CONSENSUS AND MASS COMMUNICATION.

This article focuses on consensus and mass communication. Before exploring the nature and conditions of consensus, it seems appropriate to indicate the salient characteristics of mass societies. As one looks back upon previous social aggregations, such as those of the ancient kingdoms, or at their greatest extent the Roman Empire, one wonders how, given the primitive communications that obtained, such impressive numbers and territories could be held together under a common regime over any considerable span of time. Since one shall speak of the society as mass society and of the communication that it involves as mass communication, it be hooves to depict the characteristics of the mass. Its most obvious trait is that it involves great numbers, in contradistinction to the smaller aggregates with which people have become familiar through the study of primitive life and earlier historical forms of human association. Second, and again, almost by definition, it consists of aggregates of men widely dispersed over the lace of the earth, as distinguished from the compact local groups of former periods.