Persuading the Public: The Commercial Function of Mass Communication

Author: Zhang Hao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: There's no free lunch in the world. Astute media institutions and advertisers will not give away media content that embodies their hard work and money to strangers for nothing. Mass communication necessarily achieves commercial benefits that can support its investments and exceed its costs. In addition to directly charging the public for purchasing media content (such as pay TV channels, newspapers, magazines, etc.), mass communicators also obtain financial returns from the public through a commercial exchange system!
Authors either study the relationship between media and business, evaluate the value of media in the process of social development, focus on the relationship and interaction between media, enterprise construction, and economic development, or explore the unique capabilities of images in the era of visual culture, examine the role of cultural inheritance in television media, or focus on the media of "fashion," tracking their emergence and development trajectories, conducting research nearly in sync. In short, their features lie in broad perspectives, active thinking, and novel angles. Their knowledge structures differ greatly from those of previous generations, creating a "generation gap" in their research within the field of social sciences.