Reverberation Effect in Current Mass Communication

Download paper
Pavel V. Balditsyn

Doctor of Philology, Professor at the Chair of Foreign Journalism and Literature, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

e-mail: pbalditsyn@gmail.com

Section: Discussion

Contemporary mass communication is characterized by multiple repetitions of any information, so it may be called the reverberation effect (RE). The effect of reverberation may be traced on different levels of mass communication: in general flow of news, in any news agency and medium, in serial and chain news, even in a single story. Data sources are few — usually one or two, the rest of mass media replicate and reproduce initial news. Reverb determines structure and strategy of mass media in Internet: any web site and mass medium contains cross references on other media; news articles usually have references to previous news; reactions, opinions, and comments prevail over proper news in contemporary flow of information.

Keywords: reverberation, mass communication, reflection, information stream