Pre-modern masses could only be reached through personal relational networks.
Evidence
Certainly until recent times most ordinary men and women stood outside of and were inaccessible to and uninterested in communications that were mechanically reproduced beyond the circle of village and kin. Ordinary people could not be easily gathered together, held still, and sat down for an appeal, advertisement, advice, or admonition. To reach them one had to work through elaborate networks of personal relations: churches, political parties, neighbor- hoods, ethnic societies. The instruments of communication were expensive and distant and, for most people, uninteresting and irrelevant. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 115
Categorization
- QUESTION: Implication: mass media’s power is a recent, contingent achievement, not a natural extension of older communication.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 115
- XREF: connects to: Pre-modern trust is anchored in local place rather than abstract systems. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 245
Broader Connections
- Pre-modern trust is anchored in local place rather than abstract systems.
#expands(0.78) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 245