Mass communication is a directed message addressed to a large group of people. An example of mass communication can serve: public speaking, a lecture, a film or a performance which is shown in the theater, an art exhibition and much more. Historically established forms of mass communication are literature, art, cinema, the Internet computer network, etc. All of them in their specific language - words or images - carry information to a person that helps them to orient themselves in the surrounding world, in political, economic and other processes occurring in the world, in the state, in the city. They shape his worldview, influence him.

The most important features of journalistic information that distinguish it from other forms of mass communication are: importance, unbanality, accessibility and circulation. This information answers 6 questions: what, when, where, how, who and why. Journalistic information should be perceived by the audience as reliable, understandable, important.

However, there is one more form of mass communication that meets the same criteria as journalism: publicism.
Publicism is different from journalism by the purposefulness of information. The publicistic work is devoted to the actual problems and phenomena of the current life of society, and its purpose is not simply to inform the masses, but to teach society.
Publicism shapes and directs public opinion, influences the activities of state and social institutions, serves as a way of organizing and communicating social information. It appears in those societies in which a civil position already arises. Publicism arises with the public, who already knows how to think independently and needs to discuss the pressing problems of public and state life.

Propaganda is another type of information transfer similar to journalism and publicism. Its task is to spread ideas, teachings, views, opinions. Propaganda is an ideological influence on broad masses of society, by imposing, introducing information into the minds of people. Propaganda occurs in those societies where it is no longer enough to order people to obey someone's will, they need to be convinced of this. Propaganda originated in antiquity, but the mass character of this
the way information was received in the Middle Ages. In this era, the term "propaganda", despite a completely secular nature, was closely related to the activities of the church. Propaganda medieval Catholics called conversion to faith. No wonder the first Roman Christian missionaries were called propagandists.
Based on these definitions, we can say that the phenomenon of social life, which we call "journalism" has very ancient roots.