"Public-making" is the chief instrument of modern social control. --George Gerbner

George Gerbner, "Communication:  Society is the Message"

The key to the historic significance of mass media is their ability to mass- produce messages that create mass publics-heterogeneous social aggregates that never meet face-to-face, and have little in common except the messages they share.
Such "public-making" is the chief instrument of modern social control. When rebels take over the radio station, when election candi- dates demand "equal time," when advertisers buy space or time in which to deliver their message, what is bought (or fought for) is not time or space but the chief "products" of modern media: access to the publics they have created.