Mass Media

The way one understands the term "Mass Media" is defined by the way one understands the words themselves; whether we understand the words based on their connotation or their denotation.
The denotation, of the “mass” portion is interesting. Does mass refer to the innumerable quantities of media and therefore information transmission? Exemplified by cellphones emergence everywhere. Or does mass refer to the vast scope and reach of said transmission? Such as TV's ability to reach so many. In both cases the final approximation is really the same. The main idea is that the “mass” portion of the phrase refers to the ability to be able to reach as many people as possible.
From this we can take that for a medium to be categorized in the “Mass Media” bracket, it has to be a medium that is designed to reach the largest possible amount of potential viewers.
That is, as I see it, the denotation of the term. The connotation is a bit different. Our cultural views, as a society, seem to put a very negative light on things with “media” attached to it. Mass media has become something painfully inseparable from definition of “the media”. That quaint little term people use for defining anything news (and thus “media”) related.
That’s because people don’t see media as technology, the cellphone they use, or the TV they watch. Instead they understand media and by extension mass media only as the organization that brings news to the masses. Mostly people of that opinion are those that don't know (or perhaps even care)about the denotation of a term that is defining us as a society today.