Mass Media In The 19th Century

The Mass Media has experienced numerous changes in the last two centuries. It has faced appreciation as well as criticism from the masses. The development of Mass Media has benefitted the audience by causing awareness on vast variety of topics but simultaneously it aroused many fears among people. The era of the nineteenth century has a lot of importance as it is also known as the era of Industrialization, in which many people migrated from rural areas to urban areas. Newspapers started getting sold at comparatively cheaper rates among the new rural immigrants. Except for some positive theorists, the others were not pleased with the idea of Industrialization as they thought it destroyed peace and unity. Moreover, they started blaming the Media i.e. the Newspapers, for causing lethal criticism which resulted in political instability and destruction of cultural norms and values. Many people feared these new changes caused by the emerging media because they wanted to maintain old political and social order. The emergence of Penny Press (1830’s) and Yellow Journalism (1890’s) also became a target of elite class, who believed that the two were restricting the flourishment of the business and politics. These industries dealt with less socially aware audiences by exaggerating and dramatizing small issues into bigger ones. The newspapers were full about the Government being immoral and corrupt. They also highlighted how unfairly the factory workers were treated. According to people,