The notion of social aggregates deals with the ways of gathering individuals in loosely clustered groups. Their purpose, size and form of interaction differ depending on the way they react to the stimuli that are exposed, the possibility of directly intervening in their object of interest and the objective for which the subjects are integrated with this group of people. They are mostly spontaneous and may have one or several motivations. The three forms that social aggregates can take are the crowd , the mass and the public . These three have different characteristics, but they can be common in the means by which they are formed.
Let us first deal with the crowd , which is characterized by a group of individuals who share a common motive and are in the same physical space. A crowd can form spontaneously, without the need for prior communication from the subjects, and does not necessarily have a defined leadership or hierarchy. There are no pre-established rules or organization, the individual relies only on his own judgment in mediating his actions. Individuals are anonymous, as their name and social position are not taken into account in their integration into the crowd and, therefore, they are indifferent, and it is not possible to manifest individual differences for each subject. We can take as an example of a crowd the groupings of people in the political protests that we have experienced in recent years.
The viewers of a program are aggregated in their consumption of the message transmitted by the media they watch
The concept of massit can be a little more complex in definition because it is a “virtual” grouping of individuals who, when inserted in the body of the masses, lose their individual characteristics. We refer to it as a “virtual” grouping, as there is no physical contact or direct interaction between those who make up the mass. It is an agglutination of primary, basic desires, of a group of subjects who do not know each other and who do not necessarily occupy the same social reality. Those who are part of the mass do not interact with each other and do not have the power to criticize what has brought them together, therefore, they are passive in relation to what is imposed on them. As an example of mass we have the viewers of a television program who put themselves in a similar situation, with similar desires and with the similar aim of passively consuming,
Don’t stop now … There’s more after the publicity;)
Members of an audience can express diverse opinions and together, interacting directly with their source of encouragement
As for the public , it is characterized by being a group of people without a specific form, who respond to the same stimulus spontaneously. They do not necessarily occupy the same physical space, being able to form in a virtual space such as the internet, but they are all subject to exposure to the same stimuli and have some organization. The main characteristic of this type of social aggregate is its capacity for interaction between the individuals that form the public and the source of the stimulus that originally aggregated them. Through boos, applause and the sharing of opinions, the audience interacts with the theater play or musical show they are currently watching.
