Distinction Between Mass Communication And journalism -By Suleiman Ahmed

In today’s communication landscape, mass communication and journalism are often used interchangeably, particularly by those who have little or no knowledge of both fields. This misconception leads to questions about their definitions, similarities and distinction. While both are components of the media, they represent distinct concepts. Mass communication involves reaching diverse audiences through various media channels, such as radio, television, newspapers, websites, and social media. While, journalism is a specific practice within mass communication focused on gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information.

According to Little John and Foss mass communication is a “process whereby media organisation produces and transmit messages to large public and the process by which those messages are sought, used, understood and influence by audience”. while Mcquail state that mass communication is “only one of the process of communication operating at the society wide level, readily identified by its institutional characteristics”. Its involves the creation, transmission, receiving, and analysing of messages through the used of mass media.

The aimed of mass communication is to share information to the wider audience and influence societal norms, behaviour and attitudes. It has a wider audience and cover various topics like entertainment, education, advertising, public relations etc. mass communication content are informative, educative, persuasive or entertainment. they are mostly designed to captured attention, encourage specific action or elicit emotional response. A professional in the fields of mass communication can work in various industries raging from entertainment, business, politics, health, agriculture, by creating content that will encourage the audience and serving specific objective. The fields of mass communication has a broad spectrum of mediums which include television, radio, newspapers, magazine.

In contrast, journalism is a sub-set in the fields of mass communication. it focuses mainly on gathering, and reporting news about events, issues and topics that are of interest to the people. The united nation education, scientific and cultural organisation (UNESCO) defined journalism as the “works journalist, media workers and social media producer’s who gather, process and distribute news and related content”. while a journalist Robert Niles sees journalism as a “form of writing that tells people about things that really happened, but that they might not have known about already”. journalism seek to reports the truth, and provide accurate, fair and thorough events. it provide analysis, uncovered fact, and offered insights in to relevant stories.

Unlike mass communication, journalism encouraged critical thinking and discussion among their readers, listeners or viewers. It’s guided by a strong ethical guideline that aimed at ensuring credibility, objectivity and accountability. journalism is mostly involved in reporting, editing, and producing news content for media organisation such as radio, television, newspaper, magazine and other news platform.

In conclusion, while mass communication and journalism are interconnected, they belonged to distinct fields and stand for difference objective. Mass communication serve a wider purpose by Engaging heterogeneous audience through the used of various media to convey messages. While, journalism in order hand, is a discipline that is dedicated to accurate reporting of fact, and information. journalism play crucial role in informing the public and forster democratic participation.