ABSTRACT
All visual artefacts can be ranked according to a good-to-bad scale of aesthetic value, but in terms of the hierarchical schema high/middle/low it has been customary to assign the fine arts to the top and the mass media to the bottom. Historically, the concept of fine art became associated with particular art forms - namely painting, sculpture and architecture - there is nothing intrinsic to the practices, materials and media of these arts which makes them 'fine'. The expression 'mass media' denotes certain modern systems of communication and distribution which 'mediate' between relatively small, specialized groups of cultural producers and very large numbers of cultural consumers. Since the advent of industrialization, social scientists have increasingly preferred the concept of 'the masses' to 'the people', hence 'mass culture/media/society'. A characteristic common to the mass media is the use of machines such as cameras, projectors, printing presses, computers and satellites to record, edit, replicate and disseminate images and information.
