dec. 2024

In these immensely enjoyable and unpredictable montages, Coover tries to capture the entirety of the 1950s, depicting the decade as a battle between Uncle Sam (the United States) and the Phantom (Soviet communism), one that is waged on a landscape of mass media and pop culture. —Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times, 27 Dec. 2024

As a follow-up, Rise moves the 18th-century setting of the original into the 20th century, bringing the mysterious, powerful idol to the attention of both academic scientists and mass media executives who seek to exploit its mind-altering powers. —Ars Technica, 22 Dec. 2024

Rhymes for mass media

• comedia
• commedia
• cyclopaedia
• cyclopedia
• hypermedia
• intermedia
• multimedia
• encyclopaedia
• encyclopedia