CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Dervin, B. (1981). Mass communicating: Changing conceptions of the audience. In R. E. Rice & W. J. Paisley (Eds.), Public communication campaigns (pp. 71-87). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Reprinted in: B. Dervin & L. Foreman-Wernet (with E. Lauterbach) (Eds.). (2003). Sense-Making Methodology reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin (pp.197-214). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
© Hampton Press and Brenda Dervin (2003), reprinted by permission of Sage (1981).

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ABSTRACT:
This is the first of three versions of chapters Dervin has written for the Sage Publications edited volumes entitled Public communication campaigns. This version, originally dated 1981, compares two different fundamental conceptualizations of public communication campaigns—the top-down transmission approach and the communication approach. The former, Dervin suggests, is based on information-as-thing assumptions while the later is based on information-as-construction. Dervin compares these two sets of assumptions and draws out their implications for the design and impacts of public communication campaigns. She also presents Sense-Making Methodology (called Sense-Making approach in 1981) as an attempt to address both in research and in design the information-as-construction assumptions. As with all of Dervin’s writings, later works introduce new terminology and alter assumptions—for example, later Sense-Making is described as beyond constructivism. Most of the fundamental assumptions and arguments remain the same, however. The Dervin chapters in the two later volumes of Public communication campaigns involve such substantial revisions that they are, in effect, entirely new presentations. See Dervin (1989) and Dervin & Frenette (2001).

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