Hey - I ignored a *major* part of Baron Saarthuran's question: what kinds of media vectors are available in Traveller?
Well, because the range of communication is HUGE for a technologically advanced civilization, I'm going to restrict myself to mass communication media.
*** "In the Flesh" - actual human messangers, carrying (or *BEING*) a message sent from one place to another.
This covers travelling artists and singers, dedicated people with the message on their person (from microchips to encrypted dreams), etc. Because of the importance of Family, I feel that Noble family members would often be used to convey messages. The grandest demonstration of this is in GURPS Traveller, where the Imperial Family splits up to check out different regions of the Imperium, and - partly by listening, partly by spreading the message, "The Imperium must/should remain united!"
"In the Flesh" is also very impresive to all cultures. Sending out a message by x-boat is (comparatively) dirt cheap, but if a messanger In The Flesh is sent, then obviously this means that the message is of Crucial Importance. This is especially true if a member of Nobility is sent.
Artists can charge the maximum money for performances In The Flesh. You need to be in pretty good demand to make a physical tour of worlds worthwhile: the greater the demand, the more money you can make and the more worlds you can tour. People attending a concert expect an *incredible* experience, and you had better be prepared to deliver! On the other hand, you can get away with charging *incredible* admission fees... ;>
The greatest artists can be commanded by the Emperor to deliver a Command Performance at Capital. This is the greatest honour an Imperial artist can aspire to. (IMTU: If you are a poet, you can also aspire to be the Poet Laureate; a writer can aim for the Letters Laureate position.)
Note that In the Flesh messangers impresses *both* high-tech and low-tech cultures.
*** "Hard Media" - this refers to sculptures and direct physical representation. The Roman Empire used sculptures and coins to propagate the greatness of the Divine Emperor, and the modern Imperium does the same for her non-divine - but FAR more powerful - Emperor. No-tech to Medieval-tech worlds can expect to have various statues and busts of the more important nobles, made with laser precision.
Classically-minded nobles might keep a few busts in stone or metal (the most highly-valued busts use marble imported from Italy, naturally). But usually, "Hard media" uses specialized robots when possible, or highly specialized plastics and cremaric materials when not, to give as much a lifelike, powerful aura as possible. (Be aware that many Imperial societies - high- and low-tech alike - dislike robotics...)
Clones and actors have sometimes been used for this purpose: the most famous incident, of course, relating to the murder of the man acting as Emperor Strephon in the Offical Timeline. Everyone thought that the *Emperor* had actually been assasinated, instead of an actor, and the tragic Rebellion was started.
*** "Letters" - Written, typed, and printed physical material (books, letters et al.) The most common method of communication for non-electronic societies. Often, in these societies only the elite can read, so it is not beneath even the Emperor to send out a 'paper' message. Hand-written letters from Nobility have the most prestige: a form letter from a noble office is of some worth, but only to the issue it is addressing.
[As an example, a world [or a Corporation, or a Noble House...] may treat a special, hand-written letter from the Emperor the same treatment that Americans give the Declaration of Independence, complete with special housing for the document, dedicated personnel to care for the letter, etc.]
Even the high-tech societies publish books - for different values for the word 'book'. Most TL 9+ cultures use smart paper, electronic tablets, or Trek-style PADDs, with dynamic and holographic displays and controls available depending on the tech level. Genuine *paper* (organic plant material) is quite uncommon, except for local use on low-tech worlds.
Specialized and exotic books (made from animal skins, say) are actually an art form, and not a from of mass media.
A crucial note: complex ideals are easiest to communicate using Letters, difficult to do using audio media (too time-consuming, dependant on clear pronunciation, and with poor search features and indexes), and near-impossible using visuals or "Hard Media". So, even in the Imperium, there is a strong "noble/expert" aura around serious books and professional magazines.
*** "2-D still graphics" - basically, painting, printed graphics and photography. This is of some importance to even a high-tech society, but only as an art form, not as a means of mass communication. This *is* a real force for low-tech societies, but you have to work with some restrictions: putting the painting at a place where everyone can see it, but no-one can damage or steal it (think "Sistine Chapel"). If you have printing technology, you can print off massive amounts of cheap copies for the masses, spreading your message across the world (think "printed Bibles", or the role of spreadsheets in Early Modern Europe and America.)
Assuming that they can read, or that you have very easy-to-understand graphics.
*** "Audio" - this is mainly an artisitc medium in any culture that has video technology. It is possible to have audio and no video - in these cultures, the spoken word is of *major* importance. Oration, stories and songs are the ways the masses express themselves, and much less emphasis is placed on how a man looks (see how the American President Franklin Roosevelt was able to hide his polio, and recall the imporance of the speeches of FDR, Churchill, and Hitler in motivating their nations.)
For these cultures, corporations want to make sure that they have excellent jingles and songs, Nobles want to develop that Deep, Rich, Trustworthy voice, and reporters need to be able to _verbally describe_ what they see. Imagine a 1930's-tech reporter describing a TL E orbiting city to the folks back home...
"Audio-video books" are quite doable, but remain a minority taste when it comes to the masses. At certain worlds and certain times, this combination can be quite popular, so it shoudn't be totally ignored.
*** "2-D Video" - this covers television, movies, and videotape technology.
There are two phases to this technology: analog and digital. Analogue is the most valuable for mass communication, as only a few people can afford to send these powerful messages, and there is an element of trust in these pictures. "I can see it with my own eyes!" This is the era where propaganda and advertizing has the greatest impact on the masses.
With Digital 2-D Vieo tech, you can show almost anything - but, since you can also fake anything, there is less and less trust in what the viewer is seeing, and your message has less and less impact.
Also, with digital 2-D video - and assuming widespread access to computers - it becomes more andmore easier to produce high-quality work, and so the range of messages grows massively. It becomes harder for any single message to stand out.
The Ziru Sirka never got past Digital 2-D technology, so they developed this media to an incredible degree. Important messages - from speeches to executions - would be videotaped, and the tapes copied and distributed actoss the Imperium. Special, use-once videotape would be used to record legal procedings. The "language of Vilani cinema" reached an amazing level of complexity and subtly. Some forms of film was designed to be stable and usable for centuries, while certain graphics programs have never been surpassed in their versatility, and remain in use, millennia after the fall of the First Imperium.
Following Vilani tradition, much of the formal life of the Third Imperium is still ceremonially recorded with 2-D equipment (as well as with modern 3-D video cameras, of course). However, most of the media images sent to the low-tech worlds were originally recorded in 3-D holographic media, and only later transferred to the 2-D format.
Because 2-D Video requires less space than 3-D media, 2-D Video is still in common use across the Imperium, especially on space-restricted areas like starships and hostile-environment habitats. Also, the number of societies that have *just* 2-D video tech is noticably greater than the cultures who have *just* 3-D video tech, so 2-D video remains the preferred format for mass messages. Finally - for those cultures with poor computing power - 2-D images takes far less processing power and storage space than 3-D images do.
The "film language" (Body language, story plots, visual cliches, etc) of the Solomani continue to interact with long-established Vilani norms, sometimes reinforcing each other, sometimes clashing spectacularily. Imperial and Corporate propaganda have to take all this in consideration when crafting their messages, on top of the usual local considerations.
Note that - while it eventually becomes possible to project images on a very tiny screen - most 2-D images are best seen with a large screen. The bigger the screen and the higher the resolution, the better the image is to the human eye. Mass media likes to have crows of people watching hte same screen, as it's easier to gauge the audience and control the experience for maximum impact.
*** "Dynamic technology" - here, the user can easily redesign certain surfaces to have different surface characteristics: the stereotypical example is reconfiguring the keyboard to have a different layout, key setup, etc. Certain materials can become "silly putty" for reconfiguring, then resolidify to the new configuration.
This has only a minor effect for most humans, as they communicate visually and vocally. But, for those human societies who use tactile means of communication (The Braille language comes to mind), dynamic technology is a wonderful boon. And even for regular humans, dynamic tech makes communicating with computers sigificantly easier, compared to old-style, 'rigid' keyboards.
This technology does give rise to a few minor schools of art, but does not affect communication to *most* of the human masses.
*** "3-D Video and Stills" - Holographic stills are, again, mainly a form of artwork, not mass communication. (Athough, as is also true of 2-D stills, some images become ionic and *extremely* famous among the masses)
Holographic video is the current state-of-the-art, so far as mass communication is concerned. Like 2-D Digital works, it is not trusted, but can produce more compelling, 'photorealistic' images better than 2-D photography can. The "You Are There" feel is excellent, and the quality of TL E+ holographic images is impossible to distinguish *visually* from Real Life. Modern dramas for the masses are done in 3-D, and all Imperial ceremonial and public occasions are covered with holographic cameras (usually mounted on antigrav robots, or grav-belted cameramen in a pinch).
For private communication, Traveller canon mentions that Nobles do send holographic representations of themselves to each other, with programming that imitates (to a useful degree, but not perfectly) their speech styles, reasoning, and knowledge base.
For the masses, 3-D videos of large, moving objects - like human beings in a drama, say - are best seen with a decent amount of 3-D room for the images. (You can reduce the side of the people to fit a tabletop, but that leaves a poor impression on the viewer.) Using this much space for a 3-D projection is expensive for the middle-clases: to a far stonger extent than for 2-D video, 3-D holographic dramas are best seen in a theater. And, as previously noted, situations where space is at a premium simply don't use large holographic images, except where it is absolutely necessary for work or survival. (Or they can book some unused space for a time.)
*** Full-spectrum recording - A TL C+ technology, but only with TL F+ does this technology fully blossom in it's own, becominmg cheap enough for both recording by commercial concerns for transmission to the masses. Basically, this equipment records not just 3-D visuals and sound, but smell/taste, local winds, gravity, heat, air pressure, humidity, and textures/touch as well. 'Viewers' use light full-body suits, with a special appliance for the nose (to transmit smell/taste), to recieve the transmission. Recording is still a mite expensive and complicated, so the Imperium reserves it for certain State and historically important occasions (think of the use of colour photgraphy during World War II as a model). Robots - ranging from about fist-sized balls to tinybots the size of a large flea - are crucial to a successful recording.
Side Note One: Nanotech never really worked out in the Offical Traveller Universe - at least not by TL F - and true artifical intelligence is a strict impossibility. However, at TL F there has been some major breakthroughs regarding smallbots (ant-sized) to tinybots (flea-sized). TL G takes these discoveries to the Next Level...
Side Note Two: I have focused on political and corporate usage, but if you feel comfortable adressing religions in a game, similar points can be made there as well. I would suggest that Solomani religions would pay special attention to the "In the Flesh", "Hard Media", and "Letters"; while Vilani religions focus on "Letters", "Audio", and "2-D Media" for mass communication.
Side Note Three: Another thing I did not address is in-system mass communication. While something like the Internet would be impossible on an interstellar scale - the time gaps are too huge - it *is* possible to set one up within an system (I would guess that the distance to the Moon is only about 2.5 light seconds, and the greatest delay - to the gas giants - is a few light-hours.)
Side Note Four: In a Traveller's Digest on Capital - just before the Assassination - there was an article on the Imperial Palace, where most of the Emperor's personal servants are holograms - one of whom hands him a sheet of paper before simply vanishing. This I find *very* alien, and implies a VERY strange Imperial Noble culture at the capital world. It also suggests an odd - if not psychologically disturbed - state of mind for the Emperor. Naturally, I ignore all this in MY Traveller Universe!
[ I can see it now: "The Emperor who Lived in a Haunted Palace", an old Vilani folk tale come to life...
But if you like to stress the fundamentally "not-Western" nature of the Imperium, this is a great place to start. As to the puzzle of how a hologram can hand a paper to Strephon: I suggest careful control of air flows, or the 'paper' has a limited antigrav mobility. Just the thing for the most wealthiest and powerful man in the universe... ]
Moreover, in the same issue there is a hall where the holograms of previous Emperors are kept, complete with highly accurate recordings of their thought patterns and personalities. The thought-models of the previous Emperors are accurate enough, that it is worth Strephon's time to ask these holograms for advise on Imperial matters. (!!)
[ "Vilani ancestor worshippers", anyone? And don't forget, all this stuff about the Emperor's holograms is *canon*! ]
What are the implications for mass media? You can basically "live your own movies", not just in the cheapo version any TL A+ home computer, but with holograms of famous personages surrounding you in real life (their images projected by small artigrav robots). Not "Star Trek" holograms: real holograms are just 3-D projected light patterns, and are not made with real 'stuff'. But TL E+ holograms can make those image pretty opaque, so it's quite difficult to actually see thru them, and manipulate the images so they look as if they actually *weight* something.
