EXPLAINER @jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia Photo: Beyzanur K. via Pexels · Pexels License Media literacy, information literacy and digital literacy illuminate different aspects of the same activity. Their boundaries overlap, especially when information becomes communication between people, within relationships and across institutions. A news article appears in a group chat. Someone questions its headline, another searches for the original data, and a third explains how to adjust the privacy settings before sharing a screenshot. Are they practising media literacy, information literacy or digital literacy? All three, probably. The distinction is useful, provided we treat the terms as perspectives rather than competing territories. Their origins and frameworks differ, but modern communication rarely arrives neatly divided into separate categories. An article is a message, evidence is something to examine, and a platform is an environment in which people interact. Three...
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From Individuals to Media Systems: How Communication Really Works
A communication outcome can begin in a person, travel through a group, be shaped by an institution and be amplified by a media system.
Messages rarely move from sender to audience in a straight line. A short video may be noticed because one person finds it striking, shared because friends are discussing it, packaged according to an organisation's priorities, and amplified by a platform whose recommendation system makes it more visible. Looking only at the person, group, institution or system would capture something real. None would capture the whole process.
There is no single compulsory ladder. Different traditions divide the terrain differently. Here, four levels provide a practical lens: individual, group, institutional and media-system.
What structures shape what can circulate, where, and at what scale?
↕ Influence can move in both directions. Real communication crosses levels.
These are not sealed boxes. They are vantage points. The same event can be described at more than one level, and evidence at one level does not automatically establish what happened at another. That helps prevent a psychological explanation from substituting for institutional evidence, or a system explanation from erasing individual agency.
1. The individual
At the individual level, the question is what happens within and around a person. What attracts attention? What is understood? What prior knowledge is available? What feels credible or relevant? Psychology is useful here because the same message can be interpreted differently by different people. But the explanation becomes too narrow if every outcome is reduced to bias or motivation while the surrounding environment disappears.
2. The group
The group level asks what happens between people. Families, workplaces, communities and online networks can supply cues about what is normal, credible or worth passing on. A
cross-disciplinary meta-analysis of 250 effect sizes from 112,478 participants
found that social norms influenced consumer behaviour, with effects varying across contexts. The wider point is that communication is discussed, endorsed, questioned and circulated socially.
3. The institution
At the institutional level, attention shifts to organised production. Newsrooms, universities, government agencies, companies, health services and platforms communicate through routines, professional norms, resources and organisational priorities. Stephen Reese's
Hierarchy of Influences model
shows how media content can be shaped by influences ranging from individual communicators and work routines to organisations, institutions and the wider social system.
4. The media system
The media-system level widens the frame again. Markets, regulation, ownership, technologies and distribution infrastructures help define which communication environments exist. In a
classic comparison of 18 Western European and North American democracies,
Hallin and Mancini distinguished media systems using dimensions including media markets, political parallelism, journalistic professionalism and the role of the state. Their framework is not universal, but it shows why media cannot be assumed to operate identically across settings.
Seeing the levels interact
Social-media algorithms make the interaction between levels unusually visible. Individual behaviour and preferences generate signals; patterns across groups help shape what gains attention; organisations adapt what they produce and publish; and platform systems influence which content becomes more or less visible. One communication outcome can therefore involve several levels at once.
This short Behind the News explainer from the ABC shows how algorithms help determine what users encounter online.
The important part is tracing how the levels interact. A platform feature can alter what institutions prioritise. Organisational choices can change what groups encounter. Group discussion can affect what an individual notices or trusts. Individual clicks and shares, aggregated at scale, can reshape platform distribution.
This is why explanations fail when they stop too early. Saying that people shared something “because they believed it” describes one part of an outcome. It does not explain why the message was available, why it reached that group, or why the surrounding system made some forms of communication easier to encounter.
A better question is not simply, “What caused this?” but “At which level is this process operating, and what other levels are shaping it?”
Media and communication become easier to understand when the individual remains in view without becoming the whole story. The same is true of groups, institutions and systems. The levels are analytically separate, but real communication moves between them.
📚 Key references
Chan, M., Zheng, N., & Dragić, L. (2026).
Multilevel analysis in communication research: A three-decade review.
Annals of the International Communication Association, 50(2), 94–108.
https://doi.org/10.1093/anncom/wlag017
Melnyk, V., Carrillat, F. A., & Melnyk, V. (2022).
The influence of social norms on consumer behavior: A meta-analysis.
Journal of Marketing, 86(3), 98–120.
https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429211029199
Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2004).
Comparing media systems: Three models of media and politics.
Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511790867
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