Communication Ecosystem Contexts: From Mass Audiences to Mass Messages

Abstract

Mass media used to have ‘mass audiences’. Nowadays, and with the emergence of the Internet and other new media technologies, messages themselves have turned into ‘mass’. These ‘mass messages’ have different densities, varieties, and dynamics in different societies and different countries. Accordingly, in this paper, we take an ecological perspective and resemble mass messages to living organisms that form ‘communication eco-systems’. We then introduce ‘communication ecosystem context’ as a new umbrella concept encompassing various previously known communication contexts. Based upon historical evidences, communication ecosystem contexts are classification into long-term and short-term, which can be formed normally, forcefully, or due to turn of certain events. In this paper the impacts of communication ecosystem contexts on message perception and interpretation have been studied primarily in Iran, and comparison have been made with five different communication ecosystems of Germany, UK, Australia, USA and Canada.