BAZA ZNANJA

Kurs: - Intermediate

Modul: Adverbs

Autor: prof. Gordana Matorkić

Naziv jedinice: Communication

COMMUNICATION

When Columbus finally landed in the New World in October 1492, it took six months for people in the old world to hear about it. But those who heard about it then did not quite understand exactly where he had been – ironically enough, not even Columbus himself knew.

            When in July 1969 man made his first landing on the moon, live radio and television broadcasts transmitted within seconds the historic event into hundreds of millions of homes all over the world and made us all into armchair witnesses of man’s greatest venture to date. Such is the change mass communications have vigorously brought about in the 20th century.

            We can date the beginning of mass communication with the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1450. As motion pictures, radio and television came along at the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, the time lag between the occurrence of an event and the news of it reaching the public was greatly reduced.

            The communication process has three basic elements: the sender, the message and the receiver. The sender speaks, writes, shows pictures or gestures to the receiver who may be listening, reading or watching. Whereas in simple face-to-face communication the receiver may respond at any time by sending back his own message, in mass communication through the mass media the response from millions of receivers is small and slow – an occasional letter to the editor or a telephone call to the TV station; or a receiver may react by turning off the radio or TV set or by canceling his newspaper subscription. Because of this, the mass media constitute mainly a one-way channel of information that is difficult to control and potentially dangerous for a free exchange of opinions.