Understanding Mass Media: Journalism, Language, and Genres

Posted on Mar 1, 2025 in Arts and Humanities

Mass Media: An Overview

Mass media (television, radio, print, internet) are a phenomenon of great influence today, frequently visited by all. The press has always existed, but the invention of the linotype started a golden age, now also present on the internet.

Types of Mass Media

  • Television: Broadcasts news previously published in videotape form, using images and signs.
  • Radio: Uses language codes and sound, allowing instant transmission of live events with simple language.
  • Newspapers and Magazines: Use paper or electronic media, promoting reflection and analysis through reading.
  • Internet: Revolutionized the concept of media, offering access to all the possibilities listed above on websites.

Journalistic Language

The language used by the media usually corresponds to colloquial speech, but sometimes includes slang and literary styles. Style manuals are available to prevent misuse of language, given its significant influence on the audience.

Features of Journalistic Language

  1. Conciseness: Transmitting a large volume of information in a limited space and time.
  2. Strategic Content Arrangement: Capturing the reader’s or listener’s attention by introducing key data of interest as headlines.
  3. Simple Syntax and Objectivity: Using a logical order, news should be treated objectively and easily, except in opinion pieces.
  4. Influence of Other Languages: Incorporating elements from English and other political or literary speeches.
  5. Tendency Towards Cliches: The urgency of news reporting often leads to the use of cliches for conciseness.

Morphosyntactic Characteristics

  1. Tendency to place the subject at the end of the sentence.
  2. Propensity for elongated sentences through verbal periphrasis, prepositional phrases, conjunctive expressions, redundant expressions, apposition, and explanatory clauses.
  3. Use of Gallicisms (from France) and Anglicisms (from England) morphosyntactically (incorrectly).
  4. Mixed indirect styles.
  5. Frequent direct and passive employment.

Lexical Features

Includes foreign words, neologisms, semantic shifts, words formed by standard procedures (derivation, composition, spelling, combination), use of abbreviations and acronyms, and euphemisms.

Journalistic Genres

Journalism reports on reality, interprets it, and uses mechanisms of persuasion and manipulation. The selection of news, its length, and placement constitute mechanisms of persuasion and manipulation. The sender’s intent and the intended effects on the receiver determine the choice of genre.

Informative Subgenres

  1. News: The main subgenre, exposing current and interesting facts issued on radio, TV, or print, covering political, economic, and social events. The story structure includes:
    • Headlines: (Sub-headline, title, and subtitle) are crucial for attracting readers and previewing events.
    • Summary: The first paragraph, accumulating the most important facts, often in a different font or bold.
    • Body: Explains the situation, including background, consequences, and verbal reactions.
  2. Feature: Informative journalism requiring intensive research and documentation, focusing on interrelated events occurring at different times.
  3. Interview: Alternates statements by the interviewee with the reporter’s description, biographical data, and comments.

Opinion Subgenres

Aim to interpret and evaluate current events, characterized by subjectivity, personalization, connotative language, and expressive appeal.

  1. Article: Exposes personal opinions about reality, including subtypes like columns, open forums, comments, and article-tests. Signed by the author.
  2. Column: Similar to an article but more concentrated, with a fixed amount of space. Signed by the author.
  3. Editorial: Represents the newspaper’s point of view on an event or situation, reflecting on current affairs. Not signed.