Introduction to Journalism and Mass Communication
What it is
Unit 1 covers what mass communication is, how Indian print and broadcasting grew, the bodies and policies that shaped them, models and theories from Lasswell to McLuhan, Indian and Western philosophies of communication, and culture under globalisation. UGC-NET tests it by theorist–year matching and chronology.
Core concepts
Journalism and mass communication. Journalism gathers, verifies and disseminates news and views. Mass communication is institutional, largely one-way, public, rapid and transient, reaching large, heterogeneous, anonymous audiences (Charles Wright). Lasswell (1948) named surveillance, correlation and transmission of the social heritage; Wright added entertainment; Lazarsfeld and Merton (1948) added status conferral, norm enforcement and the narcotising dysfunction. Indian mass media coexist with folk media such as nautanki and yakshagana.
Print media and the Indian-language press. Hicky's Bengal Gazette (1780) was India's first newspaper. Udant Martand (Calcutta, 30 May 1826) was the first Hindi paper and Darpan (1832) the first Marathi. Amrita Bazar Patrika switched overnight to English to escape the Vernacular Press Act (1878); Tilak's Kesari (1881) served the national movement. Language papers then fed statehood: Orissa became the first linguistic province (1936); Potti Sriramulu's fatal fast (1952) produced Andhra State (1953) and hastened the States Reorganisation Act (1956); the Marathi press backed Samyukta Maharashtra until Bombay was split (1960).
Electronic media. The Indian Broadcasting Company opened in Bombay in 1927; the state service of 1930 was renamed All India Radio in 1936. Television began experimentally in Delhi on 15 September 1959, adding Krishi Darshan in 1967. SITE (1975–76) used NASA's ATS-6 to reach about 2,400 villages in six states. Doordarshan split from AIR in 1976 and went colour in 1982. The Prasar Bharati Act 1990 took effect in 1997. After private satellite TV arrived (1991–92), the Supreme Court held the airwaves to be public property (Cricket Association of Bengal, 1995).
Press Commissions, Press Council and media policy. The First Press Commission (1952–54, Justice G.S. Rajadhyaksha) recommended a Press Council and a Registrar of Newspapers. The Press Council (1966; 16 November is National Press Day), abolished in the Emergency and revived by the Press Council Act 1978, is a quasi-judicial body of a Chairman (by convention a retired Supreme Court judge) and 28 members; it can warn, admonish or censure but not punish. The Second Press Commission began under Justice P.K. Goswami (1978) and reported under Justice K.K. Mathew (1982). Broadcasting panels: Chanda (1966) and Verghese (1978, an autonomous Akash Bharati). As of 2026-10, the Press and Registration of Periodicals Act 2023 has replaced the PRB Act 1867.
Media criticism, literacy and education. Media criticism includes Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model (Manufacturing Consent, 1988), whose five news filters are ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak and anti-communism. Media literacy, in the 1992 Aspen definition, is the ability to access, analyse, evaluate and communicate messages in a variety of forms. Annie Besant's Adyar course (1920) is usually cited as India's first in journalism; the Indian Institute of Mass Communication dates from 1965.
Models of communication. Aristotle: speaker, speech, audience. Lasswell (1948): who says what in which channel to whom with what effect. Shannon–Weaver (1949): source, transmitter, channel, receiver, destination and noise, a linear model. Osgood–Schramm (1954) is circular, each party encoding, interpreting and decoding; Schramm added fields of experience. Newcomb's ABX (1953) models co-orientation; Gerbner (1956) adds perception; in Westley–MacLean (1957) A advocates, C is the gatekeeping channel role, B receives, X is the event field and f is feedback. Berlo's SMCR (1960) and Dance's helix (1967) followed. Lewin coined "gatekeeper" (1947); White's "Mr Gates" study (1950) applied it to news.
Normative theories and the critical tradition. Four Theories of the Press (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm, 1956): authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility (from the Hutchins Commission, 1947) and Soviet communist; McQuail added development and democratic-participant theory. Lazarsfeld (1941) split administrative research (empirical, effects-centred) from critical research on power and ownership: Adorno and Horkheimer's culture industry, Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding (dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings) and Schiller's political economy. Marxist approaches: for Marx and Engels "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas"; Gramsci's hegemony is consent won through culture; Althusser (1970) counts media among ideological state apparatuses.
Communication and change. Limited-effects research replaced the hypodermic needle with the two-step flow through opinion leaders (The People's Choice, 1944; Katz and Lazarsfeld's Personal Influence, 1955). Agricultural change rests on diffusion research, from Ryan and Gross's hybrid-corn study (1943) to Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (1962): adoption depends on relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability. Socio-cultural change: agenda-setting (McCombs and Shaw, 1972), cultivation (Gerbner), spiral of silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1974), knowledge gap (Tichenor, Donohue and Olien, 1970). Educational change: SITE and the UGC Countrywide Classroom (1984).
Technological determinism, McLuhan and information societies. Technological determinism makes the medium the cause of social change. Innis contrasted durable time-biased media (stone, clay, parchment) with portable space-biased ones (papyrus, paper). McLuhan gave the global village (The Gutenberg Galaxy, 1962) and, in Understanding Media (1964), "the medium is the message", media as extensions of man, and hot (high-definition, low-participation: radio, film, print) versus cool (television, telephone, speech) media. Critics call him untestable and blind to ownership; Raymond Williams (1974) argued that social intentions shape technologies. Information society: Bell's post-industrial society (1973), Castells's network society (1996), and UNESCO's plural, inclusive Towards Knowledge Societies (2005).
Indian, Western and Eastern traditions. Vedic communication was oral (shruti, then smriti), with Vak as a deity; Bhartrhari's Vakyapadiya gives sphota, meaning grasped as a whole. Bharata's Natyashastra founds rasa theory, relished by the sahridaya; sadharanikarana (universalisation) underlies the Sadharanikaran model of J.S. Yadava and Nirmala Mani Adhikary, where communication creates commonness. Plato distrusted rhetoric as flattery (Gorgias) and writing as weakening memory (Phaedrus); Aristotle's Rhetoric gives three proofs: ethos, pathos and logos. Manusmriti pairs truth with pleasant speech; Buddhism makes right speech (samma vaca) part of the Eightfold Path; Islam verifies Hadith through the isnad chain of narrators and values shura (consultation).
Media, culture and globalisation. Raymond Williams called culture ordinary, a whole way of life. Cultural imperialism (Schiller) sees one-way Western flows; Liebes and Katz found Dallas read differently across cultures; Robertson's glocalisation and Appadurai's five scapes (ethno-, media-, techno-, finance- and ideoscapes) describe disjunctive flows. In India the 1991 reforms (liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation) brought satellite TV, regional-language channels, foreign capital and consumer advertising.
Worked example
Arrange in chronological order. A. The name All India Radio is adopted. B. Hicky's Bengal Gazette appears. C. SITE begins. D. Udant Martand is published. E. The First Press Commission is constituted.
Options: (1) B, D, A, E, C; (2) D, B, A, E, C; (3) B, D, E, A, C; (4) B, A, D, E, C.
| Event | Year |
|---|---|
| B. Hicky's Bengal Gazette | 1780 |
| D. Udant Martand | 1826 |
| A. All India Radio named | 1936 |
| E. First Press Commission | 1952 |
| C. SITE begins | 1975 |
- 1780 comes first, so option 2 (opening with D, 1826) falls.
- Option 4 puts A (1936) before D (1826), so it falls.
- Options 1 and 3 differ on A and E: 1936 precedes 1952, so option 3 falls.
- Verify the chain: 1780 < 1826 < 1936 < 1952 < 1975.
Answer: option 1 (B, D, A, E, C).
Common traps
- Hicky's Bengal Gazette (1780) is India's first newspaper; Udant Martand (1826) is the first Hindi one.
- The Second Press Commission began under Goswami (1978) but reported under Mathew (1982); Rajadhyaksha chaired the first.
- For McLuhan, television is cool; radio, film and print are hot.
- Lewin coined "gatekeeper"; in Westley–MacLean the gatekeeping role is C, not B.
Speed technique
- Timeline anchors: 1780, 1826, 1881 Kesari, 1927 radio, 1936 AIR, 1959 TV, 1975 SITE, 1976 Doordarshan, 1997 Prasar Bharati.
- Models by year: Lasswell 1948, Shannon–Weaver 1949, Newcomb 1953, Osgood–Schramm 1954, Gerbner 1956, Westley–MacLean 1957, Berlo 1960.
- Hegemony, ideology or culture industry signals critical research; effects and surveys signal administrative research.
Check yourself
- Who chaired the First Press Commission of India?
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Justice G.S. Rajadhyaksha — constituted 1952, reported 1954. - In the Westley–MacLean model, what does C stand for?
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The channel or gatekeeping role — it selects messages and passes them to B. - Name the four theories in Four Theories of the Press (1956).
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Authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, Soviet communist — McQuail added two later. - Is television hot or cool for McLuhan?
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Cool — low definition, so it demands high participation. - Which three proofs did Aristotle set out in the Rhetoric?
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Ethos, pathos and logos — character, emotion and argument.
Try it: Introduction to Journalism and Mass Communication questions
Real questions from the NET Mass Comm. bank on exactly this skill. Pick an answer to see the full solution — the intuition, the worked steps, the faster methods and the traps.
In the Westley–MacLean model (1957), the element labelled C stands for:
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option D
In Westley–MacLean, A is the advocate role, B the receiving or behavioural system role, X the field of events, f the feedback, and C the channel role.
C acts as the gatekeeper: it selects among the Xs and the messages of A and passes a selection on to B, which is why journalists and editors are placed at C.
So C stands for the channel or gatekeeping role, option D.
The term "gatekeeper", later applied to the selection of news, was coined by:
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option B
Kurt Lewin, the social psychologist, coined the term in 1947 while studying how food reaches a family's table through channels controlled by 'gatekeepers'.
David Manning White applied the idea to news in his 1950 'Mr Gates' study of a wire editor's choices.
So the term gatekeeper was coined by Kurt Lewin, option B.
In Bhartrhari's Vakyapadiya, the concept of sphota refers to:
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option C
Bhartrhari's Vakyapadiya, a work of Indian philosophy of language, holds that meaning is not assembled sound by sound but flashes forth as a whole; that whole is sphota.
Rasa relished by the sahridaya comes from Bharata's Natyashastra, sadharanikarana is universalisation, and shruti is revealed knowledge transmitted by hearing.
So sphota is meaning grasped as an indivisible whole, option C.
Match the concepts in List – I with their originators in List – II and choose the correct answer from the options. List – I (Concept) | List – II (Originator) --- | --- (a) Two-step flow of communication | (i) Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (b) Knowledge gap hypothesis | (ii) Stuart Hall (c) Encoding/decoding with dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings | (iii) Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (d) Culture industry | (iv) Tichenor, Donohue and Olien
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Answer: option B
The two-step flow came out of The People's Choice (1944) by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (a – iii), and the knowledge gap hypothesis from Tichenor, Donohue and Olien in 1970 (b – iv).
Stuart Hall proposed encoding/decoding with dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings (c – ii), and Adorno and Horkheimer coined the culture industry (d – i).
So matching List I, from "Two-step flow of communication", gives a – iii, b – iv, c – ii, d – i, option B.
Arrange the following in chronological order: I. The Indian Broadcasting Company opens in Bombay II. Doordarshan is separated from All India Radio III. Experimental television begins in Delhi IV. Krishi Darshan is launched V. The Prasar Bharati Act takes effect Choose the correct answer from the options.
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option C
Indian Broadcasting Company: 1927. Experimental television in Delhi: 15 September 1959. Krishi Darshan: 1967. Doordarshan separated from AIR: 1976. Prasar Bharati Act takes effect: 1997.
In numeral order that is I, III, IV, II, V.
So the order from the Indian Broadcasting Company (1927) to Prasar Bharati (1997) is I, III, IV, II, V, option C.
Answer above — every one shows its working.