differentiate b/w private communication and public communication
Answers
In his 1956 book The Power Elite the American sociologist C. Wright Mills sketched the difference between a public and a mass society. He thought this difference could best be understood in terms of the characteristic forms of communication found in each.
The archetype of public communication is a conversation between equals. In a public society ‘virtually as many people express opinions as receive them’ and ‘communications are so organized that there is a chance immediately and effectively to answer any opinion expressed in public’. Citizens can also translate its opinions into effective action – the public can change policy as its opinions change. Mills adds that in a public society citizens can respond to what they are told without fear of reprisal. Furthermore they can be secure in the knowledge that ‘no agent of formal authority moves among the autonomous public’.
The archetype of mass communication is a broadcast that delivers one unanswerable voice to millions of listeners. There is little or no scope for individuals to answer back to the messages they receive. Indeed in a mass society perfectly realized even private dissent carries penalties and open disagreement is forbidden. There is certainly no way that the inhabitants of a mass society can translate their opinions into politically effective action. Not only that, ‘the public is terrified into uniformity by the infiltration of informers and the universalization of suspicion’.