A compilation of volume Introductions. THE study of mass communication has early origins in the study of the newspaper press as a phenomenon of modern society in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, but it became firmly established as a branch of research only after the invention and growth of the new media of film and radio. The newspaper was first studied in Europe and especially Germany, but the new and wider field of inquiry found its main home in the United States where the truly mass media developed most rapidly. It was there at the same time that the social sciences were most rapidly growing in range and status and they ...