What Is The Role Of Mass Media In The 1920's

689 Words2 Pages

Mass media and entertainment is what brought the name “The Roaring Twenties”, and it helped the progress american exceptionalism. Media was relevant to all people during this time, because there were new and useful technologies being introduced. One of the popular forms of media at this time, was the radio. Radios were first sold as cheap sets left over from World War I, but it would soon spread across the nation as a massive entertainment business. For a large amount of Americans, specifically in small towns, radio provided an exciting link to the larger areas of consumption (Faragher, John Mack). It was a massive help, because it drew the nation together by bringing news, entertainment, and advertisements to more than 10 million households …show more content…

Newspapers, and magazines both helped people stay and touch, and know what’s going on around them. The shift from print-based journalism to electronic media began in the 1920s. Competition between newspapers and radio was minimal, because the latter was not yet an effective news medium ("History of American Journalism”). A lot of the newspapers gave foreign and domestic news weekly. They gave more diversity by featuring poetry and religious sections, since most writers had those views. There was a new way of presenting newspapers during this era, and that was the tabloid format. Tabloids were half the size of a regular newspaper, and they were soon to be known as magazines. Some of the popular magazines were Reader's Digest, Time, Vanity Fair, and even Vogue. Magazines like Time were informational magazines with detailed current events, while magazines like Vogue set fashion trends ("Mass Media”). These forms of media were essential to the nation being open to new ideas, and knowledgeable to everything that was …show more content…

Filmmaking began in 1908, but as soon as the 1920’s hit, it was recognized as a widely known pursuit that took hold of the American people "The Rise of Hollywood and the Arrival of Sound”). Films were shown in just black and white, and no sound. Around the late 1920’s, a new technology was included into film: sound. Theodore Case developed this sound-on-film system, which were then called “talkies”. The success inspired other studios to produce competing newsreels, and became popular enough to have them be shown in theaters in major cities around the country ("History of American

Open Document