Works change hands in the art market. So the media industries are not the only institutions concerned with the economic valorization of symbolic forms. Barr in the modem world they are certainly among the most important of these institutions, and those most likely to impinge on the day-to-day lives of most individuals.
The third characteristic of mass communication is that it institutes a structured break between the production of symbolic forms and their reception. In all types of mass communication, the context of production is generally separate from the context or contexts of reception. Symbolic good are produced in one context or set of contexts (namely, the institutions which form the media industries) and transmitted to recipients located in contexts which are distant and diverse (such as the varied settings of domestic households). Moreover, unlike many other case of communication involving a separation of contexts, in the case of mass communication the flow of messages is, as I noted earlier, predominantly one- way. The context of production is not also (or not to the same extent) a context of reception, nor are the contexts of reception also (or to the same extent) contexts of production. Hence the flow of messages is a structured flow in which the capacity of recipients flow in which the capacity of recipients to intervene in or contribute to the process of production is strictly circumscribed.