This Study is not a miniature textbook, the sociology of mass communication is too new and complex to be condensed into a hundred or so pages of textbook lessons. Rather, the book is intended as an introduction to this new field. Each chapter presents to the reader a major subdivision of the field, at various levels of detail and selectivity. The book begins with a challenge; after exploring those characteristics that distinguish mass communications from other forms, it invites the reader to apply one sociological orientation functional analysis to the determination of their social effects.